After spending five years in Architecture school one always tends to wonder about what this course of time had one prepped for? Academics or a holistic approach to problem-solving? As a student of architecture, I can confidently vouch for the fact that it is not a traditional understanding that an academically driven course would offer, but rather a holistic approach to various perspectives and how to comprehend those perspectives and combine them to Ignite ideologies that can generate new possibilities. Often this becomes a way of life for most students whether it is with realization or it becomes their unidentified truth, either way, their learnings align on similar outcomes about their views on life, during this course of architecture.
I always had a burning desire within, that I wanted to understand various aspects of life. Unfortunately, I couldn’t put a pin on it, for the longest time, as to how to define what I desired. I am still struggling on various layers as to how and when I should approach the new-found understanding of this age-old desire, but something that architecture school graciously revealed was the various opportunities life has to offer when it comes to storytelling and how multiple aspects of life can help you understand every story better and everyone’s story better.
Through this ageless teaching in architecture school, I could reacquaint myself with writing and expression of life itself. It was not every day in our regular school-going days that our right brain was tickled or allowed to excessively expose itself or version of itself to the rest of the world, but that was not the case during college, you were expected to move, keeping both your left and right brain in your mind. And that has been a sole revelation on developing my skill sets that would help walk through this life rather differently and probably with more balance.
Art and its faculties have a lot of lost lessons that could very reasonably play a role in refining taste and articulate creativity. One of the other important lessons that I learned was to grow in synchrony with art. I would essentially consider it as a tool that helps one navigate through the important variations that life has to offer, and this navigation tends to be relentlessly mindful.
“God lies in the details”, Is a familiar phrase that architecture helps you truly comprehend, this is another important lesson that has been wired into my meaning. There is an undeniable high when minute episodes add up to form a series of major pictures, and you learn to recognize that transition and that is what essentially helps you call yourself an architect, maybe all in good time but eventually, you do learn how to do so.
Perception, scale, distance, measurement, art, and vision all are aspects you learn to juggle with. And more often they don’t make sense, but learning to understand them in the physical world and if you are adventurous then you dare try and understand them in the metaphysical world as well, and this inward journey becomes one of many pathways you’ll find yourself lost in. This teaching is a lifelong thesis where the aim and objective may not be strongly defined, but you do get the opportunity to design with all that is at your disposal.
Architects’ biggest job is to formulate all philosophical reality into physical reality and the course may be only partly responsible to help you begin to wrap your head around that, but it will take decades of practice to learn how to materialize something that may not necessarily be materialistic. But school teaches you to be aware of that unsaid truth. For most, it’s exactly what keeps them going, a walk down an abyss with multiple perspectives to glide along with.
