Architecture is a convoluted mixture of engineering, technicality, and art. It is a cumulation of several fields, expecting that the architects should master the skills of all. While we dive deep into the complexity and pressure the course holds, let’s not forget the plethora of experiences one goes through 5 years of their architectural education.
From the moment you walked into the architecture school to the peak of your careers, you have witnessed and experienced events that formed the key stories that you tell your children years later or reminisce over a cup of coffee with your friends. While these experiences can be serious or humorous, let’s dive deep into the humorous side of architecture. So get a cookie, lean back on a couch as we take you through the humorous experiences in the lives of an architect/architecture student and jump on the bandwagon.
Pulling All-Nighters
Days and nights before the jury, the workplace becomes a battlefront for students trying to meet every end of the deadline. From rendering the drawings to making sure that your prints speak the correct intensities, each sip of caffeine is used to keep one awake. While working 24 hours at a stretch for consecutive days and nights becomes the jury anthem before every deadline, it’s hilarious how students measure their survival quotient by the number of nights they have survived. Students’ dual personalities come into life when they have no sense of what day it is. Also, don’t be surprised when you see a student sleep talk, struggling to keep every nerve awake. Eventually, pulling all-nighters and using epinephrine of deadline as motivation has become the new normal of architecture. But, the jury nightmares shall always live within every architecture student.
Inhuman scale of the model
Drawings in architecture are the way to represent ideas, concepts, and reality. Scale is a factor that establishes a direct relationship between the real structure and the dimensions of these drawings or models.
While different scales representing the depth of details pertaining to it, the real deal begins when the professor demands an unmanageable scale of the model. If you nod or disagree with it, you surely haven’t seen students carry massive bulky cardboard or wooden boxes on two-wheelers or any government transportation and be a center of attention for everyone to gaze at as you pass by them. Ever wondered if it’s you or your inhuman scale of the model that makes them stare at you as if you were an alien creature inhabiting their planet? Well, you know now. With each twirling wind that caresses your face, you bid goodbye to tiny trees and fragile building blocks that made your beautiful model. With the bulky models in one hand and process sheets in the other, you could either carry your model, or you could see where you are walking. But you can never do both!
Treacherous friends
Every architecture studio is filled with a variety of characters, each being a kind in themselves. The bond that an architecture student shares with his/her fellow batchmates is that of comradeship, but oftentimes you come across treacherous friends who tricks you into believing that you are sailing in the same boat as him. They are the ones who often mislead you into thinking that they haven’t worked enough and then magically their work ten folds overnight.
Haywire at stationery/printing shops
If you have stepped inside architecture stationery, you know it’s not an amusing place to be at, even if you are a stationery lover; thanks to the hustle-bustle of the architecture clan. The architecture printing shops are equally chaotic, where you wait for long hours; only to find out at the end that the red reads as brown and the scale of drawing don’t fit in an A1. No matter how many times you get it printed, there is always a last-minute change. Also, not to forget the fortune the prints cost and the stupor of stepping out with an unknown pen drive.
Production matters
Students in architecture are expected to adhere to the criteria given by the professors for any jury. Apart from the design, favorable importance is given to computer-generated renders/graphics which helps in visualizing the space, improving the presentation and, adds to the design synthesis.
Taking the right advantage of the institutional framework, students tend to fabricate their faulty designs by presenting eye-catching panels and appealing renders. This in turn helps in deceiving the situation into a good jury.
Are softwares friends or traitors?
The love-hate relationship of architecture students with the software continues. Every student would have experienced the panic that chills through their spine when the error dialog box pops up in any drafting or graphic software, doubting if you had saved the work. Also, how obvious are software crashes a night before the jury?
Professional Practice
In architecture schools, one is always encouraged to think out of the box and bring something unique and creative to the table. Whereas, the on-field experience is contrary to it. The professors and clients often embody the same role of asking multiple options of the same project, acting oblivious about the timeframe given for the same. The most familiar parameter of architecture schools and offices is that of professionalism and gearing up for impossible tasks.
Yes! I am a civil engineer!
Are you an architect, architecture, or engineer? Sounds familiar right? Because the sheer number of people who know the difference are less than the number of people appearing in a NEET exam. Also, not to forget the “will you design this house for me?” “Oh, free of course.”
Architects have been undervalued and underrated all this while. The rigorous efforts and physical, mental, financial investing nature of the course is enough for people to have exorbitant respect for it. Now, more than ever is the need of the hour to educate people about the severity of it.
