After the not so long summer vacation, everybody eventually returns to the place they belong to “The Studio”. Architectural Studio is a “home away from home” for every student. Within just a year, we feel the sense of belonging to the place just as our home where we all grew up, it seems like it has seen a lot from our stressful era to the after-jury contentment. So, after meeting your family members, I mean your batchmates, you finally encounter your new academic project and you plan to handle your working schedule to function properly. But it doesn’t work that way, right!
After spending some of the starting days in meeting your mates, staring at new juniors, you get struck by the resolution you made on the first day and you start working on the concept. Even after reading the brief five times, you still don’t get the way to your first step in the project and the days pass by. The date for the concept jury is announced, you’re already bare and haven’t even discussed anything with any of the faculty, but you have to pass the jury regardless. So you stand up to fight the battle with coffee in one hand and laptop in another. Spending the whole day and night in the studio drinking coffee, still empty-headed and it’s 4 a.m., now for the sake of submission you come up with all the puerile concepts. The time where the next thing you see is the concept be it a fan or a coffee mug.
And somehow you manage to pass the jury, but the workload is increasing since you are pretty busy enjoying life. And in the same way as the concept jury, you manage to pass the other juries too until you come across the final review date. The moment for your life to turn upside down, when some of us are already on the first stage and then there come other students having the printed sheet at the moment because every architecture school is full of devils like them after all. The most stressful time of the year is here, and you collect all your good deeds and call for support from both seniors as well as juniors, but they’ve got the juries too. So you are going to prepare the schedule again just like the first day remember? but the only difference is, this time you work according to it because now you don’t have a way out of it. As the day passes, you try to minimize the unnecessary work you think is, the photoshop rendering, and selecting one out of the physical model or digital model. Just to make sure the amount of work that others are getting, you frequently dial many of your contacts. Phew! Now it is better to know that you are not alone, and you work accordingly.
After managing the work, you finally get your standard black and white sheets for the jury, and the moment you enter the class, you get smacked by the colorful sheets pinned all over the studio with the eye-catching illustrations and renders. All the people whom you thought would have less amount of work are overwhelmed with sheets and models from the concept stage to the final product and this moment comes to remind you of the devils you are living with. With the black and white sheet and no model, you still manage to pass this too and that is where you learn to give your full to pass the stage with what you have.
And the semester gets over and all the grudges and problems are getting away with that, and you decide to work from the next semester and then next and next and carry on with that. Isn’t that right?
The time is here to leave the studio and you realize that it has been your best friend since day one, it has been your perfect coffee buddy, the ultimate secret keeper who holds all secrets of the stuff you took from the studio and this is the moment when you love the studio a little more. You know what makes this special is not the place, it is the studio culture that never ties you from something, it sets you free every day every time just to make you fly high. Studios never limit you from sitting in one position maintaining the silence because it doesn’t work like that, you can only expand your creativity with the sharing and receiving phenomenon. And this what makes you love it the most, you can be anything here without thinking of anyone else, you are the king of your kingdom. It has seen you grow from a child to an Architect.
And when you get out of the studio, you collect all your memories and set yourself up to build something new in another studio. And that is where you learn to let go of things to achieve the ultimate goal of Life.
