Setting foot in the gigantic cosmos of architecture, with my flared up passion for art, a timid first-year student in me had pre-assumed that it would be nothing different than the 2-D compositions we had practiced at NATA. Being unaware of the store for future courses, the introduction of concepts like user perception and contour handling had left me in a frenzy. As time raced, the student in me amounted to an ant’s share in understanding this complex process to design, all abiding by the corporation rules. The fire to this learning was fueled by the professors, acting as beacon lights to our lost and ever-wavering ships, and importantly, the educative atmosphere of the architecture college.
The studio, which often extended beyond the four walls, taught us to learn from Mother Nature. We grasped types of foundations and depths by analyzing how tree roots responded to the micro soil types and the usage of line weights from nodes and leaf veins. The college taught us so many things, from building concepts and designing to the presentation, each of which shaped us as a human. The final year student in me, now, smiles at this improvement, as the recap for the college skill workshop begins.
1. Exploring Materials
College life would be the golden era for an architecture student, being the only time of material exploration without budget constraint. We could play with materials and textures, to build small walls of cotton, and challenge ourselves to search for possible reinforcements in the vicinity. We could play with bamboo and wood, to create installations, a dream which rarely surfaces in practice.
2. Learning that “The Earth has Enough for your Need, but not for your Greed”
While some people argue that structures destroy nature, the college taught me facts to backfire the same. I learned that unplanned development destroys the ecosystem, while architecture responds to the ecosystem. Architects incorporate materials of zero-waste, sustainable development, introduce vernacular materials, lower transport, and thus air pollution simultaneously, and use grey-water from kitchens for landscapes. Hence, they respect and care for the biological cycle while providing man with one of his basic needs.
3. Expressing Graphically
True to actions speaking louder than words, the jury taught me that a sketch is mightier than the spoken word.
4. Creating Experiences
As one progresses in the course, we realize that it’s not a simple composition of 2D shapes, but it is a play of colors, textures, light, height, etc., all which unites to imbibe a particular emotion in the mind of the stakeholder.
5. Money Management
As students suffocate under loads of the hostel fees, extra expenses add bricks to the top in the form of canteen snacks, on sleep-deprived eyes, study tour fees, the college welfare fees, and the stationery bills, which all fall short even if the student sit on the brink of kidney trading. Money management is a subsidiary training offered by architecture, as students struggle to manage the culture and the exhibition, at surprisingly lower funds, at enthusiasm unheard in academics.
6. Time Management
College life accelerates the software skills enough to revise the portfolio, the last minute before submission. Students postpone things till the day of assignment submission, pull an all-nighter, curse themselves for laziness, but either complete it or memorize a made up genuine-looking excuse, which turns into a nightmare as the software crashes.
7. Crafting and Modeling Skills
During the first year, I always eyed the senior’s models with awe, but on progressing further, even I learned model making. From cubes and prisms, the scale eventually transitioned to bungalows, housing, urban inserts, and finally concluded to organic and fluid modeling during the thesis. My family appreciated my crafting skills so much that every year I ended up doing the festival decoration at home.
8. Allied Activities
The college taught me that architecture is not only the creation of spaces but exemplifies the complete birth cycle, from birth, life, death in the form of concept, execution, demolition, to conservation. It is a multifaceted field with its roots holding firm to the soils of interior designing, sustainable architecture, architectural journalism, product designing, etc.
9. Presentation Skills
Even the introverted students, who asked their doubts while hiding behind their peers’ backs, students from vernacular mediums of instruction, gained enough confidence over time to present their concepts in the international language in front of the jury. We became equipped with a skill set to shield ourselves from the jury bombarding, questioning, and prompt answers for the same.
10. Respecting the Grandeur of the Past
History lectures in the college and study tours helped us revive the long lost stories which shaped remarkable structures and settlements in the past, their defense strategies, their services, and functionality to be inspired from and create a similar experience for the future.
11. Visualizing the Future
Going with the principles of “Less is more” and internationalism, we learn to look at future architecture, responding to disasters and threats, researching waste-reducing materials, globalization, and a better planet.
12. Learning Patience
Staying patient, calm and hopeful, trusting your design when the worked-out concept gets scrapped by the faculty, as it would, in the future, by the client.
13. Empathy
Architecture teaches us to be sensitive towards a large group of people, the various types and subtypes coming underneath it, understanding their ways of living and thoughts about the abode. It teaches us to be neutral and respectful towards each class, individual, and society.
14. Making the Construction Industry our World
The knowledge of learning, ordering, checking and rejecting second-grade materials on-site, their batching, calculating quantities, and budget calculation, learning that comes very handy during the internship course.
15. Architecture is not only about ‘Drawing’
The college taught me the making of plans, elevational, and sectional drawings, labeling of the same, using google maps to the fullest extent while site searching, interviewing people during case-studies, digesting rude answers from them, analysis; and hence, could boast of an empire’s share in my knowledge about architecture.
