Indian Arch '21

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Manogna Malempati

FOREWORD

Greetings from NASA India, Even after almost four years of my association with NASA India as I am writing this, I am still astonished by the fact that NASA India is built and is continuing to be built by students and student leaders across the country to be the magnanimous Association it is today with over a growing number of 60,000+ students amongst 300+ colleges across the country. Such is the legacy of the Association, a legacy that has taken shape and adapted over six decades to drive the Association to where it is today. The Association has been growing and will be ever growing; and during this process, it will continue to shape thousands of students, as it always has. As the association grew through the years, all of us grew along with it.

The beauty of this huge organization lies in how the Association functions from every corner of the country, through the good times and the bad. Even a global pandemic could not stop our students from learning. We paced with the difficulties, changed our ways, functioned from our homes, ventured into new experiences, and did whatever it took, but we did not stop. NASA India for me is a persisting, neverending zeal, and is an integral part of the enthusiasm and the student culture in every architecture school associated with it.

Why Indian Arch?

Indian Arch inspires students of architecture to make sense out of their architectural world beyond drawings, through writing, questioning, critiquing, photography, documentation and other various methods. John Spencer says “When students try to make sense out of their world, they become the people who will transform it.” and hence, I proudly present to you - Indian Arch!

The 35th edition of Indian Arch expands beyond its usual scope and serves to 1) The general reader and 2) The ones that take a step ahead to learn more! It delves into diverse topics in the allied fields of Architecture with interviews from professionals in Photography, Sustainability, UI-UX, Architecture critiques and travelers, which allows its readers to understand the allied fields. The winning entries of NASA India’s very own Writing Architecture Trophy from the 62nd year are showcased to share the exceptional talents of our students. For those up for quick reads, this year we have curated the “Indian Arch Recommends’’ for Podcasts, books, music, novels, movies and series. For beginners, we even have a Glossary of the most common words used during your architecture school; illustrations and short articles by the students.

I take this opportunity to thank all those whose vision and contribution has filled the pages of NASA India’s Annual Magazine - Indian Arch. The complete Indian Arch Team - the editors, designers, the students who have sent their entries across, the architects, the coordinators and the council who have worked tirelessly to put together this beautiful edition.

Welcome to IA’21, happy reading!

Manogna

Malempati

63rd year National Vice President NASA India

63rd year National President (2020-21) NASA

Simarjeet Singh

PRESIDENT’S NOTE

First of all,

Greetings from NASA India!

This magazine has a wide circulation, therefore I felt it would be the right space to discuss what this association should strive to become. Over the last four years in the Executive Council, we have tried our very best to put things in order and orient them towards a longer and a larger goal, but without altering the fabric of the association. I have reached a place where I believe that we need to relook into the annals of the association and redefine what this association is supposed to be. This discussion for me started in the 62nd year and took shape in the 63rd Council’s vision statement - Refinding the roots and Redefining the routes.

Let me be extremely crass and frank, the association has gotten too big for its existing setup and yet the potential that I can imagine is bountiful and far far away from where we are. We are now at an odd juncture where we have to define the fate of this association and historically such junctures would have arisen in the past and we always chose the onwards and upwards alternatives.

First of all, the students, not the council or the NASA graduates, need to decide what we aspire to be. The three different frameworks which I understand right now are

A student-union like organisation, I use that word with tremendous apprehension but an organisation where students connect and take care of each other’s needs.

A skill development provider. The goal remains to upskill each architectural student for future careers.

A force of societal change where the architectural students are gainfully employed/deployed to help the society as architectural designers, workforce etc.

I understand that all three will have certain aspects of the other two and can serve as important co-benefits. It is, however, contrary to where we are right now where everything is jumbled up with a very hazy understanding of our impact and goal. All three are very achievable frameworks and by deciding upon them we can bring clarity to the councils of what direction to progress, where, how and the quantum of resources that need to be deployed to achieve that.

Another important question for our associated students; Is the primary goal of this association to develop a few fabulous future leaders of the fraternity or create a large-scale impact for the student community as a whole. If the answer is the former, then our organisational structure is somewhat fine but if and only if, by a slight chance the answer is the latter then we need to completely upturn the structure or maybe find a hybrid where accountability and governance rest with current student leaders but the operations are run by seasoned nonprofit professionals.

These are a few existential questions that we are going to face sooner or later, and we will have to take sides. I think it will be better if we start engaging in these discussions with ourselves at the earliest possible time, allowing us enough time to ponder over all sides. I am shying away from delving into my exact opinions and possible alternatives as it is for the association to decide as a whole and therefore these ramblings may seem incomplete. I am a strong believer of the nudge theory and please take this as my nudge.

All that being said, as always, I reserve the right to be wrong.

Hopingly,

Simar

Simarjeet Singh

63rd year National President (2020-21)

NASA India

PREFACE

Dear reader,

Thank you for picking up this magazine. The brainstorming for a theme for this edition started a long time ago, but finding an umbrella term that bound together all the things we wanted to write and share with our fraternity was nowhere to be found. It was frustratingly confusing, to be honest. Eventually, we started asking questions, not as editors, but as students. What exactly do we not get from colleges? What do we really need? What do we really want? And that is how the theme, ‘Architecture and beyond’ came into being.

This is an edition by the students, and for the students. It is an attempt to explore things beyond the shimmer and glamor that our architectural field falsely offers. It is about the realities, the offbeat paths, the burning passions. The hard questions, you know? Think of it as sort of an informal guide for options you have after you are done with your bachelor’s, things that they do not tell you in college, the struggles and the possibilities. We try to answer the question, ‘What lies beyond all of this’ with IA 2021. Please read it with an open mind.

From left to right- Siddhi Dhanaraj (Zonal President - Zone 4), Arunav Sinha (Zonal President - Zone 2), Vagish chaudhary (Zonal President - Zone 1), Dinesh P (Public Relations), Manogna Malempati (National Vice President), Simarjeet Nagpal (National President) , Ashwith Koyyala (National Secretary).

Working on this magazine, especially this edition, must have been one of the most exciting projects of my life. The pandemic posed a great challenge, but also a blessing for us. It brought us closer to people we might never have had the chance to interact with otherwise. All the interviews that we did online were an unforgettable experience. It was humbling to have such great people give us their time and provide us with snippets from their own lives. We are very grateful.

I believe that every single one of us has created a world of our own that we spend most of our time in. I know, I do. It is tangible, yet intangible at the same time. And if that is the case, then this magazine is a galaxy of worlds. Each one brings you a surprise with it. From what it is like to be a content creator to being a pioneer of high rise in India. From being an architectural publisher to a traveller and photographer. We have it all, in here.

So read ahead, and get surprised.

With Love, Shreya Dubey, Editor-in-chief

right-

EXECUTIVE & ZONAL COUNCIL

From left to

Idris Ahamed Shariff (National Advisor), Anurag Gautam (National Treasurer), Chaitanya Gajbhiye (Treasurer Designee), Ayush Bipin (Zonal President - Zone 6), Aditya jaiswal (Zonal President - Zone 3

Shreya Dubey

““Be right back. Going through another existential crisis.”

IG- @shreya_13d

Jyotsna Suresh

“It’s all about perspective” IG-@joontheblock

Shivam Purohit

“I’ve Unagi, I’m already four universes ahead of you in my head.” IG- @d.walker_29

Saksham Mitra

“We have been weaved from the same fabric experiencing the strands differently.” sakshammitra096@gmail.com

Ambika Kannu

“If you don’t find me, look for a cat.” IG- @am_bikaa

Kiran S

“I get ready with coffee and brushes to procrastinate” @kiru_.s @kiran_arttt

Sandali Rathore

“Lost somewhere between the chaotic blend of procrastination and perfectionism” IG- @sandalirathore

Dania Irshad

“I am half agony, half hope.” IG- @thebookisharchitect @withloveanonymous

Adviti Damodar

“Architecture is fun :)“ IG-@adviti23

Samhita Shyam

“Get me fries” IG-sam_createss, samhita_shyam

Ayushi Nigam

“Art fuels my soul and poetry keeps me alive.” IG- @ouseyyyy

Tushita Basak

“Stuck in a loop of infinite dilemma” IG: @tushitabasak

Ponnuru Akhil

“ABC_Always Be Creative” IG- @akhil13.ponnuru

Preethi

“Sure, I like tea, but it’ll take a lot more for me to spill it.”

IG: @artem_captiosus

64th year VP

Tarun Krishna Alluri

“Don’t shy away with your dreams!”

IG- @tarun_krishshnaa

Ajay Betageri

Dearest

Gentle Reader,

Do read ahead, there’s so much in store for you. We have been through the anxiety, the uncertainties and the predicament that you might be facing right now. The dreaded change from college to a professional world. And hence we have come together to curate this edition for you.

This magazine goes beyond the drawings, sections, elevations and the graphics. It goes past the 5 years we spend in college and ahead of our textbooks, syllabus and studio, talking about the unconventional paths that one might tread upon while navigating through the dilemma of career choices. This magazine can act as a Bible for anyone who wants to explore untouched avenues in the architectural realm. Imagine a page from your diary scribbled with confusion, now transformed into this handbook.

“Yes i book extra leg room seat … just to make myself feel a bit taller”

IG- @ajaybetageri

Hari Sasikumar

“ikr! Ajay”

IG- @hari_horrid

Hari haran

Designer Coordinator Coordinator

“Rough lines are fading !”

IG- @off.sets

Here, we bring another edition to you solely through online mode. All the data, interviews and the graphics have been done online but despite the physical distance, the team has fared well. The shear amount of work that was done to get this publication in its final form is nothing compared to the satisfaction we get in presenting it to you.

So, brace yourself for a treat of reality straight from the horse’s mouth.

We would like to extend our gratitude to all the people who made Indian Arch 2021 possible.

The patient mentors who gave us their time, energy and wisdom; the enthusiastic students who shared their stories and work with us; and NASA India, for helping us shoot for the stars.

We hope that you enjoy reading this as much as we enjoyed working on it.

Much Love, Team IA

The General Store Of Architecture

Reaching Heights with Ar. Reza kabul

Off The Script With Niel Schoenfelder

Sustainability with Malak Singh Gill

Photography As A Medium Of Expression With Amit Pasricha

Did you know? with Rishabh Wadhwa / BlessedArch

THE GENERAL STORE OF ARCHITECTURE

Curated by Shreya Dubey, Saksham Mitra and Tushita Basak

Dr. Philipp Meuser is an Architect and Publisher. Born 1969, he is currently the managing director of Meuser Architekten GmbH (with Natascha Meuser) and head of DOM publishers, from 1991 to 1995,he studied architecture at the Berlin Technical University. from 1995 to 1996,he undertook editorial work for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland. He has a post-graduate degreein the History and Theory of Architecture from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zürich), graduating in 1997. He did his Ph.D. on Soviet Mass Housing (Berlin Technical University, 2015).In the year 2017, he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit for cultural and scientific exchange with the states of the former Soviet Union (2017). Since 2018 Honorary Professorship at the O.M. Beketov National University of Urban Economy in Kharkiv, Ukraine. 2022 Visiting Professor for Public Humanities at Brown University in Providence/Rhode Island.

Early life/introduction

IA: What drove you towards architecture in the first place?

PM: I was born into a family of architects. Although I never met him, my grandfather was a civil engineer and built bridges. In that respect, I have the genes of a designing engineer in my blood.

IA: Tell us about your journey from an architect to a publisher.

PM: While my fellow students at the architecture school worked in architecture offices or on construction sites during the semester break, I did internships in editorial offices. Parallel to my architectural studies, I trained as a journalist and worked for the press, radio, and television.

IA: What was it like working for media (print and digital) as an architect? And things from the architecture school that helped you in the media world.

PM: As a young architect, I was always the “exotic one” in the editorial offices. Still, I was respected because of my specialized knowledge and received assignments for book reviews, construction topics, or critiques of new buildings. I was also considered an oddball among my fellow students because I approached architecture less through drawing and more through writing. But since architectural education in Germany does not follow a strict curriculum like in high school, I set my priorities. I am grateful for this freedom to this day.

IA: Why master in the theory of architecture? What was the driving force behind this decision? And tips for students trying to decide what they will master in?

PM: The theory is the foundation of any discipline. This is especially true in architecture - even if it is understood as a practice-oriented discipline. But this is precisely where the misunderstanding lies among many of my architect colleagues: Architects need to be able to talk and write about their ideas in addition to drawing. Thinking is where the theory begins. I can only advise young architects not to be afraid of the view. You don’t have to have read ten books on architecture to formulate your own opinion on buildings and their design. You can also describe and evaluate architecture based on your own experience. Of course, one should also read texts by other architects and ask oneself which discourse to take up and pursue.

But beware: many architects wrote about everything, but not about architecture. Therefore, one should first concentrate on texts about architecture. Otherwise, the reading will lead one to a dead end.

IA: How was your experience teaching in countries like Kazakhstan? Any life-altering moments?

PM: When you contact people outside Europe as a German architect, you are initially met with a lot of appreciation for German engineering. This also applies to countries in Central Asia that were formerly part of the Soviet Union. I have met colleagues there repeatedly who enjoyed an excellent education and had to experience how the profession of architecture has changed compared to the socialite times. At that time, architecture was considered a highly respected profession. Today, the architect is often only the vicarious agent of profit-making commercial project developers.

Dom Publishers Publishing

IA: How did DOM publishers come into the picture? What was the inspiration behind it?

PM: If you deal with architecture theoretically, writing is part of it. I founded my own publishing house in 2005. It is mainly related to making myself completely independent and allowing young authors to have their books published. I know from my own experience that the “first book” is always the hardest.

IA: Advice to students freshly out of college. What if we want to do something unconventional (in publishing, or media perhaps), especially if we are from a third-world country? Where do we start?

PM: I don’t understand why you consider India as a third-world country? By far, it is not. India is the biggest democracy in the world. You could be proud of it – especially if we look at what is currently happening in Russia, the world’s biggest country by territory. They ultimately lost any means of democracy, and you could get sentenced to 15 years in jail if you don’t describe the martial war against Ukraine as a, “military operation for the purpose of peace.”

India is a country with one of the oldest cultures of humankind. When it comes to architecture, you have many ideas and beauty. This should be your value from what you can benefit from. That does not mean that you should copy the past. But architectural history can inspire your ideas in contemporary architecture. You don’t need “unconventional” ideas to attract potential clients. If you start working on an architect’s all-day tasks, you can become as successful. A “radical normal” can be even better than “re-inventing architecture every Monday.”

IA: Running a specialized publishing house for architects. What is that like?

PM: Combining the architectural firm with the publishing house has become something familiar. And helps to get inspiration from both fields. For example, we have been working in Western Africa as architects for ten years now. The many trips to Mali, Ghana, Burkina Faso, and elsewhere helped me collect information and edit the 7-volume, “Sub-Saharan Africa Architectural Guide,” published in 2021. Moreover, the manuals on accessible architecture and signage allowed our architectural firm to specialize in this field. My wife Natascha Meuser has become an expert in zoo architecture, and, consequently, she has published books on building for animals and public aquariums. Two years ago, she founded the “Institute for Zoo Architecture” – the only academic institution of its kind.

Housing Issues

IA: How can we rethink housing in India, where slums are a huge issue?

PM: Housing is the most crucial field for architects, but universities hardly communicate this. I remember in my university that housing was the most boring seminar, full of politics and ideologies. If you think about housing in India, you should again look into the history and understand how those people for whom you would like to design a new residential building come from. For example, it makes no sense to move people from the countryside – who lived in adobe homes for generations into high-rise apartment towers. In my opinion, the most successful strategy is to provide basic shelters which can be individually and continuously built by their users.

Step 1: You should focus on the infrastructure like water supply, wastewater drainage, electricity, and means for cooking (and heating in some climatic regions)

Step 2: Place a kind of garage within a decent distance from their neighbours and train the people to fit out their new home. This strategy would allow the residents to extend their homes according to the growth of their families. Another critical parameter is ownership. People who live under a bridge would never invest a single Rupee in their home. But once you issue documents for a piece of land or a shelter that belongs to them – they will start to invest in their property.

Summary: You don’t need to invent new typologies of residential buildings; you need to change ownership strategy only.

IA: Tell us a little about your doctorate research work.

PM: Since my Ph.D., one major part of my research has been on

Housing in India near Ganga edge

prefabricated architecture. The most extensive housing program of the 20th century was implemented in the Soviet Union. You can find similar panel buildings between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific Ocean. It’s a distance of a third of our hemisphere! I developed a system of ten parameters to identify the more than 800 panel systems and tried to categorize them into three generations. This area of architecture is far from being fully explored, and there are many new aspects yet to be covered

IA: How far can politics influence the state of housing of a nation?

PM: Housing is always a primary focus of politics. Many politicians came into power through housing strategies. No surprise, because we are all “experts” in housing since we mainly live in planned and designed structures. Suppose a state starts thinking for its people, which would be the best typology to live in. In my opinion, housing should always encourage the people to own their property, not stay a tenant the whole life.

Final Words Of Wisdom

IA: From being an architect to an editor to being a teacher, researching on Soviet housing, being a policy adviser, teaching in former USSR and the US, to all the research projects you have undertaken, working on the tasks of embassies, and establishing a publishing house altogether. How has this multifaceted work in your life added up? Did one-point lead to another? How did the dots connect ultimately?

you will have gravity – you need to think differently if you would work as an architect thoroughly. Once you leave your home, you will be in a space where you cannot survive. This requires a new concept in architecture. And I am highlighting the term “architecture” here as it will be our responsibility as architects not to give this field to space and rocket engineers only.

WWW.NASAINDIA.CO

IA: Final advice to students reading this article.

PM: It’s all about architecture. Nothing more. What makes it look like a general store is the different media I work in. But broadly speaking, it can be reduced to planning, writing, and teaching.

IA: A book that is close to your heart, and why ?

PM: Let me add: a “printed” book! It results from a lengthy research and writing process, crowned by the book being printed on paper and critically reviewed by colleagues. The printing stage is essential because it requires the author to complete their work. I am tempted to permanently change the work with an ebook if I think of something new. But for me, this is not an intellectual work of continuance but for an “always supplemented digital blog”. A blog can also be scientific and sophisticated. But I feel uncomfortable in this medium.

IA: What do you find fascinating about the space program and space architecture?

PM: The orbit is a space without gravity and allows new thinking about architecture. Even on the Moon and on Mars – where

PM: As an architect, you have a great responsibility for the built environment and for the people who use the buildings. As architects, we must think two or three generations ahead to create sustainable buildings. Today this is even more true. We need to develop alternatives to traditional materials and construction methods. Structure accounts for 50 % of our global energy consumption. This does not mean that we will only be allowed to live in straw huts without water and electricity in the future. But in the future, we must be prepared to rebuild more than we build new. More brownfield architecture than building on greenfield sites.

Comic strip by Krishti khandelwal

REACHING HEIGHTS

with Ar. Reza kabul

Interviewed by Shreya Dubey & Tushita Basak

We had a conversation with Architect Reza Kabul, the President of ARK Reza Kabul Architects, one of the pioneers of the high rise revolution in India and a stalwart of our fraternity. Reza sir has also been a mentor for the NASA LIXIL Mentorship program in Season 2. We talked about everything under the sky, including the future of high rise in India, his advice to students of architecture, and everything in between. This is how it went:

IA: What are some of the most cherished moments from your undergraduate days?

ARK: Like all architecture students, what happens with most of them is that, halfway down the line, you get frustrated, because you see all your friends pass out in four years, And you have to wait for five years. And mine was worse. We lost a year because there were riots those days- Navnirman Andolan. And our college was closed. Our degree was prolonged to about five and a half years, instead of the normal five years.

There was a point where I did get frustrated. I started thinking that it was high time that I start making some money. It was very frustrating. But then luckily, I met some friends, and they got me a job. I came to Mumbai and started working and I realised what architecture truly was. Architecture is very different both academically and professionally. So that break gave me a completely different outlook towards architecture. And that was a great thing. I started loving architecture much more, I started understanding why we were doing certain things in college, or the subjects that we were studying, how they were related to each other and how it could help us as professionals.

So I think that was the best thing that happened to me in my college days. Other than that, I love the college days, because in our college the studio was open 24/7 and we could just walk in any time and work and hang out with friends. And the usual things that students do.

At times, I live those moments again, and I cherish those moments and I want to go back to college.

And that’s why I like to go to a lot of colleges when they call me for lecturing or mentoring. I take that opportunity because I love to go back. It reminds me of my days in college and it’s a great feeling.

IA: When we look at a typical achitecture course we see that we just have a six-month internship. And then the rest of it is purely academic. As you said, your job life helped you understand how the subjects we study are related and that helped knit the reality and the theory together. So what changes do you think can be introduced to improve the architecture course?

English bonds and the Fleming bonds, we don’t get bricks at all today. We’re not doing brick construction anymore. We’re using completely different methods of construction. According to me, referring to McKay even today doesn’t make sense. I passed out 30 or 45 years ago, and we studied McKay back then. Students now are still referring to the same book. There has to be some change to that. Something innovative, like what technology is doing today in construction, what architecture is all about in the 21st century.

We made those building construction sheets by borrowing from our seniors and copying them. And we just completed the submission without even understanding. Instead, there should be more practical classes and more technology-related subjects that are relevant in this era. Technology is not only computers, but technology in construction. How would you use technologically advanced construction methods? What are the different technologies that you use in construction? All those things have to make their way into the academic curriculum.

Otherwise, what happens is that when you come out of college, you don’t know anything about the reality of architecture. We should focus more on the practical aspects of such things rather than the theory. So no brick joints, wood joints and window details as they are not being used today. We have UPVC windows, we’ve got aluminium windows, there are so many different types of windows. So the course should contain all those things. Current things.

IA: Our teacher once asked a very simple question, “How do you construct a two-storey house?” He asked us to break it down into steps, and none of us could answer. We knew the theory but not the practical part of it. So like you said, we need more practical know-how. How do we achieve this? And how can we bring that change in the undergraduate architecture course, in terms of tangible strategies?

ARK: I would say that even when you’re in college or after you have passed out and you start working with a firm, a student just thinks that they passed out and they know everything, but in reality, you don’t know anything. Because you have to go through at least a cycle of one project from conception to conclusion. That means you start on the drawing board, you get the approvals, then you go for the construction phase, the construction drawings, and then you finish the building and handover.

So I think there should be more practical exposure in college itself, where you take the students right through that journey of the practical working of a project so that they know what the whole thing is all about and it is not just about passing exams.

ARK: I would say there are a lot of things. What they teach you in college is of no use. When you look at your brick bonds the

IA: You mentioned that students should see at least one project cycle. But in architecture, there’s this catch 22 situation

where nobody wants to hire you unless and until you have already built and you cannot build unless you have experience, it’s this vicious cycle. What can be done to tackle that?

ARK: That’s exactly what I’m saying. After you pass out there are a lot of students or architects who graduated and got a degree are in a rush to start on their own.

I have a lot of trainees who come in as students who pass out and work with us. I always advise them to work for two years minimum, but three to five years ideally because that’s how long it takes to finish a big-scale project, starting from the drawings till the signing of the contract and the final construction. Only then will you get to learn the process.

How to sign a contract and negotiate with the client? How to know whether the project is in a residential zone? What is the area you would get? What is the surrounding of your site? You have to go through all of this and only then will you be able to do something on your own.

IA: The design process taught in colleges is very linear - You work on the concept, and you work on the plans and the elevations and then sections. But then again, the design process in real life is not linear at all. So from your experience, how do you think we can make the design process more of our own within the structure that is dictated by the course?

ARK: Students should be associated with live projects. Colleges should tie-up with architectural firms and get permission for the students. So that they can go to the site during their time in college and see the entire process.

Just a couple of days ago, I got a call from one of the colleges saying that they wanted their students to visit two of my sites, one was under construction, and the other one was completed. They are both hotels. The students are doing a hotel as their design programme for the semester and they wanted to see our projects. So I told the college that I would like to come and talk to them and tell them what the hotels are about first. After that, we can take them to the site which is under construction and let them experience the construction phase for the rest of that semester. They can then see the hotel that is completed and operational for some time. There, they can talk to the managers, ask them about the problems they’re facing and how it could have been done better.

I think a more interactive studio experience and more site visits would bring in the necessary change in the way students design. That should be the method of teaching architecture. Architecture is not two plus two. There is no formula to it. You have to derive your formula and to be able to do that, you have to do physical work and be involved in a project from the very beginning.

IA: As you mentioned earlier, when you were still in college, you saw most of your peers pass out and some of them even got into well-off jobs. Likewise, we see our peers pass out get high paid jobs, we start questioning whether we should have taken up architecture altogether. We get a mid-course crisis and start questioning our passion for the subject and the entire decision that we took back then. How can we best handle this situation?

ARK: That’s exactly what I said. Architecture is something that you have to love, otherwise you’ll find the subject to be thoroughly monotonous. You have to do it with a lot of passion. You can’t just do something because there’s no formula. So you have to be in it. You have to live it. Sometimes in the middle of a project, and you can ask this to my team, I’ll just get up in the middle of the night and send them a WhatsApp message saying ‘I think this should be the solution for it.’

Because you know you’re living it, you are looking at it. You’re thinking about it even in your sleep. Only then can you do something meaningful.

IA: Do you have any advice for the students who are considering abandoning the subject altogether and getting into another field? what would you say is the best thing for them to do at that juncture?

ARK: Firstly, it should not be that since you didn’t get into medicine, you didn’t get into dentistry, you didn’t get into engineering, it’s okay to try architecture. Architecture should be out of passion. I always say this, that, ‘If you love what you’re doing, you’ll never have to work’. You should be passionate about whatever you do. Architecture demands a lot of feelings because you’re playing with human lives. What you build or what you design is going to play a huge part in the lives of a lot of people. So you have to be very careful.

IA: Did you have a Eureka moment, when you knew that architecture is for you? What is the path of finding one’s passion like, is it linear or messy? What was it like for you?

ARK: When I die and I am asked what I want to do in my next life, I would say I want to be an architect. It should be that way for you. Not just for architecture, but anything. You should be passionate about whatever you do. That’s very important.

IA: What are your thoughts about the exploitation of freshers in our industry? We have crazy work hours and minimal pay. And I even heard some of my seniors saying they had panic attacks in the office. That’s how bad it got, they were working 16 hours a day and were paid peanuts. So how do you think we can tackle this problem in the industry?

ARK: That’s the case with architects too, we also get paid peanuts sometimes. So it just trickles down the line. Initially, you have to have some kind of a base. I started my life with only 600 rupees. At that point, my parents would tell me, “You have gone through architecture and you have spent so many years on this. See our staff, they’re getting much more than you. Why are you wasting your time, come join our business.”

Initially, anything you do, even when you start your practice, you may do small jobs. I did small jobs, like just refurbishing a product, or just doing a bookshelf. Those are things you do to climb up to the top. You have to start from the ground floor, you can’t start from the 10th floor. That is all a part of the learning process. It is all about how you learn and how you use it.

You must have heard of Eklavya right? He gave his thumb away to learn. So to learn, you have to give something. We all must.

IA: Being on-site, especially after you are a new graduate student can be daunting in itself because you don’t really know what’s going on. But for women, it’s like an added disadvantage, because we don’t get ready to use toilets on-site,

ARK: There is a group that invites me regularly as a chief guest at all these events where they empower women to get into the construction industry. They acknowledge the women and they give them awards for their feats.

So, as more and more women come into this industry, It is going to change a lot of things. And there are a lot of names in this industry today. When I was in one of the colleges in Nashik a couple of months ago, I was shocked to see that of all the students maybe one-third were boys and two-thirds were girls. So you can get an idea about the number of women getting in the field. With more women in the picture, things are bound to change. Earlier when we visited sites, there was no drinking

water. Today, things have changed. The first thing that they do on a site now is put up an office. There’s an on-site toilet, there’s drinking water, there are all the facilities that were absent earlier.

When we used to visit sites, there were no telephones. So it was a big challenge. Today, we have got mobiles and things that are within our reach. The office was just a shed, with four poles and a tin roof. One squeaky fan in the room, rusted chairs, and a table that was discarded from somewhere. oday things have changed, and they will change. They have to change.

IA: Since we’re on the topic of an office made out of tin, I’ve seen this, especially in large cities like Delhi, where there are high rise buildings and then right beside them, there is a labour colony with houses made of tin. There’s a stark contrast between the rich and the poor, especially when you look at the way they’re living. what do you think we can do as architects to uplift the poor?

ARK: Most of the good constructions and the good contractors that are there today, insist that they have to have proper labour colonies. There has to be a proper sanitary condition for them as well. Quite a few of them have started dormitories for such colonies.

So whenever you do a contract, or whenever you do a BOQ, you mention that these are the services that the contractor has to organise on the site for the people. Today, there’s a lot of awareness. Most of the sites have a creche for the lady labourers to watch kids. And one of them who’s not working as a labourer looks after the kids. For slightly older children there are teachers. Most of the big sites have creches with some kind of a mobile school. The developer or the contractor organises a teacher who comes and teaches the kids as well. So things are changing. And I’m sure that as we go ahead, we’ll also pick up a lot of things and learn more ways to bridge the gap.

IA: Sir, since you were a pioneer of the high rise in India, I’d like to ask you about the social connotation of a high rise. Can we bring in the feeling of a neighbourhood when we are creating a high rise?

ARK: That’s why you have community spaces in most of the high rises. There are clubhouses and other activities for the members of the residential building. Even for the drivers, we are creating a space or a room where they can sit and relax, there’s a TV in there, there’s a bathroom, they can play games when they’re idle. So there’s a lot of thought that is coming into the construction industry. And it’s changing. Regarding the community spaces, we have the main clubhouse, sometimes we even create a cafe within. They’ve got lounging areas and

and dedicated spaces for other recreational activities that are there.

In a lot of high rises, we even create an intermediate floor where we incorporate recreation areas. This is convenient for the person residing on the 75th floor who may not want to come down to those community areas on the ground floor. So you can come and interact with people just halfway down the line. In the landscaped areas, we’ve got other activities like yoga or the senior citizen areas and the kid’s area, so that interaction takes place Now, we have started introducing video conferencing facilities so it’s becoming more interactive.

IA: A lot of this could happen in a society for the rich. Is achieving something similar in an EWS housing possible?

ARK: Of course, yes, we’re doing that in EWS housing as well. In EWS housing it becomes more important because you need collaborative spaces. In India, we have larger families and smaller apartments. In such cases, the interactive spaces get more utilised. For example, if I have a guest, I don’t take the guests up to the apartment because it is anyways small to accommodate them. So I entertain the guests in the clubhouse. We can have a meeting with them there, and offer them some snacks without entertaining them in the house where the family could get disturbed.

IA: What makes High Rises so effective?

methods of construction. The formworks that we now have, have made it possible to go as high as 800 metres. So with all the technologies, you can go as high as you can. I think in the future we may be talking about miles of buildings.

IA: Can you tell us a little about your inspiration for Shreepati Arcade?

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ARK: If you are doing a lot of these mixed-use high rise buildings, they become very effective because you have your office spaces, you’ve got the retail spaces, literally everything within the envelope of the high rise itself. You do not have to travel too much. It’s a community that is stacked up. Instead of using more land area, you’re stacking it up vertically, and you are making a vertical community space. This is more sustainable than using more land area and having to travel more often. For me, all these points add up to make high rises more effective than horizontal development.

IA: At this point, I can’t help but ask, how high can we go?

ARK: When I started my career, there were seven stories maximum. People would not go beyond that. The primary reason was the absence of technology. We didn’t have the methods of construction and hence there was a lack ofa vision then. We couldn’t think of such a possibility because we didn’t have computers. The coming of technology has changed the whole perspective. It opened a lot of avenues. Now, most of our construction sites have got the service derivatives required during construction. Initially, when we started constructing towers of 20 to 25 floors, we had to walk up to the 25th floor. So that wasa big challenge but today with the changing times you have RMC coming in, the high-speed elevators and the different

On the site, there were a lot of these three and four-storied buildings. When the Government came up with the redevelopment scheme, it was mentioned that we would have to rehouse the existing members and tenants on that plot of land. We had to get them housing and then we could build on the remaining plot. So the natural tendency was to go high to consume the FAR and for it to become viable for the developer. But the main reason was that the best views are at the top. That is what has made high rise into a worthy status

IA: Can you also tell us about 96 Legends Square?

ARK: 96 Legends Square is a project for the World Cup winners of Sri Lanka. They told us they wanted something to do with a bat and a ball and the World Cup. So we took those elements to develop the tower. We did 96 floors because it was in 1996 that Sri Lanka won the World Cup. If you see the design, it has got four cricket bats with a ball on the top and it looks like the world cup. It was a mixed-use project with retail and commercial offices downstairs. Then you got residential, hospitality, and an observatory where you can go up and see the skyline. We have levels of revolving restaurants and cricket net practice right on the top.

IA: How much of architecture is actually architecture and what lies beyond? How do we bring together all our little experiences into the architectural ensemble to get a wholesome output?

ARK: Architecture is like doing a piece of art and then you add functions to it. So while there is a revolving restaurant, it is only a concept until we get the engineering needed to make it functional. Earlier, we used to design a building and then give it to a structural engineer. Today, it is the other way round. We start with a concept and get the structural engineer, the transportation in charge and the sustainability expert. Everybody joins in at the initial stage of the project itself, because when you have an idea, you have to have these people at that moment to see how it can become a reality.

IA: When we are in the midst of the architectural degree, we all want to have our own architectural firm. What could be some of the challenges of starting an architectural firm?

ARK: The first thing is to have everything in-house. If you look at all the big firms overseas, they have the structural engineer, the MEP Engineer, the transportation engineer, the traffic consultant all under the same roof. The flow of work becomes very efficient and so does the output. We should get into the concept of having everything under one roof and going as one so that the client gets everything in one window and they don’t have to go from pillar to post. The second thing is to get your contracts in place. Most of the time, as architects, we get carried away by the passion and forget to draw legally sound contracts with the clients. This will save you much trouble and time.

IA: You once told us the story about how you fell in love with the site and you ended up doing the project.

IA: Sometimes it can get a little frustrating when our design is not as good as our peer’s. In work life, sometimes somebody else bags a better project than we can. How do we keep ourselves motivated through it all?

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ARK: I know but then, you cannot be lucky all the time. You can manage one such project that way, two projects at the most, but then eventually at the end of the month, you have to get paid. How else are you going to survive if you don’t get money? That’s why you should have everything in place. You do a project which will fetch you other projects because it will bring you high visibility but that’s an investment on your part. You can take that calculated risk and move on but you can’t be doing that all the time.

IA: Architecture is a very exhaustive field. Sometimes we are pulling all-nighters and it gets hectic and we do go into a dark place. So how do we pull ourselves out of it?

ARK: It is essential to take a break. A pause can change the whole perspective. A fresh start can bring in the needed solution. A lot also depends on the situation as every situation varies. You cannot generalise anything, but sometimes taking a couple of days off and then getting back with a fresh mind can do the magic.

ARK: Sometimes you work a lot for it and yet it doesn’t come to you. It happens a lot. So, look at the other guys who got the project, learn from them and try to implement it next time when you are doing it. Sometimes you lose, other times you will win. If you are playing a game you cannot be winning every day. So it’s okay, try better next time.

IA: Some people say that you cannot have multiple passions. If you are into architecture, you are just an architect and nothing else. Do you believe that?

ARK: No, I don’t believe that at all. You can do whatever you want. You are a designer, I mean we call ourselves architects but we are primarily designers. We can do a lot of things, Like I design products and other things. As a designer, you can design anything. Fashion designers are becoming interior designers and actors are becoming interior designers. Anything is possible.

IA:How was your experience with the mentorship programme? How was it like mentoring 15 students ranging from the 1st year to the 4th year?

ARK: I learnt a lot, that’s why when I was asked to pick students, I picked right from the 1st year to the final year to understand what the thought is of a student in their 1st year and

the one getting into their final year. I learnt from them, what their thoughts were, why they got into architecture and what they want to pursue after they graduate. As an architect, you can do a lot of things and I think I learnt that just from the mentorship program.

IA: What do you think is the future of our industry? Where do you see ourselves heading?

ARK: We are always going to build structures; we will be heading towards the sky. Innovation and technology will give us that push. Earlier we used to think in 1-D or 2-D, now we are talking about going through it and feeling it. VR might em power us to feel the material with gloves, the surface textures and everything. So it is going to be a lot of architecture with technology.

IA: Do you think eventually machines will take over architects?

ARK: They cannot take over, you have to be the person who puts things into a machine. It’s your thoughts that the machine will implement. So, I don’t think it’s going to ever be like you just tell the computer to give you a house or make you a tower, and it makes you a tower. You have to give it some parameters and envisioned characteristics of the house. You want so much height, you want a certain inclination; you will have to fill in all these kinds of things. The computer won’t tell you to make an inclined house, we don’t want that.

IA: Any final advice that you want to give to young students and architects who will be reading this article.

ARK: All the best. Work hard and be adamant.

Sahajanand Arcade

Illustration by Saahithi

Illustration by Lignesh JY

OFF THE SCRIPT

With Niel Schoenfelder

Interviewed by Shreya Dubey, Saksham Mitra and Sandali Rathore

Niel Schoenfelder is a German Architect who came to Pondicherry to work for a few months and has been working in India ever since, he lives with his family in Chennai. His outlook on cultural heritage and the amount of detailing he takes into account can be witnessed in his works.

On his proposal, the team goes off the script in this one, with the editors and Niel engaged in a conversation that was stopped short due to the paucity of time. The conversation also touches upon the architectural education in the country and the disconnect among the students with the physicality of space, leaving everyone to introspect about carving out their path. Read ahead for the insightful experience……..

IA: You have been working in India since all these years, how much difference do you see the way the work is happening here in comparison to Europe?

IA: Let us start on with the first question?

NIELS: I have answered those questions, it is all in the public domain. Let’s talk about something more interesting.

IA: Alright, what sounds interesting; incomplete, Sir, what drove you towards architecture in the first place, was it like a Eureka moment that you had? Did you always know it all along? Why architecture to begin with?

NIELS: Well, I was planning on possibly studying mathematics. Just before applying for majors, I had been traveling a lot and was interested in buildings through these travels, more or less and I thought to give it a shot. There’s not such a serious situation in Germany, it’s more common that you first try something, if it is not for you, that’s fine too. There are lots of people who go into university and after doing a semester or two, figure out where to go from there.

There was a fair amount of engineering in architecture and some rationalistic aspect too. And it also gives interesting cultural and historical aspects and the world of arts connected to that is what interested me.

IA: So it was like a trial-and-error kind of a method! That is interesting. I mean, this stands in stark contrast, when you compare it with a place like India, people expect you to figure out your entire life by the time you’re 18 and you’re supposed to pick a mission, stick with it throughout.

NIELS: Yeah, it should have, but it may not work for all right?

IA: Even though I’m a fourth-year architecture student, I still wonder if I made the right choice and is it really for me? What do you think we should do about such doubts?

NIELS: You guys collaborate across universities? This particular project, the series of interviews, is that NASA Delhi thing or it’s pan India thing?

IA: All over India. We came up with the Beyond architecture theme to explore different avenues, once you’re done with your degree. Because it’s not just architecture, there are allied fields as well.

NIELS: Yes, there are.

NIELS: I’m sure some of you guys have been doing internships abroad and can report back to your schools but it is almost like a different profession, can’t compare. There is the Design aspect of conceptual thinking, that’s comparable,same all over the world and we engage with contexts and try to find solutions. But then once it gets to getting this done and who is involved, that’s where it differs vastly. There are so many stakeholders in Europe, you have lawyers involved from the beginning, city councils, conservation groups, National or local supervisory boards also get involved right away. So, it’s a very different piece that way.

IA: Ok. I was just reading through some interviews that you had given. In one, you mentioned that you were mostly on the site and loved to interact with the artisans and craftsmen, the clients. Here I want to understand it in depth. What was it that intrigued you to be on the site in most of the projects?

NIELS: That’s how we started 20 years ago. I came to India and landed up on a construction site and therefore discovered how it is working here and collaborating with very local systems of making, whatever it was 20 years ago for smaller projects. There was no international supply, everything was local, a 10-kilometer radius. So, you would know the steel supplier, the welder, the carpenter, where they live and there was a very different connection and it was always fascinating. It has a lot of potential because once you earn that relationship, you discover, learn more than you would just sitting in your office, learning happens on site, looking at it while it’s happening. That’s how we started, many years we did work like that. And only now, in the last 5-7 years, more supply and expertise are coming from further away. That changes things a lot, because then you have people involved who don’t have a physical hang of what they’re doing. You buy an aluminium window system from some supplier, that company is more often a trading company, not a passionate craftsman company, at least. The promoters of these kinds of companies will more likely be traders, I respect that, that’s a good thing. But they don’t come from the technical or engineering or craft aspect to that profession and then it is a totally different ball game to work with. Then you end up knowing more than them about their own product and so, the thing flips around, everybody starts looking at you, trying to get you to help them to figure the difficult details out, which had they come from a craft or tech background, or engineering background, that would be expected from them. So that’s an initial scale if you extrapolate that and especially for larger buildings, a lot of work is happening like that and suddenly a lot of people make a lot of money who have no real connection to the craft or to architecture, they have a connection to the commercial aspect of dealing with products, that’s a pretty big shift. Now, I think a lot of our buildings look the way they look, partly also because of that equation.

IA: Many people in Auroville are trying this philosophy where they’re going back to the ancestral techniques. So, we are trying out earthen architecture, cob wall construction and lime, saying no to concrete. Do you think that is a legitimate experiment? Eventually, somewhere down the line we could start mass producing such architecture because of the philosophy that ancestors were doing something right as the buildings have withstood the test of time. What are your thoughts about it?

NIELS - How do you think that happened, that we lost common knowledge of lime plaster or lime masonry?

IA: The biggest culprit is the industrial revolution and the huge industry giants of cement and concrete and how they have so much power that they control our textbooks. We have no chapters which tell us how earthen architecture is done, only a paragraph, this is just a material, let’s move ahead, not a long-term material, not durable!

Definitely, I remember attending a lecture. The person wanted to have renovations of haveli in Delhi, until a conservationist architect got involved. And she told him that we have to get lime plaster on board, this is how we are going to repair it. We are not going to destroy the whole thing and construct a new building and infuse concrete into the structure where it is not required. Sir, what are your thoughts?

NIELS - This is an interesting point. You need to think more about it. Why did that happen? Why did these industries acquire the position they are in today? What is the political and cultural backdrop to that?

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every last little family, even the rural areas that you should be using concrete and not lime anymore. In the rural areas, you certainly don’t need the same speed or magnitude of infrastructure, which would have otherwise justified the approach. It is something which has gone sour anyway. We may have to use concrete to raise a hospital in very short time to have enough beds to tackle a virus, but may not need concrete to repair or build new rural accommodation or even repair the heritage structures, the way that have been happening, PWD all over India has been up until recently, have not had sufficient experts on board to repair the building properly, its changing now.

IA: Do you think it started with, when India gained independence and Nehru had this vision that we have modern India and we have concrete and steel. Do you think it started somewhere there?

NIELS - Yeah, I think so!

IA: Back then building used to be a celebration. Everyone in the village would come over and help each other build them. And all the traditions have just been ruined. Maybe it starts with our generation. We’re realizing it and maybe the next generation will be better.

NIELS - Well, again, what has to happen for that to really take place.

IA: I think so too because we have this obsession with European and modern traditions and I don’t even understand why we have so much glass in our facades, we don’t need it at all. IA: Even even in the college, a project that we are doing these days as a design process. We are being taught hospital buildings, group housing or huge business centers and there we are given these FARs, where you can just go up to 20-30 floors. You need to have glass and openness in the building. The design schools in the country are apparently instilling that you have to tackle these kinds of design problems because in practical life you would be doing more of this. We just had one bamboo construction workshop and one mud architecture related workshop. Nothing else related to any traditional or vernacular means of construction did took place.

NIELS : There was a huge project of nation-building, we needed to have an expression for that and there is also the demographic aspect to it, an extremely populous country. We do need infrastructure at an immense scale and it just takes less time to pour concrete or spray concrete plaster, cement plaster onto your walls, than have craftsmen sit there and mix the lime plaster. But then nation building jumped into, eventually giving industries free reign to become monopolies and with their marketing power, they have now essentially convinced

NIELS: Agreed, it is a problem, but don’t forget it’s not just the school’s problem or fault. Go out and try to make a living as an architect specializing in mud and bamboo structure, that is not going to be easy. The market has to aspire or value these kinds of constructions and then pay salaries and fees to specialists who can do that, for the school to wake up and say, hey, there is an opportunity for our students economically in this kind of project, let’s teach that as well. The school starts teaching you mud and bamboo and then you go out and figure out that nobody is going to pay an equivalent salary to the junior architect who joins a huge firm shelling out IT offices in concrete. The parents will come and question the teaching being imparted if the kids cannot even earn a proper salary. It is a pretty complex situation.

IA: Another issue with design schools is that they teach us that design is a very linear process. Start with a plan and then you end with your sections and this is how it is supposed to go. And even if you look at the informal projects that we have, it starts with, the plinth beam has been casted and then we will move ahead and it becomes very linear and it’s not supposed to be linear, it’s a back-and-forth process, No?

NIELS: Depends on who you ask. It is one way of doing it, there is more than one strategy to design and then get to building.

IA: How would you describe your design process?

NIELS: Well, that’s pretty old school. Try to understand what’s at stake. It takes a little while to sit in one corner and think about it before you actually start doing anything. Try and gather some information that could be fairly, mundane comments from clients and what they really aspire to build. Then you have to probe further and ask them if you are really sure this is what you want or you understand that. The first step is about volumes and how space can be moulded to fit that. Then you take it for a spin, primarily thinking about just the cultural and political aspect. You know how representative should this be? What is the form? What are the conventions of this particular project? Could you question conventions or not? Should they be actually discussed with the client or not. If you start questioning the convention, where does that lead you, could it just become more complicated. It’s complex, especially in a place where architecture is a relatively young profession like India. And how do you make sure that the long tradition and history still is relevant for the architects as those are the crafts people and the masons and have continuous training over the last hundreds of years. How can their knowledge be of some meaning for a modern project, it is difficult!

be like this. So how does it end up in practical scenarios?

NIELS ; Depends on what kind of firm you’re working at, what kind of firm you want to build if you are building your own. There’s more than one way of doing it, could be very interesting. Firms who are essentially facilitating what client wants for his or her office building or house, facilitate what comes to you in terms of Pinterest boards if you’re good at that. And you figure out methods to do that in an efficient way, a beautiful way. That could be one way of doing it and then there could be other firms who may say, we’re not just facilitating the Pinterest board to become a new building, we want to bring critical thinking to it, and the idea of authorship becomes important. You have to be honest with your client and find out if they actually want an author or not. Some clients may just not want an author, they may just want a facilitator for preconceived images in their heads to happen. There’s a place for those kinds of firms and many more different kinds of firms.

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It is very important to be honest about what kind of firm you’re working in or you’re working for. And then make a strategy which allows you to get really good at what your specific is. It would be commercially extremely interesting, to be really efficient at facilitating quickly, to build projects like that and move on. Figure out contracting situations, supply situations which allow for that, it’s a lot of knowledge in there too. The ideals of the architectural firm being the author and the client gives input, the part of a critical discussion and understanding. And there’s some sort of interesting intellectual underlying discourse for the project, that is something which is being taught in schools. But how many clients do really want that or can do that or have the time or finance that. I think it’s very important to be ruthlessly honest about market forces and understand what’s going on and how to make a sense of that. inclusiveness should be for everybody. Most public buildings call for that, but maybe the designs are not always responding to that. There is a psychology of human behaviour in groups and buildings and spaces, that is very important to be studied and have the knowledge about that kind of behaviour and the spatial situations in which to perceive public safety or how the public eye itself creates safety.

IA: Eyes on the street.

NIELS: There’s a lot to be learned from other sciences, from behavioural biologists or anthropologists, and so on and so forth. Understand what the group size is, that is the start; 10,20,100, 500 people. They interact together very differently, and when you put them in spaces or buildings, what happens. I think that’s the beginning of the answer to your question.

IA: You just mentioned that you have to go through all the aspects, through all the political, cultural and every other angle and should the client be presented with the facts or not. As an architect, how much do you think one has to make an informed decision for the client? The person might say, I just saw this thing and want it to be like this and the outcome should

IA: That’s interesting.

NIELS: So what are you being taught in school now? What should be your career? What are the options the school outlines

for you? What is the perception that is built for you, as you go through your semesters? Expectation of the teachers essentially. Between the lines you can read, right? What is it that they think you should be doing? In your careers. when you come back right from your internships and you have to present what you’ve been doing right?

IA: We have to, yes.

NIELS: And then there’s some sort of analysis of that. What is the feedback you get when you come from different kinds of fields or different kinds of firms back?

IA: I might have an opinion about it. The experience I had in the internship was great. I ended up in a firm where the director was apparently doing his masters and I was assisting him with the research paper. I was working on that and on the design process of different projects. The experience was very fascinating, really captivating. He is trying to do something different in that scenario. Due to COVID, we had an online jury, rather than having face to face interaction, and the juror asked us to explain what we had learned, what we did and what were the kinds of projects. It just went on in the same way with a few questions to assess the learning. Like, if you say that you have done this part of the building, so what are the standards of it? Or what are the by-laws that were followed? Or what were the basic sizes? What are the finishes that you took? for interior projects…..

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It was nothing out of the blue, if someone got involved in some kind of research or made a breakthrough, designed something out of the ordinary. It seems that we are restricting our own selves in this whole scenario. My boss told me that this is how internships happen all across the world. Rest I heard my friends’ experiences. They were made to sit for hours, where they could not touch their phone and had to be focussed to complete the drawing, because it had to go on site on that particular day. In that sense, the field is becoming quite restrictive.

Adding on to this, there’s another thing that is plaguing our industry, specially in India-exploitation, for interns and fresh ers, we’re paid peanuts for 16 hours a day and I know some of my seniors who had panic attacks in their offices. That’s how bad it has been. So, there’s a lot of exploitation that is going on in the industry, and this really discourages us. What are your thoughts about this? What do you think can be done from our end?

NIELS: You should be refusing to be exploited. Such practices have to be reported to schools that there are certain firms who do not behave professionally, they’re unprofessional. And then try to build a pressure that this kind of cheap labour or whatever you want to call it, is not being provided by those colleges anymore. On the other hand, building reputation and

proofs through publications or online exhibitions, that the students and the semesters they’re supposed to go out for internship, what is it that they can already contribute. Only if it’s really clear where I can contribute, then I can say that I can do and I believe the worth of this kind of work is that much and we can come to an agreement where I get paid appropriately. There needs to be clarity, what is not acceptable as a stipend is important too, to define. So, if the schools say here’s the portfolio, all four or six semesters, this is what they have done. These portfolios show, let’s say, beautifully drawn, simple, but beautifully drawn technical drawings, then I know as a firm that I can rely on this college. That the students I will take from them as interns will be able to contribute in the realm of technical drawing. Another college may focus on something else; it might be creative in the way they present and conceptualize and have proven skill in that field and so I know that I can rely on them. I know I have to teach something because after all they’re students, but I also need to know about where to start, otherwise it is a stress on these firms as well, if they have to take interns and he’s disorganized, there’s no clarity on what they may be able to do or not.

Then they just essen tially, very problematic team members who would have to be shepherded around and that is a stress on other colleagues. We should not be working 16 hours at least continuously for nothing. That’s not professional.

IA: And sir, as you just mentioned, I just had a recollection, I had studied art in school. When we go through the history of art in India or elsewhere in the world, there were these art schools that were expert in one field, that art school is into miniature painting, then another is famous in oil paintings, with time, the techniques also kept on evolving. In terms of architectural schools, it is totally nowhere to be found, if a school gives technical subjects this much weightage or

graphics subject more weightage. We are not having any kind taught that one should know a bit of everything and then you can find expertise when you do your masters. In bachelors, you should do everything.

NIELS: There’s something to be said for that, but again, that’s only for some people. Some people have the capacity to be generalists. Why not? But I do think there is so much demand in the market in the construction, in the industry, for people with specific skills that would make sense, like you say to have at least some schools have a stronger focus, so that the professional firms, engineering firms, real estate firms and all those who want to employ architects can make good use of skills and offer careers like that. I think that’s lacking, you’re right. We look at a lot of portfolios every week and so I can tell you about 95% of all portfolios are sheets completely overloaded with information, impossible for any hiring manager to make sense of. The students are being told that you have to show everything you’ve done and they cramp everything into tiny sheets. Nobody is going to print that, it will be on a small computer screen, you can’t make out anything as a hiring manager or some person sifting through it finding candidates. You see half a page with the hand drawn sheets for the staircase detail, in the next page it is cramped, there’s no character, no display of real passion or real skill because of just an overload of repetitive information, everybody has the same thing, big problem!

IA: Some people believe, as architects, architecture is the only passion that you have, you’re an architect you’re supposed to live, feel, sleep architecture. How do you find a balance in your work life and your other passions? And is it ok to even have you know different passions?

NIELS: Sure. But why do you think it should? If you can’t have different passions?

IA: Architecture, it is a very time-consuming thing. If you devote yourself to something like architecture, you’re saying no to something else.

NIELS: That is the same for a lawyer, Doctor or finance person or somebody who works in engineering. I mean pretty much if you want to be good at what you do and you want to have an interesting career, it’s going to be time consuming. It’s going to be taxing.

IA: How can we find balance in our work life and personal life?

NIELS: Well, it’s a part of the same question and if you have developed skill sets which are really specific and in demand, you will be very quickly in a position to also carve out time for other passions. Because if your skill is in demand, you can say I’m really good at that, so please pay me well for this, and on weekends I’m not doing it, I’m doing something else. If that was your goal, surely freelance is now out there, especially now that everything’s online where you can earn a good living and essentially, work whenever you feel like working. But you have to be specifically good at something. It’s not going to happen if you need hand holding for every little step, every little sub task, it’s very difficult, so just really focus on distinguishable skills and communicate them well.

IA: So the key is to find your niche. The more niche the better. And I always like asking this question to everyone that I meet because everyone has a different answer to this. What is your definition of an architectural concept?

NIELS : Physically, those are sketches or whatever form, it could be dimensional, could be models, could be hand sketched and they capture your take in that particular project setting of what is culturally, economically or politically important. It’s your interpretation of all that put together in these sketches or condensation points, for the development into a proper piece of a building or landscape. But I don’t think it is a technocratic exercise. Costs are the engineering involved, there’s knowledge involved, there’s code involved. But there’s equal knowledge and feeling involved for what is culturally appropriate. What is appropriate to do with that particular case, what is sculpturally beautiful or what is harmonious or what is full of tension. You have a bit of a historian’s input, a bit of sculpture input, and a bit of a technocratic input, the input of the engineer and have a fair idea, even if you sketch it at the beginning, you have to have some inkling of all you can potentially build. How would it hold up, if everything floats around in your concept and you don’t know how to make things, then your concept does not evolve?

IA: So the key is to connect the dots together.

NIELS : Yeah, if you want to say it that way. It’s a little tacit knowledge, it would be futile to express everything in words and try to write it all down. Some architects may favour certain inputs, the engineering input more than the cultural or historic input and others will have an inkling towards archaeology and sociology and then their concepts will be based maybe a little bit more on that than on the engineering part, that’s the beauty, that’s how society will then find expression in architecture. Because it’s diverse and should stay diverse.

IA: So if you had to pick any favorite project that you worked on? That you really cherish and is very close to your heart.

NIELS -They are all close to heart. Normally you end up working so much on it, if they are not close to your heart, you are in the wrong spot. It has to be close to your heart, it is your work.

IA: Yeah, sometimes you work on a project and it does not pan out in the end and it becomes a part of this other library called the unbuild library.

NIELS: Sure, happens all the time.

IA: So how does that not break your heart?

NIELS: That you learn very early on. That’s perfectly fine, but you have to move on, you have produced interesting ideas and we come back to them. At some point they come back to you in some other form.

IA: And maybe use them in some other project.

NIELS: Yeah, at some point of time. You won’t forget it because you have done it, you sat there on your 3d Max and you rendered it overnight for hours and hours. It’s in your head and it will come back in some different fashion.

IA: How was your experience with the Lixil mentorship program?

NIELS: Interesting, very much like the one I already told you, because it was students from all over the place. Just confirmed what I already knew from all the applications. There seems to be a sort of cookie cutter approach in the curriculum, which is a problem.

IA: What do you mean by a cookie cutter approach, sir?

NIELS: How can it be that the students from all over India, their portfolios or projects all look the same? There’s something wrong. Obviously, conceptual ideas are different, that’s not the problem. When you all work, you get ideas and they’re unique but the fact that the techniques employed to express that kind of drawings, kind of renderings, the language used to explain it, it doesn’t seem to be in the school support for that to become individual, that is all standardized, throughout the same. There is a section drawing for your concept, that drawing is persistently omitting important structural information which has an impact on your concept. Now, I can understand if some schools don’t put emphasis on that and maybe they put more emphasis on urban studies or freehand sketching or whatever that may be. But how come that all schools don’t put emphasis on that and therefore make all students omit vital information in their project which would have helped them to

tune the project so much better, get so much more expression out of their ideas. But simply going over that one layer of extra information, very broadly how is it going to be built. Don’t tell me that projects can be built with 30 centimeters slabs and 30 centimeters upturns or downturns beams and that is the only thing we can do in that, is not true, 95% of projects are shown that way in section and then there are some lines like that and false ceiling.

IA: And to think of it, that is very true and one of the problems here is the fact that all Indian colleges have this final list of submittals that all of us have to make. You need two sections four elevations and all the floor plans. The list, stick to the list, there’s a lack of independence, we don’t get to explore our ideas.

NIELS: I think students should stand up and say, what if I don’t do any drawing, for my submission, but I will deliver a firstclass model. I will build everything in 3-dimensions. Will you accept it or not?

IA: We have never been given that option, nor have we done it ourselves, but as much as our teachers laid the importance on everything and the model used to be out of the question, as it was the thing that was done after all the sheet work was complete. You need to have balance in everything otherwise you might just end up failing in one part of the submission.

NIELS: Why is that so? I haven’t studied in India; I do believe what

you’re saying, but now tell me why is that so? What is the reason for that? Why will the professor say that I will fail you if you do an excellent job and capture everything in three dimensions, be it cardboard.

IA: The explanation will be about the college curriculum; marks being divided in these parts, so they end up saying that you are going to score excellent in model, you can score highest in model, but you don’t have any sheets, we’ll give you no marks over there, and then you are going to fail in that part.

NIELs- Which is fair enough! What if you have already proven that you can draw, I’m not saying that for every project we do, we should only do a model and expect the teachers to say ok, I love it and get full marks. But what if you have a different course, say a Structural design course or Building technology course, whatever you have, you have been drawing. You have proven that you have captured the standards of architecture drawing, you understand, you can read it, know the section, and in this one particular project of yours, you are choosing to build a model. Why is that not ok? If you have already proven it to the same professor or his colleague, you can easily show it because you have your sheet from the previous year. Why is that not acceptable according to you?

IA: I don’t know, this is how it is like from the first year. I have been given the final list of submittals, and I was always told to follow it. And that has been happening to me since the last

four years, and we just go with the flow, we never question the system.

NIELS: But it is a problem, from a professional perspective. Be it a big or small firm, you want to hire, you have to find good people, it’s exceedingly difficult because all of these portfolios have the same, slightly weak and very standardized approach to how to present a project. You see 10 or 15 per day like that. How can I select, assess that somebody had a really good idea, I can’t even see through because it is everything cramped up.

IA: It is also monotonous, similar and homogeneous. I think part of the problem is also that many teachers in India did not teach with passion.

NIELS: It’s a different model in Europe, at least 25 years ago, most professors had their own practice, you can’t be a teacher if you don’t have your own practice. And so, you’re not teaching full time, because then you can’t run your own practice, it’s rigged such that every department really has except let’s say archaeology, but even there, it was research. It’s professionals who do their own research on some days of the week and teach the other days. And the same for the structure engineers, they have their own engineering consultancy or write books and then teach on some days of the week. The world was brought into the school in a way and there was no question of not knowing or no question of disconnect between the academic environment and the professional environment.

try to apply those learnings to your own projects like even though that may not be what the curriculum wants but do it in your free time.

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IA: It’s just completely different. Many teachers here do not have that much experience in the industry altogether and there is no compulsion of having a practice running side by side with teaching.

NIELS -Seems to me like a flawed system, because how can you teach about something when you do not have that much experience.

IA: This has given me a lot to think about. This system is flawed, it’s rigged. And what do you think we can do about this? We cannot just change it overnight.

NIELS: On campus, you must have these kinds of get together clubs where you do your own thing; music, dance, movie criticism or whatever that may be. Why don’t you make a club which tries to find a new expression of how to redraw last year’s project in a really fascinating way, how to learn about making it your own or how to use the facilities given to you, the space given. Nobody will keep you from expressing yourself in a nice collegial group manner. And just like you would do with sports or music or like on campus, pick up a case study and analyze what makes the case study so relevant and then

IA: I just wanted to pitch in that it is not all on the part of the faculty that is coming to teach us or whatever the curriculum is. I have been to college, and have completed these five years. We are just following someone else’s path, in sort of saying that you are getting all the same portfolios. Everything is put together and what is happening is that this one person made this kind of a portfolio. That same portfolio has been passing down to us. We go on websites like ISSUU or BEHANCE and then we see a senior’s portfolio and he got placed in this very big firm and we just see that this stuff is required to get placed in a big firm, let’s make it. That uniqueness thing is not coming in from our end, like sir very rightly said that we should have this club. You should have this thing from your own end. You cannot expect everything to be served. That creative expression is lacking. The teachers u will graduate, it is up to you. My own portfolio will be the same because we just saw that this is how we get a job, then let’s do it as it’s easier.

NIELS: Sure, there’s a lot of that happening. It doesn’t have to be reworked. I’m sure you can fulfill the entire list of your requirements. a submission. The access we all have now is massive, our ex posure to potentially worldwide input, it’s a given. And I think it’s good to learn from examples which speak to you and see how it can be applied in your case; how can it be made relevant in your school or your project? If you’re not inspired by somebody who has done great work in India, it could be from anywhere, but I think it’s trying to achieve those benchmarks and try to get there.

There’s a little disconnect. I’m not sure how to explain it, but there is a disconnect between what architects are told and think and draw and the actual physical space and how it is made. There is this problem, not even model making, it is pretty weak very often, you can do wonders with cardboard, it is not a matter of fancy tools. There is a passion for the physicality of this design, and we want to bring that into a model which in a way mirrors or is a little similar to actually how you build a building. It is that connection to the physical impact of what you’re drawing, what you’re thinking. How is the light coming through there? How is it bouncing off? What thickness of that wall should be able to transmit the idea well in your design. Grateful that cinema lives up lighting, set design. When they want to speak about the medieval setting, they do not make more thin walls in there, they will make thick walls because you need that light in the jam to come in. And the audience knows immediately that you are in the 13th century. It’s very physical.

IA: Is it a lack of passion from the studnets? is that what you’re saying?

NIELS: No, I think it’s a lack of taking the physical world really seriously. I see very little, really good hand drawings. But if you are from Delhi, we have a monument every 10 Steps on the side. If you were to sit and analyze and actually draw these things, not about capturing the iconic silhouette, that is easy, but capturing why it is so impressive, why does it make you feel very dense? Sit there and draw all the shadow that goes to the jam of those deep windows for example. Once you’ve drawn, it’ll stay there, you will never ever forget it again. Then the next time you render something, build something in 3d Max or Maya, Rhino or whatever you’re using, you remember and then only do you have the impulse, let me try to make this thick to get that quality of light. How do I do that in a contemporary setting? You can’t do the 1 meter thick wall like they used to do in the 13th century, but what can you invent to get a similar effect? Just thinking would come to you when you’re doing it. A cardboard model, or rhino model. It will come when you have once internalized. It’s very physical, it’s underestimated people just sort of think it’s not a valid experience, you can’t talk about it really in rationalistic terms. It’s not about how many people you accommodate and how many square meters you built. But to me it’s equally valid, so I think that’s very often why we find it difficult to find interns, young architects who have a connection to the actual thing you built.

cheap when you touch the handle, it may feel solid. How big is the deadbolt, is it the right one? It all comes together. In a car or automotive design, this is all they do. They take the physical thing off this car damn seriously. They have armies of designers, designing the sound of new indicators and they’re highly paid. So why are we thinking that we shouldn’t be obsessing over our door handles or light coming to the jam of our windows, I think we should. You probably spend more time in your house than you do in your car.

IA: Yeah, definitely. And God is in the details.

NIELS : You said that. I’ll leave you with that.

IA: Any final advice for the students reading this article.

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NIELS: It’s such a wide, vast field, there are so many careers within architecture but for all of these careers, I think it’s very important that you get these basic movements, where you forge your connection with the impression the real world has on you. Physically and emotionally and you have to find a way to express it, it could be drawing, could be sculpture. It needs to be one moment if you want to last in this vast field. You want to bring passion to it. Not saying one should be exploited, but I’m saying give passion, which is a positive thing and for that to happen, have long lasting passion. That movement in the student life where you get to the bottom of what it actually means and that is easy because there’s so much good architecture. Sit down and figure it out. Draw or measure it, some people do a survey drawing and they’re magnificent. And by surveying these examples whether it be modern or medieval or classical, you may get that moment drawing it by hand or by painting them or modeling in clay. But it’s not about submitting a clay model and being done with it rather quickly. It’s about you making the clay model or the drawing for yourself.

IA: Right, because you cannot really feel it in your hands, even if you have a 3D model in Revit or whatever software that you’re working on.

NIELS: I don’t know if 3d is bad, maybe not much. Just saying it before you use 3D, you have to have an inkling of what it all means. The brown door behind you, with the polish on it, speaks of a certain kind of craftsmanship, time, but it may feel

Architecture can be synonymous to creating a fabric with intricate designs blended with each thread. These two disciplines overlap as both look for inspiration from nature. Each one uses techniques, colors and materials according to the geographical surroundings. The photographs are taken at Uravu Indigenous Science & Technology Study Centre, Wayanad, a bamboo-based developmental organization that strives for rural empowerment through sustainable solutions.

by Michelle mariam

SUSTAINABILITY

with Malak Singh Gill

Interviewed by Jyotsna Suresh and Sandali Rathore

Malak Singh Gill has been on the forefront of the sustainability movement of architecture in India. His work over the past twenty years has created a unique niche in combining vernacular concepts with ecologically conscious design. We discussed his early beginnings, unique collaborations, inspirations and visions for the future of the field.

What is the meaning of sustainable Architecture for you? Have you ever felt a tug- of-war between your ideologies and the demands of the architecture profession?

MSG - The tug-of-war between ideology and architecture is not something I first experienced only in the profession. I did not like the style and nature of architecture practised and discussed as the best of the industry around me. I was always an artist, I probably still am, but not just for the sake of art but also to use art in architecture. I didn’t want art to be sold but to be meant as a means of expression. Architecture translates art into something inhabitable by combining your ideology. The conflict began quite nascent in my student life. Architects like Geoffrey Bawa, Hasan Fahty and Laurie Baker were a guiding light in that sense, along with my interest in vernacular architecture.

For me, the larger architecture of the world is sustainable. The architecture that is more visible within the urban centres is perhaps lesser in quantum than the others. The literature, awareness and advocacy about the Indigenous architecture of the common people is insignificant. Sustainable Architecture is not what needs to be highlighted, it is the unsustainable architecture. Most people in the world do not adhere to the pretentious examples that one learns through the five years in architecture. If architecture makes the best use of the limited resources and lays a road map for our future generations, then that is sustainable.

How big of an impact did Laurie Baker have on your personal ideology as a student of architecture and later as a subordinate in Costford? What ideologies of his do you implement in your day-to-day practice?

MSG - Interestingly when I was a student, Laurie Baker was a beacon of light. He was one of the reasons I didn’t quit architecture through the course of the five years of college. He was always a point of reference for his undeterred approach to architecture for fifty years. My relationship began with Baker-ji from a distance, almost like a road map for my life. When I moved away from contemporary practises after 2 years in a firm to Costford, it was a dream come true. I was the first one in and the last one out of it during the day. The culture that Baker-ji set in Costford was that of a family. Costford took care of me and built me up, they respected my passion for sustainability. Saajan Sir was my guide at Costford. I eventually had the privilege of working with Baker-ji, collaborating with his sketches.

My view towards Baker-ji’s work has evolved. It was the best out there when I was a student, his principles were inspiring. When I was at Costford, I was trying to go beyond the template of Baker-ji that had become so famous and acceptablethat of exposed brick, rat-trap bond and filler slab. I began to think of whether we could work with mud, wood and lime. I had begun to look at redefining solutions from vernacular architecture. I launched on a journey to work with mud and timber at Costford. The result was one of the first Cob Houses which they had worked on, and I had hands-on experience of building without cement or steel. I brought this on to my own practice after my stint at Costford.

Over the years, I’ve realised that it is more difficult to practise architecture which enters people’s palette of choices versus the ones that are technologically forward and better on paper. The choice of the solutions in-between is that of maturity. I understand Baker-ji differently today in that sense. I’ve taken time to uncover and educate myself from Laurie Baker. That requires a complete immersion into this approach of architecture, from before you were a student to after you’ve started on practice to retranslate what sustainable is.

Mid-course crises in architecture are common with students in this field, how did you overcome these difficulties to continue on with architecture?

MSG- That was mostly to do with my upbringing. I always wanted to be in a field where a person’s character isn’t up for negotiation. That was the belief system that I carried. The difficulties were actually taken up by my teachers and friends. Sticking to my beliefs took strength and backing from my family. Today, I know it’s because of this that I had a choice to stick to my ideologies. Formal education only showed me a road map of traps to be aware of. Architectural education can’t give you direction in ways life can.

Have you felt a limitation due to your selected path of philosophy in architecture? What would you consider the midpath between ideology and practicality?

MSG - Ideology and practice is like the process of pickling, it’s ever-evolving, changing and growing. Beyond a point, your practice becomes your ideology. A duality between them is near impossible. At this stage, practicality has become my ideology. If something is not practical, it is not worth doing. Also one learns value ideology a lot, it guides you when things get difficult in practice. The circle around you - your students, the craftsmen, people who have been with you on your journey help reorient if you fall off your path. The oneness with ideology becomes no longer just a choice, but a necessity.

What would be the challenge in applying eco-conscious ideology to projects focused on different scales and complexities?

MSG - When things become larger, spatially or monetarily, things become complex. We need to tread the path between hands-on experience of design and digital skills in order to handle these projects.

Adaptability is key. Smaller scales do have lesser ambiguity and therefore when we deal with larger scales, the smaller details need to be more in focus. You can’t compromise on your principles of sustainability or practice for scale. Graphics can’t be the first resort to solving the big problems. That would be detrimental to architectural practice everywhere.

How does an architect sell sustainability to their clients where sustainability isn’t a priority to the residents or the builders?

MSG - The best way to sell something is to show success. I didn’t have to sell anything for a large part of my career. With increase in awareness, the number of projects available is immense. Consulting and advising clients who look for a typical Baker building is a part of my work. Luckily, clients are well informed on my work now. However, the degrees of sustainability and adaptability need to be counselled to the clients. Discussions always take place in the domain of sustainability. Confidence and pride in your work always helps. Advocating for the environment helps to push the projects into the clients’ value systems.

How do you fight the short-term profit driven market with your choice in material, construction and costing mechanism?

What would you consider your best collaborative experience?

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MSG - Our work takes the materials beyond their essence to build the ethos of the building.

The system available in India, whether it is the education, the codes, or the standards, all stick to the traditional materials. Each material is in competition with RCC in economics. We strive to get the local materials, craftsmanship and expertise to keep our costs down. Context is key and we strive to rediscover the structural properties of local materials which help to root each project to its location.

What kind of identity does the buildings fabricated by Ar. Malak Singh imbibe? And what are your views on Mumbai?

MSG - When you look at Mumbai as a city, a large part of it is still vernacular in nature, albeit neither discussed nor appearing in the iconography of the city, it helps to reduce the alienation to my work. But various factors including the economics and the general mindset of people often doesn’t allow for such an expression of sustainable architecture. My work has moved away from the city. Mumbai, despite its image, is not as dense. Most of the compacted developments end up vacant and with a better plan in mind. It can definitely be flatter and have a better equitable distribution of its resources to all its residents.

MSG - I can’t choose the best collaboration amongst all of them. Directly or indirectly, often subtly, I’ve had multiple pushes from different people - all over the spectrum. I’m glad to say that the best part of my work was that all of it was a collaboration. I’m more satisfied to have helped someone through their journey than any recognition my work might get.

How does your firm create the much-needed awareness about environmentally sound architecture in India?

MSG - I’m mostly passive in that approach. I hardly use social media, my website - made by my students, might be the only window to the outside world. I am guilty of not trying too hard to reach out or putting my work out there. But it feels nice to see the work taking on wings, going beyond, and creating interest. And who knows? I might learn to do it better!

As an architect practising in Mumbai, with such rapid urbanisation around you, how well do you think sustainable architecture translates to the Urban Indian construction?

MSG - Urbanisation is on the drive in the smaller towns and villages but too much of our focus has been on the metropolises. If we devise strategies for these smaller towns with closer resource catchments, urbanisation can be made sense of. Conservation and regenerative growth of resources will push to make conditions better in such zones. Most of my practice lies with these developing zones, I want to set up and establish good precedents to guide the future works in those zones.

You’ve often advocated for ditching the pencil for a more hands-on approach. In a growing industry so focused on graphics, how can one root a design and give it identity?

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MSG- The transition to a virtual experience of design has alienated it from the possibilities that only hands-on experience can give a designer. Students are left alienated from the relationship of design and the various facets of the people inhabiting it. Even simple economics of a building are barred from students, in fear that it might curb their thoughts. This inherent problem of not having teachers with enough practical experience leads to a more surface level environment for design to grow. The main question is - Can architects go beyond the norm and become more sensitive to the uglier sides of architecture and to people with limited resources?

To break this disconnect, my despair is that interest is more peaked for an outwardly approach than going back to the basics which is to understand and to know people. I’m striving to break out these divisions.

As a teacher yourself, do you think the given five year education suffices the learnings of an architect? Is sustainable construction adequately and appropriately taught in India?

MSG- The approach to teaching in India lacks the fundamental approach of the building experience. Building construction cannot be taught by drawings. Working with the materials hands-on changes the perception towards it and can change

how you’d visualise it. I’m glad that environmental education is now compulsory in schools in the lower classes. However sustainability in architectural schools still lacks the depth and are only limited to precedents to set up visibility within the industry. Education has to stop being an ivory tower and should go beyond formal education. Having more literature be developed on the subject will push the field out beyond its nascent stage.

How do you predict the change in sustainability in the upcoming years?

MSG - I believe that sustainability will soon become a highly specialised and sought-after branch of architecture. Within the next ten years, I suggest that sustainability will become the norm, maybe more out of choice than necessity. There will always be a conflict between the market and the offbeat. My job will be to foresee the near future, to get the larger sustainable systems in place for a greener future. There needs to be a systemic change in the functioning of the industryin education and in policy. Destabilising the current trend will bring about a necessary change in the world’s view towards sustainable architecture. I only hope we aren’t too late. The pandemic has shown us that sustainability is the way forward. Having local human resources work towards it is the healthier approach, versus the migrant culture that has developed around the construction industry.

Books

Photograph by Rajath

photograph by Tanya Avhad

Interviewed by Ayushi Nigam and Sandali

IA- What did you pursue as your Undergraduation?

AP- I ended up doing English Honours, though I was a science student.

IA- How did you end up in such an offbeat, unconventional and cool career?

AP- Like people are born with a silver spoon, I was born with a Nikon camera. I am a 3rd Generation photographer in my family and that’s kind of an advantage. My grandfather, my father, my uncle and my cousins are all Photographers. There is always a lot of photography going on. My grandfather owned a Delhi photo company at Janpath in Connaught Place. My father was a photo editor for SPAN magazine for 25 years, he is known as the Music and dance photographer in the country.

There was a lot of photography in and around me. It’s not a business, it’s not something you can learn, you can’t pass down the creativity. As I’ve learnt late, my kids did not take up photography as their first line of interpretation. It is sometimes daunting to take up a profession which is sort of the creative profession of the family. In a way, it was easy for me to be naturally into taking pictures. And from a very young age, around class 5th or 6th, I was constantly with my camera to a point that by class 9th all the teachers would come to me for their portraits.

We had a school photographer, we had photography as a SUPW subject, so I was part of that. But they would sort of turn to me rather than the photography teacher. It was an early start for me. I didn’t feel challenged, it sort of allowed me to think that it could be a very fun thing to do in life which is to take your passion ahead.

IA- Did you always want to pursue photography or did you have second thoughts about choosing any other field?

AP- I have an interesting story here. I started learning to play the guitar and got good at it. So, in school, I found a Rock Band and we did about 25 concerts. I was called Quartz. But the thing about music was, like photography, it required all your energy and passion. At the age of 20, sometime in college, I had to make a decision on which one to pursue.

I could see clearly that I was very divided. Both were passion oriented and required a large amount of time, so I had to kind of.

choose between the two fields. And I had to make that choice I thought music can only carry me so far but photography is something that can carry me throughout my life.

While in school I did all the regular stuff and also gave my IIT entrance exams. But I was very sure that I’m gonna end up as a photographer. When music came up, there was a little bit of conflict, but I’m very glad today that I made the right decision.

IA- What inspired you to become a photographer? What was your key driving force to become a photographer?

AP- So many people get attracted to the glamour of the profession. Let me put it this way: I did my rounds, I did fashion portfolios, I even did a book with sensuous subjects based on cocktails. I did a whole bunch of royalty and magazine work.

In my early years I did people, places, crafts, cuisines, monuments and I did a lot of tourism related pictures and I also did little amount of commercial work. Over a period of time a lot of things happen, and you begin to understand what you like and you begin to understand what you are good at. You may want to do something but you are not particularly good at it. And because you are not good at it you want it more.

As I see a lot of youngsters who walk into the field attracted by the glamour, they want to do photography because they want to be close to the glamour. On the other hand, for me, when I chose photography I did not choose it to come close to something that I was missing in life, but because I saw it as a tool for expressing. It is a tool for employment as well. But it is also a tool for expressing my urges, my needs, my dreams, my fantasies through any medium that I found out, so I did my experimentation at the field. I did a lot of product work, studio work, to sort of hone in your what suits me well. One key thing that I did which I am very proud of is that very early on in the journey I told myself that 50% of what I will do in photography going forward would be for myself. Till today, because of it, I haven’t made a portfolio of my work.

IA- How did you come up with the idea of India Lost and Found?

AP- Further back in time, I stumbled upon Panorama in the 90s. I made my first panorama when I was in school, took some black and white films and pasted it together. In the 90s, I was given a commission by the army to photograph viewpoints that the army saw. I had to construct a panoramic image of the view that they would encounter. So I went to these points and I shot part by part and stitched these phenomenally detailed panoramic images, which I loved. These were the old days, you shot, printed it and stuck it together but I enjoyed it, so that got me into the mode of looking at the world panoramically.

The truth is that you stumble into things. It was not like I had a clear vision, I went to the points I saw things and then my

vision became clear. I saw things and I said okay I like this format, then you begin to understand. The two forms I like are panorama and square, I don’t like the rectangle frame. For me it doesn’t communicate as much as these two classical methodologies do. I was sort of torn between the two.

When I chose panorama It sort of became clear to me what it was offering me. It was offering me the opportunity to connect disjointed things, the building with a gate, a person with a place, its interposition and story that they would tell in unison. That got me very excited and I began to think that is one of the missing qualities.

Think from the perspective of framing, what does framing do? It allows you to choose what to take forward and what to exclude, so by framing you choose what not to show. You’re playing the role of God by framing, you are saying- hey, look at this but don’t look at what I’ve missed out.

With the panorama I am sort of saying that I’d like you to see whatever I saw. So I’m taking you to this one-way communication, to this experiential communication. I am saying that you come and stand with me at that place where I stood because I want you to experience what I saw on my left and right shoulders, what I saw ahead and then my mind will click my panorama in my head. Similarly, with this panoramic image I am communicating to you my experience. Further with experience, it became clear to me that the experiences are not momentary, my approaches became different. Why should we look at photography as only a moment? Why can’t it become a continuum?

As soon as you bring someone to a place, it becomes an experience, why should we only be there for a split second? Because when something spectacular happens, why can’t it be for the continuum and its interrelatedness?

For example, I walk to my drawing room and I find a beautiful object. I’ll come close to look at it, then I’ll stand back and look at the palace or the view and a singular photograph expresses that, the detail and the frame, all in one. That’s what I kind of started working on, that it is possible to have intimacy and to have grandeur. All sort of interplaying with each other, one plays a major role and sometimes the other plays a major role. But they sort of bring them together.

Because you are looking at an experiential system, it could be over a period of time an experience of standing at a point and looking at something over there, so why can’t we sort of express that? For example, the cover of my monumental India book was the Taj Mahal with sunset, so if you look at the sky closely you’ll know that the orange cannot be spread so wide from here to there. What happens typically in a sunset is that- first the clouds of the opposite side light up and then the drama travels to the other side of the sky where the sun is set and it ends there, that is five minute spectacular work. I shot it in parts over the 10 minutes encapsulating the moments, so

what I was suggesting was to come, stand at this point and witness the drama of the sunset rather than look at it with the perspective of one shot. That’s the panorama story.

The fact that through this expression I am able to express what I feel is the larger truth, because it’s not the bits and pieces. I want to talk about expression as an emotional space, emotional communication that I’m having with you through that photograph.

If you go back, consider early photographers, say Plato, the place the artist was put at which includes architecture as well, was the fore frontal society. And why is that the early philosophers decided that the structurally same artists could play a leading role in society

and that they can play the role of social change? What we talk about today has to come from an artistic temperament, something to push the bubble and it is not about duplication or replication or earning more money, it is actually about thought, the action of creation following a certain way and that is what is expected from an artist in society. Not somebody with money or power is capable of it, it’s something that I took very seriously and deeply.

I mean, I am somebody who lived his entire life with the belief to look at life as a sense of poetry, the beauty, the amazement of the world and our interaction with and my work for the last fifteen years has revolved around people and places, combining both the elements, this was the genesis of ILF. It has been about culture, and environment. I had the monumental India book, Rashtrapati Bhavan, Umaid Bhavan and of course Sacred India and India at Home and a lot of it was about habitat and structures. And I thought, what is it that I can make a difference in the space of, and it kind of appeared to me that

Elephant in the room interior at Denkanal Palace, Orissa.

this was the zone which constantly troubled me whenever I would go to a place and see how little people understood the concept of ancient habitat and what they could offer us. So much deep thought has gone into the past in societal innovations and literally like social movements of their own form which we could learn from and must celebrate and just take forward. That is the curiosity of what makes us different. Otherwise, we just get stuck into the humdrum, we lose the sense of the special place we hold, whether it’s our immediate environment or our country, I’m not a very country focused person even though this is the 4th India project I am doing, somehow the word India tends to land up in my project but I am one who does not look at these boundaries. Something we’d have to learn and accept as the modern truth, cultures evolve, monuments evolve and for me there is a larger truth to the human endeavour and story.

IA- How did you come across the idea?

AP- Coming back to the bubble now, when you think of monuments, who are the best people who should be talking about them? You think these are historic buildings to hand them over to architects and historians and let those two groups tell us what they are. So these are the two groups that were taken somewhere down in history.

I think every subject is created with a bounding box, and history is very typically based on one premise: authenticity. Authenticity is one of the very strong pillars of history, one you can’t authenticate is not historical, its hearsay, so you don’t put it into history. Now the unfortunate truth of that statement is culture is not really an authenticable quantity, its generally hearsay, it may play its role into folklore or into poetry but it won’t be authenticated. As a result, what happened is that it’s only relatively dry information that would come through the history box.

Similarly, what is the birth of architecture, it’s technical, how to put up a structure, so even today people find it a bit tenuous to understand the correlation between the people and structure. It’s something that is still a bit forced and something that they don’t really understand, they’re building a building but they are building it for this character that’s a little farfetched to sort of assimilate into the picture. Because they are more concerned with the time they are building it with aesthetic sense and all those factors rather than finding the true binding quality of the building and the social environment and its people.

Now their definitions even today tend to get very very difficult. If you come to an architect and you say- “oh that’s Indo Saracenic” and you’ll say- “now define what is Indo Saracenic,” most of them would fail because it has no definition or that it goes beyond this and it’s still technically driven. When I sort of saw all the descriptors of historical sites coming out of these two folds, I recognized that they are only going to impact five percent of the population. Ultimately what draws us to a building is some human interface if it’s built upon the dreams of someone or if there is a humane story around it, or the kind of

thing that pulls us to our grandfather’s home. It is not because it’s a building or structure, it’s because of the memories of the grandfather and the life he lived.

Within our frame of reference, if we were to start drawing up who we are connected to, we’ll find that probably within the five degrees of separation, we are probably connected to everybody around. There is no reason why the Bundela or the Rajput will not have some interpersonal relationship with me and my life and my ancestors, because it is possible that that story connects to my story in some really really strong fashion but I have to discover, make and believe in that story, and bring that story to the folks.

It was clear that we needed to have a cultural and heritage context, because it should impact everyone, it should speak to all those communities that are able to use that space as a picnic spot today. The idea became the centre to protect our built heritage and the definition that that heritage held, and if the definition was going to be softer, social, cultural, it also meant that it was in alignment with the kind of photography that I did. I was interested in the mood of the monument and in describing the axis, the tiers, I wasn’t coming at it with a technical perspective, maybe there was a sense of aesthetic, I won’t deny. But it was free flowing. Sometimes I would have fights with Aman Nath and his partner Francis Wacziarg of Neemrana Hotels, so Aman would love the panoramas I would do and Francis would always say its converting shapes into misshapen, everything yaws and becomes a smile, which ultimately changes the shape of the form and in panorama it tends to do it and you’d have to correct it,

In my early days I wasn’t so proficient and my buildings would yaw and gape a lot and it was a misrepresentation of Architecture and I was sort of treating it like a tool for my story. Where

as, he thought that it deserved its own standpoint as a straight aligned structure. So originally, it began that I’d put out pictures and collect experts from all arenas. I reached out to my friends and I said I’ll keep putting these pictures and we’ll talk about the lesser known structures of the country and I would want you to develop this little thought, narrative which you could plant in the definition of the monument rather than the rigid historical architectural based one that it has probably carried for all these years.

IA- What is the role that you have enjoyed and loved playing the most?

AP- Living inside my bubble. Unlike a film crew where it’s all about interaction with the people, a photographer is a very lonely guy. My Assistant and I would go up, say good morning to each other, then we’d have lunch and dinner, and then we’d say goodnight to each other. But the rest of the day was spent together without talking, asking for lenses, asking for something to clean the equipment with, but that’s it.

The most beautiful time is almost spiritual when you are out there, especially the time when its leading to great pictures, it could be lighting, situation, interplay of people and structure, it’s like total bliss and there is no better feeling than that, because you are in your bubble, there is no better feeling than the process of creation.

IA- What are some of the things your practice does to give back to communities? How have you created awareness about the historical sites? How have you managed to involve so many professionals, experts and amateurs in ILF?

AP- There are various things to it, I do believe that our education system sort of seeds within the people a sense of idealism which comes from an approach that I want to do something for the society and as youngsters you really feel the urge. Maybe later on it may dissolve, once you become a full time professional, absorbed in your own projects and then you get absorbed into your own growth and then you get totally absorbed into your own life that you forget about all this.

The beginning has a lot to do with saying I want to make a difference, I want to stamp out differently, that’s the true ground to nurture. I found that as I moved ahead in this journey, there’s an area in which I must sort of interact with. Clearly, India Lost and Found is about building for society, something incredible. What ILF will manage to create would be par excellence, firstly it’s not an NGO-like, it’s projected as very passionate but wholly below the realm of a professional. ILF sort of projected that without being corporates we can create quality and quantity because we have true passion that levers into it.

How do we get that? By tapping it and making people understand that this isn’t about pecuniary benefits but about adding to the incremental value to society because somewhere this

understanding that built heritage and attendant culture, tangible or intangible, coming together to create the story is some thing that gives us hope as human beings.

You know, a lot of people sort of resonate with that and they want to build something because they feel they are creating something necessary in society today, and that’s true of the expert age group also. People who sort of have arrived at a position feel that there’s a point where we want to give back to society.

And as someone who is an artist and of course who understands the importance of the visual medium, how would I define a photograph today? For me photography is a language, it’s a language of communication.

Coming back to the earlier convo, where you were saying that people get attracted to the glamour of photography, they get attracted to the end point, but they are not clear that what they are doing in photography is communicating. Now as a tool of communication, I could take a picture, I could put it up on social media and in one hour one million people could have experienced it- that’s number one. Number two, I could put out a different meaning and each of those people could take a different meaning from it which means that it’s absolutely open to interpretation, that I am not forcing my point of view down somebody’s throat.

Considering it as a tool for communication, I am at a very good point of bringing together these youngsters, experts, monuments, its interpretations and pushing it out not only on the social media but also into the heritage map we are building. Because what we have on social media is a window display to get more people to come and participate in our project. But the engine that we are building is going to become a heritage map app and take our heritage to everyone, not just the lovers of heritage, but also the people who live in the vicinity and the key people who’ll be able to save it when adverse conditions come up.

IA- When was the last time you thought “Man, I love my job”?

AP- I haven’t worked a day in my life. There’s no day when I have gotten up thinking oh god why do I have to go and do something even when it was professional photography. When it’s personal photography, then you are jumping to get out and generally what you do as a photographer is you are up before dawn, you’re on site at dawn, running around, experiencing the best light, it might be cold, might be really hot, whatever. but you are so caught up in it that it never could feel like work.

What might feel like work is the back-end work, making the engine of it, but for me whether it was photography or working on the images or now ILF, the last 3 years has been about growing this community and I’ve spent 12 hours a day just being with the people. I run about 180 Whatsapp groups, it’s like a mini Whatsapp university and constantly people are coming in

and leaving and I tell everyone kindly that I might be the founder but I’m also the chowkidar, standing at the gate with my register saying “kaunsi department me jana hai, accha idhar jaiye.”

My skill sets may have changed because earlier I was a lonesome photographer, now my interpersonal relationship skills have grown over the years because I had to do a lot of it. Lately, in the last one and half years due to covid, there has been a lot of counselling added to it because there are a lot of youngsters who are under duress and from time to time they need a little hand holding as they are not used to living this contained life. Of course, to motivate people and sort of share the vision in such a way that it doesn’t feel like sharing someone else’s vision but would align to their own. I feel it’s been very exciting, nothing feels like work.

IA- How does ILF go beyond just a photographic masterpiece? How do your pictures depict the entire narrative about conservation?

AP- There is a limitation to photography, there’s something called a dynamic range. So the dynamic range today is damn good compared to what it used to be for film, now with the technologies you can edit the pictures and open up the dark areas, but the key thing is to be able to register the experience in your head.

You have an image and experience and the interplay of the two, so you can slowly merge that and see what is missing from the experience that I had from the place. What is the difference between what I am seeing and what I experienced? You should be able to etch that experience in your head, it should become a reality, if you got that interplay, it would be running a few skills and bringing into the HDR and techniques. But experience the space fully, feel the texture, the light, how it wraps around the round object. You are blessed to be able to be born in a digital era when you can experience the image and its rawness at the same time.

One story, I went on a 15 days shoot to Orissa, came back and gave all the rolls for processing, as soon as the rolls arrived, I could feel the excitement and dread before opening them up, then I experience it quickly, and I felt nauseating because they were so bad, so far away from my mental image, then I had to go talk a walk because I could not bear to see the results, because we had no repose there, that’s the image that would go to the printer, there was no way of bridging the two things together, today you have the capability. You can imagine how much farther we have come, and how lucky you are. Everytime you come back, learn something from the experience. Was there too much contrast? Was I there at the wrong time? How do I balance this image? The limitations of the camera, and start including other factors. The experience of a place is a very tricky thing, you’ve got breeze hitting your face, scent of flowers now those are not going to be captured in the frame, but they are part of the experience.

IA- Tell us about the most exciting project you’ve done till now?

AP- There is a limitation to photography, there’s something called a dynamic range. So the dynamic range today is damn good compared to what it used to be for film, now with the technologies you can edit the pictures and open up the dark areas, but the key thing is to be able to register the experience in your head.

You have an image and experience and the interplay of the two, so you can slowly merge that and see what is missing from the experience that I had from the place. What is the difference between what I am seeing and what I experienced? You should be able to etch that experience in your head, it should become a reality, if you got that interplay, it would be running a few skills and bringing into the HDR and techniques. But experience the space fully, feel the texture, the light, how it wraps around the round object. You are blessed to be able to be born in a digital era when you can experience the image and its rawness at the same time.

One story, I went on a 15 days shoot to Orissa, came back and gave all the rolls for processing, as soon as the rolls arrived, I could feel the excitement and dread before opening them up, then I experience it quickly, and I felt nauseating because they were so bad, so far away from my mental image, then I had to go talk a walk because I could not bear to see the results, because we had no repose there, that’s the image that would go to the printer, there was no way of bridging the two things together, today you have the capability. You can imagine how much farther we have come, and how lucky you are. Everytime you come back, learn something from the experience. Was there too much contrast? Was I there at the wrong time?

How do I balance this image? The limitations of the camera, and start including other factors. The experience of a place is a very tricky thing, you’ve got breeze hitting your face, scent of flowers now those are not going to be captured in the frame, but they are part of the experience.

IA- Tell us about the most exciting project you’ve done till now?

beings have, a lot of people have split roles, work and are with different personas in them which don’t fit together, so I am exploring that.

IA- Were you always a full-time photographer or did you work in some other field as well?

WWW.NASAINDIA.CO

AP- India lost and found is to build the impossible, big organisations have attempted it and have not been able to do it or establish some domain, actually there are a lot of people out there who are happy to contribute to this wider ambient of culture. They talk about everything from craft to cuisines, but then we have to focus on the heritage, we’ve got an ILF radio as well which has conversations with people which are specific to heritage sites, we have got a blog called ILF ink link, which is used to share what we are producing in our community, we even have our own HR dept and look after the needs of the interns who join us.

IA- What was your most adventurous project?

A- Each book is an adventure, India at Home would have to be the most exciting one. With other books, I already had the pictures and then I decided to convert it into a book, but with India at Home the idea came first and then I had to think on how to go with the book. The interplay of people, it took 7 years to happen but very exciting as a project, and of course if I ever get to go around another book it’s called “One India, Many Lives” which I began but haven’t taken it further. But if I get the opportunity, this project would be very exciting because it looks at the domain of the many faces we as human

AP- Other than music and photography, I did some pottery inbetween, I learned some charcoal painting, not necessarily, these were meant to be the fun things that I did. Professionally, photography is a language, I am not perpetuating a language, I am expressing it, I’ve learnt a language and I’m expressing through it.

IA- Photography runs in your family, it’s your family’s heritage, so what kind of lessons has it provided to you in your career?

AP- While it’s not a business to inherit, if you have an early experience of aesthetics, you can develop a version of it very fast. You have the ability, at least you’ve got the raw material to understand, nuances of visual communication and carry it. My grandfather was a portrait specialist, he would do studio portraits of maharajas and he was very good at it, I could never get an idea on how he could do it because he knew how to make a person sit and emote. And my father, ofcourse, is a music and dance specialist, sometimes the irony is that he knows more dance than the dancer themselves and that was the specialisation he got into. And so I am using it for my own thing, so we are emoting different fields but the base remains as aesthetic, which is the force that joins it all together.

IA- Tell us about the auctions of your work? How can budding photographers benefit from the same?

AP- We won’t call it auctions- but sales. There are some hard truths about it, at one point, 15 years ago it seemed that photography would sell very well around the world like the paintings, but then it ceased to happen and it hasn’t happened over the last 15 years. Photography hasn’t moved and doesn’t command a price and part of the problem being, it is reproducible, there is nothing stopping the photographer from printing many more copies and flooding the market with the same, which means that it is never a singular work and that keeps the price low. Also with the democratisation of it, everyone is able to take a decent picture because at the resolution of the requirements, instagrammable, facebookable, that are there now.

The demand for quality has slipped over the years and somewhere the aesthetic has also gotten impacted where people are able to accept something which might look very dramatic and small but may not inherently have that powerful aesthetic or imagery. Now, given the fact that the audience themselves are deluded with visual imagery and are accepting a much more reduced aesthetic, this is no longer treated on par with painting.

I think it’s not going to be a place that we should consider that it’s going to be a mainstay, it may be incremental, it might happen in the next 5 to 10 years, or in the coming decade and I’m sure that at some point it will.

But it hasn’t reached that point yet today and I don’t see it, honestly the wall market where an artwork needs to be put up is competing a lot with many other mediums, it’s always going to be very small, niche market, I expect photographers to use the power of photography online than as artworks on the walls as a model for tomorrow, I don’t see another gaining traction for a while here.

IA- Why the name India lost and found? And why do you call yourself a ‘Panoramist’?

WWW.NASAINDIA.CO

AP- Because at one point I was a photographer, a panoramic and a Panoromologist. There is a science and an art to the panorama, so I wanted to be both. But why panoramic? Because it goes beyond photography. A panorama is not made in a view finder, so I am not taking pictures, I’m shooting an image that I built in my head.

IA- How has the abundance of photography affected the art?

AP- Overall, the rigour of image-making has collapsed. The very fact that in several other cases you’d have to put a camera on your tripod, meant that you’d be studious, studying your frame. You don’t do that anymore, you say I’ll do it in photoshop, it even impacts serious practitioners, they say they already know a way to fix something.

This is what they are doing while standing and composing. It isn’t sacrosanct and is not going to be treated as such, but that doesn’t mean they don’t need to pay attention, they are paying all their attention on the computer screen, because they are composing it there, so somewhere photography and applied arts is a bridge, it no longer is about capturing a frame, it’s about making a photograph. The quality of the output photograph is better, people’s skills at backroom operation is so much better now because it never existed but the front end has collapsed.

And why ILF? Because, we could sort of draw it from Indian philosophies, for western philosophies the view of the world is as it progresses forward, and Indian philosophy is a bit cyclic, so when you say lost and found there is an opportunity for it to get lost and be found again, it’s like going around in circles. Currently, we are in a phase where we lost it but we are going to find it again.

IA- Whom do you look up to and consider an inspiration?

AP- Each and every person I interact with because truly its human quality that I pick inspiration from and human qualities are more endearing than technicality. For example, I’ll only pick up technical things from other photographers, but from other rich individuals I’ll pick up other life qualities.

IA- How does India Lost and Found contribute to a vast and general audience other than the professionals?

AP- By sort of understanding that there is a story with the structure. Of understanding the symbiotic relationship. Let’s

say, the other day I was talking to someone, and we have all heard these- Sassui Punnhun, Heer Ranjha, there are all these beautifull love stories.If you could find a monument to house a story, then the story also prospers the monument. Effectively, there are so many cultures that are very broad with folklore, mythology, colour, craft, cuisines, motif, design, geography, sociology, if you could talk in all the little bits onto the monuments, you could save it.

IA- What career advice would you give us as architecture students and to budding photographers?

AP- Photography is a great tool for expression. But it is a tool and that’s what it needs to be recognized as. Use it to communicate a story so that what becomes quintessential is to build a story and the philosophy behind it, and then using the tool that you have been wanting to learn to express that.

What you are trying to say and what story that monument narrates, that alignment is very necessary. Just focus on what you want to say. Feel the explorer in you and capture the story around it. Don’t build any boxes around you, be free flowing, don’t do it as a job.

Mahabat maqbara, junagarh, gujarat, 1851-82

Chini ka rauza, agra, uttar pradesh

illustration by Niharika

Undergrad Education and beyond

IA: What are some of the most cherished moments from your undergraduate days as an architecture student?

R: When I’m thinking of cherished moment there are loads that come to my mind; I think one of the best time we had was in our urban studio, 4th year when we had to document the city of Pushkar, which made us visit the city every week. Our teachers were kind enough to push our schedules to give us the weekends for our study tour, where we had a lot of fun beyond our documenting processes. About half of our semester was spent travelling in Haryana roadways over a very scenic route.

There are many memories that come to me when I think of cherished moments; one of the best times we had was in our urban studio during our fourth year, when we had to document the city of Pushkar, which prompted us to explore the city every week. Our teachers were kind enough to push our schedules to give us the weekends for our study tour, where we had a great time beyond our documenting processes. About half of our semester was spent joyously travelling in Haryana roadways over a very scenic route.

IA: What according to you could be some of the most fun aspects of the course that anyone interested in pursuing architecture should look forward to?

R: The exploration and unbiased preferences of design instills me the most in my early years of architecture, and we often forget about this excitement of creation in our final years because of the restrictions imposed before us in our field. To produce interesting creations, we must carry on with spontaneous experimentation and working forward with the same concept, turning it into something concrete with a drive, until the end of the course. At least in schools we can push back the rules to dig in deeper, and as architects we can use everything we’ve learned in institutes to explore within our projects.

IA: Most students actually go through something we’d like to call a ‘mid-course crisis’ where we start doubting our career choice altogether.

Did you ever go through something similar in your time? Did it lead you to venture into content creation? Did you have any inspiration from any video/content creator to start making content pertaining to Architecture?

R: Although I had faced the “mid-course crisis” but it was short-lived. I had started my YouTube channel in the summer of my second year, seeking inspiration from a lot of YouTubers like Lilly Singh, Connor Franta and imitating them in my early videos which weren’t even about architecture. Content creation as a separate thing wasn’t ever meant to be taken up as a career, it was just something fun for me. Whenever architecture had something frustrating, I always came back to my project, working along with other subjects consecutively. Design always drove me and focusing on my work, doing what I loved, kept my doubts of the course away.

Video creation

IA: What do you think are the basics of curating content for videos, and how do you think one should approach it?

R: For different creators, the approach to creation is different, even I follow many creators out there who have different channels where they do different things than what I do, and I’ve been watching their videos on loop and learning within the niche of architecture. With varying platforms such as YouTube and Instagram Reels, and multiple options, you can pick up something that interests you personally, which is applicable in the longer run. Instead of blindly following someone’s footsteps, personalization of methodology and content typology makes the process feel much more than just a task handed over by your boss.

Seeking inspiration from vast library of content and applying it relatively upon your strata is ideal. A lot of my inspirations came from different creators and even for“one minute archifacts” I wanted to do something similar to Nas daily but on Instagram which had only allowed a minute instead of Facebook. Looking up different creators for inspiration is fine because ultimately you’ll find your own voice that evolves as you grow.

IA: Going a little offbeat, so do you use a smartphone or a professional camera to shoot the videos, and what is your take on post-editing? What software do you use for the same?

R: I had filmed very few videos using a smartphone because when my brother was gifted a 2011 model of Cannon 550d DSLR which I had borrowed from him and utilized for recording up till last year. As an older model, the quality was not up to the mark, so I had upgraded to Sony alpha 6600 which I use as a webcam as well for my interviews and shoots. I had used Windows Movie Maker till 2018 for editing, which only had a cut option consecutively in my earlier videos every frame was just cut and placed together. Now I use premiere pro, which has given me like a full inventory of tools.

When I had started off I wasn’t much invested, yet I used to write down scripts and concept looking out to create non-repetitive

petitive and fresh content. I had started YouTube full swing, but then as a student my projects and competitions used to consume a lot of my time and thereafter my frequency of uploading diminished until it picked up again after my internship in 2018. Since then, I’ve indulged myself a lot in content creation and I do BlessedArch full time. It’s because I like what I do, I never feel like it’s work I just keep doing.

IA: What exactly made you keep going in making videos? What was the motivation - the comments, the likes, the views, or the inner passion?

R: In 2018, it was a difficult decision to get into content creation as a qualified architect to change fields, however I really wanted to be in the content creation’s web and hence in that year I tried to get a job within that field itself and later ended up with a job at a company that makes motorcycle accessories which had nothing to do with architecture. And since then I think it has just been a combination of doing what I love and people loving what I do. Appreciations in forms of comments where people tell me that a teacher played your video in the classroom to explain something. It is a priority for me to do what I love, and it is great that my audience has amazing feedback to what I do.

IA; How long does it actually take for you to record and edit the videos, and what is the maximum number of retakes that you have actually done for one?

IA: Is blessedArch a one-man army, or do you have some support for running the channel?

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R: For different kinds of videos, the methodology and efforts vary. Primarily for the “did you know” Instagram videos, the research is fairly quick as I love exploring the internet and it doesn’t feel like a chore to me. Similarly, writing a script for a minute is quick and a combination of filtered information from the web. I record with my new camera and even without a teleprompter, I use a secondary screen to read out loud the script which makes the process pretty fast as compared to my early years. I t takes me about 5-6 minutes to record. Likewise, I take retakes to give a certain expression or to land a joke properly. Editing is a whole different task and takes about an hour just to edit. For YouTube, some videos are very research heavy and have longer durations, so those are more time consuming. The interviews are easy to edit as all I have to do is ask a question. Portfolio reviews took a day to edit as well and has been light in terms of the efforts put in. However, the research and script writing takes a little while, like the metaverse video took me 5 days to complete the research. To get the beats right within the entire script is a task in itself and makes the script writing more indulging to maintain suspense and interest in every segment. Within the entire realm of creating a video, the shooting is the least time taking, even with breaks in between. The editing takes between a day to three, and it is entirely a different part to nail the music, edits and the transitions.

R: From January I have finally hired an editor to help me edit where I still have to work on the scripting, recording and ideation. It has helped me maintain my upload frequency, but I don’t think I might give away a lot of the editing either, as I think the research and edits characterize BlessedArch and to give that away is difficult. It’ll take a while to get people on board that I completely trust and who synchronizes with the channel as well.

IA: Did you create videos before for any other platform, or was BlessedArch the stepping stone in your journey?

R: When I was younger in 7th, I used to create choreography and dance along with my cousin. I used to record and upload the snippets of us dancing and interweave scenes from Disney movies. I used to meddle with video creation in school as well in some way or the other and this has always been an interest since my younger age.

Blessed arch

IA: Why BlessedArch as the name of your channel, your platform on social media?

R: Arch is derived from architecture obviously, and I have always felt blessed in life, so without much contemplation I didn’t spend much time in thinking about a name as it was obvious to me. I do believe I’ve been blessed in life, and I think the name is a constant reminder of that. Even the BlessedArch

Instagram used to be my personal account and when I had shifted my personal account to a new one, I called it thatblessedhuman to be grateful for all the stuff I’ve received and accomplished.

IA: How do you source the concepts for the videos that you make? Are the concepts particularly based on the content that you want to curate, or does the viewers’ discourse lead you there?

R: It’s a blend of both because a lot of times I understand my viewers want a certain kind of content that’ll help them in their journey of architecture and I do try to create videos that help them. A lot of time my audience suggests me who to interview and what topics to cover. At BlessedArch I try to cover all these topics, but there are topics that are not always driven by the audience band are simply my interest and exploration. I have friends who’ve been studying all over the world and in India, in our conversations they keep recommending me things that I can research on and new people that I can contact. It is via these discussions and my internal curiosity paired with hours of research on the internet that gives me unique and innovative video ideas.

Evolution of content curation:

IA: Looking at one of your very first videos, and then your most recent works, we think you have progressed a lot. So according to you, how has your content evolved with time?

R: BlessedArch has evolved with me, as I improve so does the content. When I was in school, the most relevant thing to me was school. So all of my earlier videos reflect that as well, with things about architecture school: how to survive architecture school, types of people in architecture school etc. As I graduated, the content then became a little about what to do after graduation because I was in the space where I could relate to that confusion. Today it is more curiosity based, and I create content in a way that can be watched by an architect, a student or an amateur. So my approach to target a certain audience and focus on the topics to document has changed and evolved over the years along with my skills to edit, write and shoot. And I think in the coming years too I’ll keep evolving as I’m exploring newer stuff. With observation and new inspirations, you get better at writing and delivery and such change is essential

IA: Your most recent videos involve a number of interviews with prominent people in the Architecture profession. How do you approach and go about such interviews?

R: This is where the “blessed” part comes into the picture. I think in my series of interviews one of the primary interviews that went very viral was of Mariana, obviously i did interviews

before that, I did interviews back in 2018 as well, I did an interview with Ar. Urvi Seth as well within that time but it was Mariana’s video that went very viral. Mariana had actually come to me, she followed BlessedArch because of the ‘Did you know?’ videos, and till day she tells me to create more of them. She wanted to promote a workshop, so she came to me for those promotions and then she told me she was working at Zaha Hadid Architects , I was like “ listen, can I interview you?”, she said “Sure” and that is how the interview came to picture and as Mariana’s interview went viral more people, Viviano , Olly came to me, so those people found me. Narendar, somebody suggested and I just put up a story on Instagram and he responded to that story. It was Dinara Casco, which was currently the most watched video on my channel ever. So, I sent her a message on Instagram and she said okay. Nowadays, I think i reach out to people because the platform has reached to a certain level and now when I reach out to people, they respond. But how it feel into pieces is again a series of coincidences or chances that kept happening and everything fell into a place to sort of put it all together. That is why, I really stress upon BlessedArch and having that word ‘Blessed’ because all of these things are not in my control. What was in my control, was just creating content, which i still do till date, the opportunities that will come beyond that are not, that is what I live by and now when I reach out to people , most of time they came.

The off-beat career

IA: What is your business acumen in the field of content creation that is related to architecture?

R: Especially when you are creating content in the field of architecture, there are various approaches to doing it, and this i tell people who come to me and take inspiration form me as well. One, the path is not easy, especially the monetizing opportunities don’t come easy, that is one of the problems specially because of the niche thing. If you are a beauty blogger, you would have much more options, if you bid finance even your adsense revenue for YouTube is much higher, you get sponsor much quicker, they will also pay you in crypto if you want to. It becomes different when you are in the niche of architecture, there are lots of things which I am still experimenting with, that I am still figuring out. The primary thing will always be the content because you will not the audience without good content and that content can be anything you want to create videos on youtube, you want to create instagram reels or tik tok kind of thing, again you gear it towards architecture or design. The opportunity now for any creators in any field, any niche is sort of endless and slowly I can see platforms are opening up more doors for creators out there. The thing is that the architecture world is actually much smaller than the real world if you want to create content on youtube, it would take quite a bit of effort and time to build yourself to a level where you can get a lot of people to watch your content. That is the resson why I try to open up my content to people

who are not just architects but people who want to learn about architecture because the scope of reaching those people are much higher. As you go ahead in this field, only through experimentation you realize how the economics of this field works. When people from India watch a video, I get x amount. When people from the US watch the same video, I get 10x of the amount. The same view in the US pays me much more than the same view in India. So that also comes into the picture, what geography your videos are being watched from and that is why I try to maintain a global approach towards my content , again there is a lot of economics involved behind the decisions that you take.

IA: How do you keep yourself engaged in the work that you have opted for? How has it made you grow as a person and as a professional? Can you throw some light on the niche that you are creating for yourself and the aspiration behind it?

R: I don’t know if content creator has grown me as a person or I am going as a person separately, maybe all of this is just intertwined together. But I do think I have been evolving as a person because there is a huge huge difference in the person I was 2 years ago , even the person I was 1 and a half years ago and the person I am now and i think that does reflects in my content. I don’t necessarily think that is is content that is evolving me, but as i am evolving I am evolving the content with me and sort of morphing it to be in space that I am in today. There might be points where content also drives me but most of the time it is you driving the content. The reason I say that is also a lot of times there might be a certain piece of content which will get you a lot of views and then you just want to create that type of content and you are not happy creating that type of content, so it becomes the content driving you, to me it becomes like “yeh lo toilet banado, yeh detail, yeh section wapas se kro”, which is not bad thing by the way, but sometimes it becomes irritating to make same exact section around 5 times. I got into this field to have that freedom

to do and create great stuff and i always try to do that. That is why i don’t lot of times let my content drive me or influence me, it is more the other way around. I do create content outside the field of architecture, right now just more focussed on BlessedArch. Life beyond BlessedArch evolves me and then I evolve Blessedarch along with that. It’s easier now because I am single person involved in the process, it would have been more difficult if there were more people around. Nowadays , I tend to focus on short term goals because the field of creation keep changing at such a rapid pace that is opening opportunities that you have never ever seen before. I am being open to doing more and more new things and that is again, coming to the fact that the people just restrict, “Now I am a youtuber, now i will restrict to this kind of content”, coming back to the first year,”this is the kind of architecture I like, everything beyond that is rubbish”. To me, it has been constantly about exploring new things. Within my goals, I have certain goals keeping in account the current scenarios. I do want more people involved and like four people working on a kind of content that I really want to create. Till now, I am in my room creating content, I also want to be out there. This year I sort of have decided to experiment and start with Jaipur itself because there is so much content available in the city itself. I will be I will be going to sites and recording, it will be a newer thing I have never record on site it will be a new experience and then it will also include documenting the building in a newer way. Till now I have relied upon other people’s documentation to bring home the point that I want to create but with this now I will also venture out into documenting it myself, the entire project and sort of bringing it together into the video. There are alot of newer things that I want to do this year but I am also open to explore newer platforms. I feel these are very sound strategies to live life, to be open and to be ready to explore new opportunities.

IA: Setting an example for the students in the field, what is your advice for the young students/architects reading this?

R: I will give two advices, and this is for whatever you do in life

no matter what. One, don’t ever restrict yourself, always be open to ideas and experimentations, don’t set yourself in a phase that “this is what i like”. Don’t be as opinionated as quickly. The second thing, don’t underestimate the power of perseverance and putting in the work each and everyday because lot of days you won’t get the result, months you won’t get the result but what you don’t understand is that the work compounds. It always works out if you at it, even if it is not working out you will realize why it is not working out, you adjust your course a little bit and you go at it again. So never underestimate the changes that it can bring in your life.

Illustration by Prerana Paralikar

A JOURNEY DOWN The road less taken

Interviewed by Shreya Dubey & Tushita Basak

What does it take to convert your deepest passions into successful business ideas? This conversation with Ashutosh Jha, the founder and CEO of Kaarwan, gave us a peek into that and a lot more! Within a couple of years, Kaarwan has become the go-to platform for budding young architects all over India to learn related skills and gain insight into architecture through travelling. Ensuing is a journey of self-discovery and all it takes to be passionate about your profession

IA: What drove you Towards architecture in the first place?

AJ: For me, it was about getting into an IIT. I got a rank that could not have gotten me the degree I wanted, and I had not given any thought to what architecture is all about. So for me, it was about getting into IIT Roorkee rather than getting into architecture. When I look at it now, I’ve realised that had I known what architecture is about, I would have taken up this course nevertheless.

I got to know what architecture is truly about quite later in my career. A few things that led me to this decision was that it was a creative field and I was getting to learn at a premium engineering institute in our country. That in itself was an amazing combination for me. I had a few friends who had graduated from IIT Roorkee and a couple of teachers who had helped me with the JEE examination. They had all assured me that the architecture department was a good one, and so I went ahead.

But honestly speaking, I had no idea of what architecture was going to be about, or what my life would look like after college. Looking back, I think I made the right decision.

IA: How would you address a crowd of high school students having second thoughts about architecture?

AJ: I would want them to talk to a few more people and get informed about what this field entails. Explore the field a bit further so that they can make an informed decision. They should know what to expect and what the field expects out of them. They need to be aware of the scope that this field can offer before diving in. I consider that understanding to be of utmost importance.

In the end, it is your call, depending upon your background, your passion, and your skill set. Your skill set also plays a major role. You do not know what you are good at until you get into college. It’s only then that you get to try different things and expand your horizon.

But yes, try to understand the field as much as possible, talk to multiple people about it and see what their responses are. Ask as many questions as possible about architecture - What would my pay check be like? What does the field entail? How long before I can start my own business, then how would that pan out? What kind of opportunities do I have? What are the opportunities after graduation? All of this will help them take this decision in a more informed manner.

IA: Do you think you were always a creative person?

AJ: Creativity - I think the definition of it varies for different people. What I understand by creativity is that you can come up with unique ideas, or you’re able to think about any problem differently. It need not be any artistic creativity. So, from that problem-solving point of view, I think I am creative. I was not a sketcher and not someone who could design things. I was the person who failed in my drawing subject. I had no artistic creativity as such or visual creativity.

I think that if you can understand a problem properly, then you kind of become a creative person. The degree in architecture helped me evolve this quality. It helped me nurture that to a very, very great extent. I never considered myself a creative person before I got into architecture. I understood what creativity is later in my bachelors. Creativity can be visual, analytical, artistic, and so on.

IA: Sometimes we do make such uninformed career decisions. And especially for architecture, it’s said that it’s a subject that requires a lot of passion and dedication. So by the time we’re in the middle of the course, and we’ve already made a decision that was not fully passion-driven, we start questioning whether we’ve made the right choice. What would your advice be to the students who are going through such a phase now?

AJ: Personally speaking, I did not go through such a phase, like I said, I realised what architecture is about after I took it up. And it was something I enjoyed doing. There were a few parts in the course that were not as interesting as the others but I found most of it interesting. I was never pushing, or forcing myself to learn things or do things. It was mostly designing, and trying to solve problems for users. It was very interesting for me.

More than 50% of my batchmates are not practising architecture. And there were a lot of them in college who were not exactly sure if they wanted to pursue architecture after graduation. Architecture is one of the most skill-driven courses that give you skills in a lot of varied fields. It opens up a lot of avenues for you to not just learn how to draw, or how to design, but also how to present yourself and present your ideas. During the course, you get good with presentations, you get good with talking, you get good with communication. So you’re taught a lot of things in this particular course.

Try to explore other options. There are a lot of options when you graduate as an architect in India right now. You can do whatever you want, people can get into journalism, game design, concept art, product design, or UI/UX. You just need to explore things. Just because you have a particular degree, you don’t have to stick with it for life. That kind of mindset, I believe, is wrong,

We promised everyone at the end of the trip that we will do something similar once, every year. After my graduation, my friends and I went our separate ways. I joined housing.com as a UX designer. Every year, we kept doing our trips for the first few years. We did one trip every year at the same time in February. The very next year we went to explore North India, the second year we went to the northeast and learned about bamboo architecture. In the third year, we went to Bhutan. And so it continued.

Soon I left my job and I started my start up with a couple of my partners and friends. It was a fruits and vegetable e-commerce venture. It was going well, but still, I was always looking forward to those 15 days of travelling every year. I used to relive those moments and organise or start planning for them because my whole life revolved around those trips as they were the best days of every year.

So in due course, I realised that I should try travelling full time. If I can do this, I know people will get some value out of it, people already like what we’re doing. So why not build a team and try this out? I built a small team in 2018. In 2018, I experimented with multiple trips. Before you start any business, you want to check the kind of market you have, the kind of demand you have or whether you are just building castles in your mind. You need to validate these things before you go all out. It’s a big commitment. When you get into a new business, you involve new people, you’re not just concerned about yourself anymore. In 2018, while we were working on other things, we experimented by increasing the number of our journeys to four journeys for Kaarwan. It was amazing, we got the kind of response we were looking for. It was the end of 2018 when we decided that now was the time when we could launch Kaarwan. By 2019, we were working full time, we did so many journeys, and we also had a lot of colleges join us for their study trips. So yeah, it was awesome. That was what led us to get into converting travel as a business. So it was not a onetime decision. There was a chain of events that helped me reach where I am.

IA: The pandemic did bring a stop to most things. How did it affect Kaarwan? Was there a backup plan in place? Where do you see edu-travel heading in the future, especially in a world where we cannot meet each other in person?

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AJ: It was a big problem on our minds for a good six to seven months. Last year, we had many contracts, and we had already organised trips with multiple colleges in India. We had made the bookings, and those trips are still on hold. So there are a lot of difficulties but our community is also very supportive. The pandemic has been difficult for everyone, not just us, not just the travel community. But from a business point of view, we had no idea how to take it forward. You don’t have a backup plan when you just begin with something.

When you become an established business with time, you begin to understand and start thinking about contingencies for problems. But we had just started as a business. We had been travelling for a long time but only recently had we started doing it full time. So we did not have any backup plan back then.

IA: What were some of the critical challenges that you had to face while trying to set up Kaarwan?

AJ: Most of our organised trips have 60-70% of girls and women, so the parents have a lot of questions in their mind - Who is it that my daughter or my son is travelling with? What kind of accommodation facilities will they provide? Are they professionals? This was a small challenge that we had to face, to build credibility. That was because we were college students when we had started, and we were planning to organise a trip even for professionals. In 2020, the pandemic happened. That was a major problem. It had just been a year since we had started and everything was falling in place, and then the pandemic wrecked our business plans. All our plans went for a toss.

But when the pandemic happened, every single day I found myself thinking - How do I do this? Am I capable of solving this problem for the whole travel community?

And believe me, I’ve worked on multiple ideas during those six months, from February to August. I tried building an Aarogya Setu kind of app for hotels and travellers. I tried doing a lot of things, pushing my capacities because I was not willing to give up on what we were doing. We would have never thought that the world would come to a standstill for a year like this.

We had booked tickets after the pandemic had just started. We booked tickets for our travels in March because our trips happen in June. Everyone had assumed that everything would go back to normal by April. We thought that things would be

fine soon and we just need to keep engaging with the community to stay relevant. .

So we started with live sessions on our Instagram- Instagram lives. We started focusing a bit more on our social media just to keep engaging with the community because I knew that I had to keep the team running. I had to make sure the business runs. We had certain savings that would take care of us for the next six to seven months. And we had planned everything accordingly. Things will run till that time and the pandemic would be over by then engaging with the community because I knew that I had to keep the team running. I had to make sure the business runs. We had certain savings that would take care of us for the next six to seven months. And we had planned everything accordingly. Things will run till that time and the pandemic would be over by then. But that did not happen in March, April, and May. We thought we should do something that will keep us engaged and add value. We launched the quarantine facility design competition- a national competition on designing a quarantine facility. That was something we launched in April-May last year.

The competition received an overwhelming response and a couple of those submissions got executed as well with the help of some municipal bodies. And that was the turning point. It was kind of accidental. Had you asked me two years ago if I would be teaching, I would have laughed it off. I had been a facilitator for teaching, travelling with people who are learning but I was learning with them. In that case, I was not the teacher. I was a person who was learning alongside them and making sure that the experience was really good and seamless.

Everyone had a great experience joining our webinars. Then it dawned upon us that there is scope here, a scope to fill a void and add value to our community. We started with other workshops, Architectural Visualisation and Graphic Designing for architects. And that is how it all started. We realised that even the online workshop experience that we are creating is a good one and people like it. We now cater to a wide audience with various long and short courses, training and coaching more than 2000 students every single month. This was not planned, but it has been going amazingly well.

IA: What students love most about the online courses offered by Kaarwan is that they are super affordable whereas most other online courses are beyond their budget.

AJ: When we started Kaarwan, the core idea was to provide an affordable hands-on learning experience through travelling. Other companies were trying to provide similar services but the affordability factor is what pushed us ahead of them. We never really concentrated on making profits but to make it possible for as many students in our country to be a part of these ventures. Sometimes we condense a five-day worth of content into a single-day course, simply to reduce the pricing of the course. In education, everyone deserves equal opportunities and with that vision in mind, we continuously strive to keep our courses as affordable as possible.

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I never thought that we would dabble in online courses or webinars or anything even remotely close to that, that was never an idea. But after this competition, we received so many submissions. People reached out to us asking if we can give them a review on their submissions. And we had on our jury some of the top academicians from institutes. We also had people from the Defence Department, multiple people who were trying to solve the pandemic. So they couldn’t give any kind of reviews to these participants as they were very short on time.

So I thought I would just talk to these students, do research surveys and conduct this simple webinar telling people about attempting design competitions. It would revolve around simple questions like- How do you plan for it? How do you win a competition? What should be your process? I had a good amount of experience, both attempting and organising design competitions, and I had similar people on our team. So I thought we could pull this off. The response to the webinar

was overwhelming as well. Within five days, all the seats were filled. We eventually conducted multiple batches for the competition webinar.

We realised that people in our country want to learn. There are certain voids in our educational system that need to be filled. After multiple batches, we got our reviews and our feed

IA: What does curating an online course entail? Where do you get your ideas for courses from and what is the process like?

AJ: We generally get our ideas from talking to our community. We have a dedicated community of students supporting us who send in their suggestions and we curate our courses based on those suggestions. We do not decide for the students. The community tells us what they want to learn and we go all in to provide the best possible learning experience on that topic. Once we have the idea, we start with the curation process where we look for the best possible person to deliver the course. We set up the basic structure and train our instructors accordingly. When it comes to teaching, it is never about how much you know, but how much you can deliver to the students. It is always about how you make it easier for every student to grasp information. So, we make a playbook or a template of sorts which helps us make a structured and simple course that every student will be able to follow.

IA: Especially since the architectural course does not disseminate any business skills, what does it take for an architectural graduate to create a brand like Kaarwan?

AJ: We generally get our ideas from talking to our community. We have a dedicated community of students supporting us who send in their suggestions and we curate our courses

based on those suggestions. We do not decide for the students. The community tells us what they want to learn and we go all in to provide the best possible learning experience on that topic. Once we have the idea, we start with the curation process where we look for the best possible person to deliver the course. We set up the basic structure and train our instructors accordingly. When it comes to teaching, it is never about how much you know, but how much you can deliver to the students. It is always about how you make it easier for every student to grasp information. So, we make a playbook or a template of sorts which helps us make a structured and simple course that every student will be able to follow.

AJ: To start a company takes a lot more than learning it from a course. The basics of business are learnt from internships and working with people. There is no better way to learn how to run a business other than directly working with the person who is already at it. You cannot simply do your job and go back home. You have to stay overtime and learn how each project moves and understand the process. That is how you pick up the skills. Thereon, you need to come up with a plan or strategy for your business. That will help you scale up your business and move from five projects at a time to twenty-five. Once you have that in place, you can work on other aspects like marketing and branding.

IA: Do you think there are any loopholes in the present architectural course? If yes, how can we close some of those loopholes?

AJ: Believe me some of the best minds in our country are working to resolve those! I do not have solutions, but there surely are a few voids in the system, and it is different for different people. For example, in our college, we were not taught any delineation software and we had to learn them by ourselves. That may not be the case in some other colleges. So it is slightly different in different institutions. I personally faced a lot of difficulties visualising my designs because the relevant software was not taught to us. This is something most of us faced during our time. We had great ideas on our minds but when we put them to paper, they never had the same kind of an impact.

Secondly, we need to be taught how to present ourselves, be it in front of clients, jurors, in our portfolios, and so on. As an architect, we are most often judged based on our sheets. The presentation is what creates the first impression. Students have questions like how many pages to have in our portfolio, which projects to include, and so on. Basic questions like these need to be clarified and the art of presenting has to be made clear to them.

The third aspect that needs to be taught is how to execute architectural projects. I learnt this during the Uttarakhand floods when I had the opportunity to interact with Red Cross volunteers and they then asked us to help them build temporary shelters. At that point of time, I was really embarrassed to admit

that I had simply no idea how to build a temporary shelter on the ground. I could have designed a fancy apartment building but did not know the execution process for the same. So that can be taught to students in simple steps to make for a more wholesome architectural course.

IA: Can you share some tips for branding, networking and marketing for students?

AJ: Networking can be of various types and it is essential to know what is the end goal that you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to bag a job, start your own business, or reach out to as many people as possible? The purpose needs to be clear. Similarly for branding and marketing, if the purpose is clear to you, it will be far easier to navigate and achieve the set goal.

Accordingly, you market yourself on social media platforms. For example, if I am creating a brand like Kaarwan, I need to promote information that will help students in their academics as opposed to client reviews that my designs have received. That will only make sense if I want to promote a design studio. So you need to be aware of who your target group is and what their requirements are. Then, through your marketing strategies, you will need to address those.

Likewise, in networking, the initial step is to know with whom you need to network to promote your business. Do you need to network with students or professionals or founders of companies or all of them? You then need to choose a suitable platform to reach them.

IA: What do you think Kaarwan as a brand stands for?

AJ: The whole idea of Kaarwan was to get a group of people to travel together to see life up close. What we stand for right now as a brand is to become the most affordable online design

school in India. Especially after the digital revolution that has happened during the pandemic, people are now aware that we can learn skills through online learning as well. Initially, we wanted to promote travelling as a means of education but that was not possible during the pandemic, and hence the shift. So now it is about creating a company that will provide the needed skills to all design enthusiasts.

IA: How do you envision the future of the brand to be?

AJ: We want to grow big and be everyone’s go-to choice when it comes to learning design skills. People should have no inhibitions or doubts while opting for our courses. We want people to have that kind of confidence in us where they are certain that we will provide them with the best content at the most affordable price.

IA: Do you think architecture as a field is saturated and hence the need to switch careers?

AJ: The demand for architecture in the Indian market is not increasing at the rate at which we are generating architects. We have around 50k architecture students graduating every year and we do not have that many opportunities available for

them. So, in a sense, the field is indeed saturated. But I do not see that to be the main reason why individuals should switch careers. If you are thoroughly passionate about practising hardcore architecture, just do it. But if you feel stuck in this field, then go ahead and explore other opportunities. Life is too short to feel trapped in a career that you chose in your teenage years. for them. So, in a sense, the field is indeed saturated. But I do not see that to be the main reason why individuals should switch careers. If you are thoroughly passionate about practising hardcore architecture, just do it. But if you feel stuck in this field, then go ahead and explore other opportunities. Life is too short to feel trapped in a career that you chose in your teenage years.

IA: What would your advice be to the students who are pursuing architecture in terms of how they can push the boundaries and go beyond conventional career choices?

AJ: Explore and do not limit yourself to just one thing. We romanticise our field a lot and for that reason, we do not look beyond. If you are passionate about it then go ahead and do it the conventional way. But if you are feeling trapped, then explore and try multiple avenues. Explore as much as you can in the five years of college life. Try your hand at other skills, only then will you be able to know what excites and interests you.

THE SUBTLE ART

Of not giving in

Interviewed by Harish Karthick, Saksham Mitra and Sandali Rathore

An Architect turned UX Designer, we were in a candid conversation with Ar. Harshit Daga. He talks about his graduate days and the practical scenarios he witnessed that led him to shift his course of action in life. What really constitutes UX Design and how even one might stumble upon it, let’s nose-dive into it……

IA - What are the most cherished moments of your Undergraduate days?

HARSHIT- My most cherished moments of the undergraduate days- The first one, it’s for all of us, NASA trips and college trips. We kept saying this one thing ever since the first year of college that we need to get exposure, the time when you understand what that exposure means, that is the reason I specifically loved NASA trips more.

The second thing, not a lot of people would have loved- the internship days, in terms of fun only I’m speaking, in terms of learning it was way off, ideally, I’ll need another session for that. I was interning with my very good friend Gurjot and the seniors and the principal architects of the firm as well. I am still in contact with these guys and they’re more like a father and mother to me, a completely different topic. These are the two most cherished moments whenever I sit with my friends and talk. And the third one, this Saksham would know, is not the moment, it’s the person, Christopher. He was a teacher, one of the most fun and strict teachers as well to be with, he is one of the people that I remember from my undergraduate days.

IA - What according to you could be some of the most fun aspects of the course that anyone interested in pursuing architecture should look forward to?

People think that they have done under-graduation and this has to be their life goal but what we don’t see is that this bachelor’s degree lays out a very good foundation for all the other things that one would want to pursue in life. As one invests five years in this course, something that’s called transactional value in psychology, one pushes in a transactional value of five years, expecting something in return. But when that does not take place, they try to push and look into other things, like five years in this, should I be doing that or not?

It teaches you a way of life, and the most important thing, architecture helps you understand humans at the very core. Forget everything, let’s get down to toilet design, which wehave done in college, internships, and jobs. The first time I visited the washroom in a plane I was blown away, like the anthropometry that they have used, I went on my first flight in 3rd year, which gave a very good sense of how close we are to humans but because of our peers and teachers, we keep thinking that toilet is not that good of a design and you have to design all the bigger things in your life. These are the most fun aspects of architecture for me.

IA - I just remember, Harshit signing off his messages withNot just an architect, like architecture is not just about becoming an architect! So, taking back to your college days itself, you know there can be no denying that there is a culture in the department of romanticizing the idea of pulling an all-nighter together. To what extent do you think it is necessary if it is at all necessary?

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HARSHIT - When I was doing architecture and then moved on to other things in my life, I realized that it is a multifaceted course, we cannot pin it down to any one of the things that it teaches us. If you want graphic design, it’s there, anything related to design, but not only related to design! Sociology, we usually don’t concentrate on this, but sociology is one of the core aspects of humans because humans are social animals and if you don’t understand how it works, you’ll have a hard time conveying your ideas to someone. Even in the history of architecture, I loved it, my friends hated it and so there was a time when I used to sit at the center and have eight people around me and teach them how it happened, how this came in so that there is a story, a pattern.

That is the reason why architecture is a very multi-faceted course and a very good foundational course for anything you want to do. Name it and it’s there, be it business, architecture is predominantly business, you need to understand the core aspects of the business to get into architecture as an independent architect. The second is marketing, you have to market yourself. Instagram is a big tool right now. Third, you need to have what we call, an eye for detail.

HARSHIT - I’m very one-sided on that and it’s not necessary at all, I’ve been mentioning this on Instagram, in talks with juniors as well. When you stay out of the crowd, for instance, there’s my friend who just joined an MBA in one of the most prestigious institutes of India, he didn’t drink, but at the time he entered college, everyone drinks and it’s a very normal thing. This guy told me that he needs to drink to get into that crowd. We mostly fear seclusion rather than these sleepless nights. It’s the matter of matching each other, that guy is pulling an all-nighter, that’s what I want to be a part of the architecture fraternity.

That seed has been planted very deep inside. If teachers said that you don’t have to go for sleepless nights, we will anyway go for it because we have Netflix. When we compare, there’s a general aura or belief that hard work is equal to one night, that’s a big no. Lack of concentration and a swaying mind is the reason. I have pulled four all-nighters in the whole five years of study because my model was not complete in the thesis. Thesis semester is the time when people don’t sleep and I don’t understand, just sleep in for five or six hours a day, you need that sleep.

It’s not about just being a good professional and mixing in the crowd, you need to make yourself your crowd and to lay-out as a person like no other, no one can control you. Have your own will, go around that, and just focus on what you want.

IA - What kind of fieldwork were you actually looking for in the profession after you graduated from architectural school?

HARSHIT - The internship was a very sacred part for me in those five years. For the first two months, I was in a completely different environment and the firm I wanted to be in was not that big but the work was very regional, inspired by utilitarian concepts and minimalism. When I stayed there for two months, I realized that “katni aur karni mein bhaut farak hai”there’s a huge difference between preaching and action. I left that office in exactly two months.

The second was by accident because I did not get an internship and there was this very good friend of mine, Gurjot, who pushed me to his firm and that was one of the greatest decisions of my life- to follow and just take a leap of faith. I didn’t know that was the approach I needed. Having hands-on experience, doing things yourself, the biggest of that- they were resilient. A resiliency for error which usually is not there, when you’re a junior or an intern, you will make mistakes. I forgot a door and that is not expected out of an architect or even an intern, this made me a big fan and at last a family in that firm. When I moved and started working in Delhi, I was severely disappointed and that was one reason I moved out.

IA - Continuing with this, what can you tell us about something related to your days as an architect when you were working in the field. What were the most exciting projects you got to work on?

are in college, you see things from a very macroscopic lens, and nothing can be better but when you go out of that lens and see. I’m out of the lens, and I can tell that the exploitation is not two fold, it’s almost 10. Here’s a very good analogy- There are certain stages to city planning. It starts with Eopolis, and then goes to Polis, then Metropolis, Megapolis, and lastly the Necropolis.

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HARSHIT - I started working with field architects in 2018, all the projects they had were very different in the sort of approach and the concept they took. I remember making around 57 prototypes of a single roof in the software and six physical models. In a meditation centre we made for Ladakh, although it was not me, I saw that project happening. The whole structure is made without a single iron screw in it, it was a lovely process if you get to see it.

Secondly, Gurjot and I worked on a low-cost staff quarter, a completely sustainable building, utilizing used army blankets because army people usually shell out the blankets they use in three to four months. We collected them, pushed them as insulation between walls, and tied that around with wires. This experimental nature of doing the work was inspirational rather than learning something inspirational.

IA - Now that we’re done with the good old days, what do you think of the exploitation in the profession with the crazy work hours and the minimum pay and the expectations that students get?

HARSHIT - I can take a whole day on this topic and can even sit with my teachers and thrash them off right away. When you

Just before that, there’s one that is known as Tyrannopolis. This is the stage where the city is overpopulated. All the resources are depleted and it’s going towards a complete necropolis, the end of the city- the death. That is where we are in architecture right now.

Overpopulation of architects we don’t require and the quality of work I mentioned- it was my third month as a junior architect realizing that this is not something that I envisioned myself doing. I’m fine with not pursuing architecture instead of doing architecture like this. I don’t want anybody to follow that approach because I think luck turned out good for me, again a leap of faith.

Second, a lot of problems in architecture are because of the self-inflicted pride that we, as architects, have. The first statement is that we usually say who is a civil engineer? An Interior designer is no one! Who are you to say that? You are in no position to say anything but you keep on singing, it is spoon-fed to us. Our seniors and teachers have also heard this from their seniors who have also followed the same approach. Nobody wants to get out of the chain.

You cannot even do the job of an interior designer, just match a graphic designer if you want, you don’t have that kind of respect for a graphic designer thinking that the person cannot do anything. Every person has their role and you need to respect that, we lack respect and that is the reason we get disrespected, because we don’t respect our profession thinking that we are above others.

There’s too much politics, this is a completely different point but politics is directly related to architecture and I realized this in 3rd year. Not college politics, but real country politics. Corbusier designed Chandigarh, that was politics, nothing else. Europe, going through different times of its architectural revolution- politics! Architecture is completely related to politics and to the person who says that it’s designed, it’s not designed, it’s politics. It is the very part of architecture we need to understand. And politics is corrupted, you know what I’m getting at!

IA - But what do you think we can do to bring in the necessary change or for a person, who as a student is being exploited, how do you think we can get them out of this phase?

HARSHIT - We just need to get out of this general notion of architecture that has gone way beyond today, it’s a century-old. You need to get out of this order of thinking, and you need to respect. Everyone is responsible for everything, and you cannot be the sole owner of everything.

Another thing why it is so depressing for a person who is just entering into coursework or maybe just after graduating- the time you go out, you can be yourself in college, but when you are working under someone, you need someone who is actually revolutionary. If that person is ready to exploit, it becomes a compulsion.

Then there’s an internal calling- do you want to pursue or you don’t. And about how any architecture student can face this off is by- don’t hear and don’t abide by everything that you hear in architecture. A lot of misconducts are happening right now and you need to be over that. So, if you keep listening to your seniors, who keep saying- “are humain toh all-nighter maarke thesis bhaut acchi Karli”- we didn’t sleep for days and the hard work has paid off in our thesis, you need to challenge that question. Who are you to tell me that all-nighter was the reason you got good marks, it could also be that you were pleasing your teachers.

The fundamental thing is that we don’t question, just understand, a person should question a lot of whys and whats.

IA - Right now, working in the field, I can actually understand what you were trying to say. We have to work according to whatever pleases the politician.

Most architecture graduates actually go through something we’d like to call a career crisis where we start doubting our career choice altogether that- “are we really here for this? Were we going to do all this? Did you even go through something similar and has there been any tipping point when you realize that this is not the niche for me, I have to be, you know, somewhere else?

HARSHIT - I remember this very vividly, it was in 2019, I didn’t have a job when I resigned from field architects with the

thought of going to Delhi and finding a job. I was already plan ning a forty five to sixty thought of going to Delhi and finding a job. I was already planning a forty five to sixty day bracket, being realistic, it’s a process that we have to follow. I was patient for two months, one week, but then I lost my mind.

I was not a very good student nor a very bad one, but it was taking the time that made me question. Then every time I want a particular amount, they say- “hum toh dete nahi”- we don’t pay that much. More than career crises, it’s self-doubt, I remember questioning myself again and again. Then I got into this particular firm, worked there for two months, and realized that- Boss this is not going to work! It is not the kind of work that I’m looking forward to.

My friend Divij and I have talked about this multiple timeseveryone wants us to be the Jack of all trades but if I’m the Jack of all trades then what are the other traders doing. There needs to be a place for everything, I cannot be a civil engineer, you cannot expect me to know plumbing, you need a plumbing expert if you need a ballpark. Why do I need to know about the ballpark? If you don’t have the budget then say you cannot afford a guy, why are you asking me to do it?

As an architect, I am a space planner, a designer who designs spaces and spatial structures. Every person does something that fits in the puzzle appropriately. When that one piece wants to be the complete puzzle, that is where the issue happens. I cannot be everything, I am in love with textures, talk in textures. I love concrete as a texture, I love wood as a texture, teak specifically as a texture. I’m a big fan of mango wood, brick as a material, matte finish and terrazzo! I am a very big fan of these but nobody talks in these terms.

Everyone talks but- “terrazzo lageynge 25 rs ka pad jayega per feet ‘’- terrazzo will cost 25rs per feet. Do I have to make a budget or make a design, it constrains me. My father is not an architect and even my uncles! I was the sole person who was starting out this venture, I apologize if this is demotivating but this is the reality.

I’m just a person who has gone through all this. There was one tipping point and it was in November of 2019, one of my friends told me about UX and that I am the person to go for it because I ask a lot of questions. It took some time to grasp and I started off with the interaction design foundation course, it was a self-paced course. I am a disciplined learner and gave three to four hours outside of the full-time job because I had to change out of this.

Covid happened in March, and in May, the funds were over in the firm- “yeh kese business model hai tumhara?”- What kind of business model do you have? Talking about my father, he is a businessman, he makes garments in Gandhinagar, one of Asia’s biggest textile markets. His staff members were paid, irrespective of the fact that they were not doing work. My father’s business model is better. In the second month itself, you are deducting the pay to half but the working hours remain the same. So, when they told

me about this, I called it quits from my side. I searched for architectural jobs for a month and a UX job as well. I was preparing the portfolio and I completed it in August. There were a lot of UX designers, and a lot of designers as well at this point of time, but I got my first job 14 days after pushing out the portfolio. I consider myself extremely lucky! That three-month gap was the biggest tipping point, then COVID happened and I got only half the pay.

IA - Did you have any inspiration from any designer or developer that made you pursue UX design or was it just the urge to escape architecture?

HARSHIT - There was no inspiration at all. I was learning from my friend. I wanted to take a very structured approach to shift from Architecture. I didn’t want to go for an MBA because I have no idea about MBA just because it has a lot of financial security. The thing that intrigues me is related to the coursework of the last five years. But later, I realized that you can do anything once you have done architecture and this seemed like the most pragmatic approach. Finally, I went into UX Design, it was calculation, a leap of faith, and frustration, all combined.

IA - Since you got out of the field, can you please explain to our readers what exactly constitutes UX designing?

HARSHIT - It means user experience and we are just talking about users, every facet of their lives, facet of a day and how they do certain things. It starts from talking about the assumptions that we as a business have towards our users because every time, the end goal is a user. The actual work starts when we challenge our assumptions, for example right now we’re talking about improving the current status of young architects. This is an assumption, we think that young architects are suffering, are they? Do we have proof? Do we have any statistics on that?

Until and unless I don’t have 95% assurance, I will not be going with that decision. That is the first thing, directly challenging your assumptions I often use to do- why? what? How? When? This came out as a very useful aspect in UX design because this is the first and one of the most important steps. Then it moves on to ideation, think about a particular problem statement, derive a hypothesis, and you try to validate that hypothesis. It’s going to be any one of these things. Then you proceed with ideations, bring out a lot of ideas through several methods to test and then you go about prototyping things.

The best part of this whole exercise is the testing part. You take your product, present it to the user and the user uses it. That is the most beautiful part, because if you are failing, you are seeing yourself and your design fail, this could be so divine in that sense. In architecture you cannot see a person failing in the hospital because the actual physical place was never designed, you were just working on a model.

IA - In architecture, we measure our success by the amount of hard work and sleepless nights we put in. Has there been a transition from architecture to UX when it comes to work, the achievement or gratification you get after it is complete?

HARSHIT - A lot of processes in architecture actually resonate with UX. We do our case studies, though I realize that we do it completely wrong in UX, but again, we do it. The second thing is that there are constraints that are by-laws in architecture. We have prototyping, which means doing all the ideation with sketches or models.

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But when a software or a product that you have designed fails, you’re like ‘Oh! we didn’t think about this.’ You don’t have that kind of transparency or provision. Even if you want, you cannot do that in architecture, until it is a very small structure. Again, for instance, we have two luxury car brands- one is a Bentley and the second one is Lamborghini. Both have their billions and millions of dollars but the Gentry that they are having is completely different.

You’ll never see a teakwood dashboard in a Lamborghini and you’ll never see a padded leather seat in a Bentley, that is the kind of details we’re looking into when we are talking about users, we don’t do that in architecture. Try to argue, but when it comes to UX design we are talking about a fool proof method that is there or not there today. That is the most important part of you. And Lamborghini versus Bentley is a very good example of how a single product can have two different kinds of users being a luxury product. And two different users for the same amount of money that they’re pushing into a car. So yeah, that is UX design.

Third is testing, the only stage which is usually done by our teachers as jury members because they have designed spaces and are representing the users. But the question of testing is that you just stay quiet in UX, but in architecture, you have to defend yourselves and the defense mechanism we develop starts to affect our personal life, as well as the time you leave your college. Make sure to leave that defensive personality behind. Otherwise that will affect your relationships, family, friends and everything that you want, even yourself!

You get defensive, which gives time to yourself, you were told that it takes a few years in the field. This is not the case with UX, you have to just sit quietly, observe even if it bites you inside like- “are yaar yeh aise hi toh hoga, kyu ni tap karra uske upar, karlaena”- It will happen like this only, why aren’t you tapping on that? Tap on it! But control, let that guy use it, you will not be there when he’ll be using that product at his home, so you need to be very silent in those terms.

IA - Do you think that UX design is a career path for people graduating in the field of design?

HARSHIT - A lot of people coming into the field is a big example of how much resonance we have between design fields and UX. A lot of people I know are from backgrounds like

HARSHIT - A lot of people coming into the field is a big example of how much resonance we have between design fields and UX. A lot of people I know are from backgrounds like communication design, fashion design, apparel design, textile design, architecture, interior design. A strong point where architecture holds up is, as I mentioned, that the depth of subjects, it’s a lot of exploration of the outer world. Rather than thinking of this as the ultimate death sentence, we should look at it as a catalyst to all the other things in our life.

For people coming in from architecture or other design backgrounds to this profession, it’s a nice opportunity. Currently, it is a very promising field. A lot of people are graduating in interaction design. If you want a formal course, it will be one among the three of these- HCI-Human Computer Interaction, Interaction Design and User Experience Design. These are what you can expect when you want to go for a professional course. One of the biggest parts of this is that people are very respectful to you when you are a designer.

IA - The theme of the magazine is basically alternate careers to architecture and this is what we have been discussing about. But logically, how do you fight back the psychological transaction and gather the courage to take up a new career after the tiring five years? Along with it comes parental pressure, additional expectations, academic pride and lack of monetary support. How do you actually do it? How do you gather the courage?

HARSHIT - It was not courage, I’m not a very courageous person. It was more a mixture of all these three things. I was already looking for something to move into, it was more of a disappointment rather than courage. I was very disappointed by the things happening in architecture lately. There are a few firms that are doing great and I love their work. But I’ll be happy just looking at their works and probably in the next 10 years’ time, one may see an Architect Harshit Daga again. I love places, designing spaces, and sketching, but not at the cost architecture is providing back to me. If I become a billionaire in the next two years, I’ll continue to think about this. But it is not good for your pocket. Beyond money, it is not good for your mind, it alters your mind. They say that architects have to have a different kind of approach towards life, why do we have to? Why does everything have to? I don’t understand this point.

discussions and things happen when people have drunk and have smoked. And I don’t do both of these, so I was always out of the group and never had that issue of missing out.

Coming back, I do not think that it was courage. It was me realizing my potential, that I am greater than what I am right now and should be much greater. Not in terms of a person, or salary, or monetary value, but in terms of the value or the life that I want to pursue. I don’t want to pursue a life as an architect.

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IA - The theme of the magazine is basically alternate careers to architecture and this is what we have been discussing about. But logically, how do you fight back the psychological transaction and gather the courage to take up a new career after the tiring five years? Along with it comes parental pressure, additional expectations, academic pride and lack of monetary support. How do you actually do it? How do you gather the courage?

HARSHIT - It was not courage, I’m not a very courageous person. It was more a mixture of all these three things. I was already looking for something to move into, it was more of a disappointment rather than courage. I was very disappointed by the things happening in architecture lately. There are a few firms that are doing great and I love their work. But I’ll be happy just looking at their works and probably in the next 10 years’ time, one may see an Architect Harshit Daga again.

Why do we not question something that has to be questioned? Why do I have to stay up all night? Why do I have to smoke to be an architect? Why do I have to drink to be an architect? Why do I have to buy the most expensive rolls? I gave the thesis presentation on that thin sheet. Nobody cares, half of the things are in our head, it is the thesis project, it should stand out, let’s spend more on it! We keep on thinking about what we have to do to be a part of this community, we have to go for NASA otherwise there’s a FOMO(fear of missing out). The best thing was that I’ve always been a part of the FOMO because the majority of the

I love places, designing spaces, and sketching, but not at the cost architecture is providing back to me. If I become a billionaire in the next two years, I’ll continue to think about this. But it is not good for your pocket. Beyond money, it is not good for your mind, it alters your mind. They say that architects have to have a different kind of approach towards life, why do we have to? Why does everything have to? I don’t understand this point.

Why do we not question something that has to be questioned

Why do I have to stay up all night? Why do I have to smoke to be an architect? Why do I have to drink to be an architect? Why do I have to buy the most expensive rolls? I gave the thesis presentation on that thin sheet. Nobody cares, half of the things are in our head, it is the thesis project, it should stand out, let’s spend more on it!

We keep on thinking about what we have to do to be a part of this community, we have to go for NASA otherwise there’s a FOMO(fear of missing out). The best thing was that I’ve always been a part of the FOMO because the majority of the discussions and things happen when people have drunk and have smoked. And I don’t do both of these, so I was always out of the group and never had that issue of missing out.

or any other course-related to UX. So, you get a regulated supply of something, when I’m talking about a job. But let’s say we’re talking about business, when you get into UX, you understand the users at the very core level, very structural level, all the minute details, and now you know the kind of product that is needed by the end-user, you may launch a product with business knowledge.

There are lots of things to learn, to read a lot of books, you have to work hard as well but yes, you will know the user and understand all the nitty-gritty of that user and you can launch a very good product. You can just take in the projects from the agencies, work as an independent agency, or even work as a freelancer. A lot of people on Upwork and Behance and the other websites are paying a good amount of money for UX designers and UI designers. If I’m talking about it in monetary terms, then it’s 100% better than architecture.

Going a little beyond the question, when you are a UX designer, you understand certain aspects of the product, certain parts of the business that you weren’t thinking of before. It is a very nice experience to have, because you understand that design is a lot of other things mixed into one. It’s marketing, it’s different policies. It’s RBI guidelines because I’m currently working in a banking sector- HDFC bank, so there are a lot of policies, other regulations that need to be bound to certain product limitations, technical limitations and so on.

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Coming back, I do not think that it was courage. It was me realizing my potential, that I am greater than what I am right now and should be much greater. Not in terms of a person, or salary, or monetary value, but in terms of the value or the life that I want to pursue. I don’t want to pursue a life as an architect.

IA- How is UX growing as a profession and how do you make your monetary choices, in terms of profit-making in business?

OK so when you say business, I will be talking about business. Definitely, without any doubt, and after COVID, architecture has gotten worse than it was before. One of my friends had three years’ experience. What is the salary of 18,000 a month for an experienced person like her? I mean what are we talking about? When you compare architecture to UX design, I am pretty sure that financially, one will be much more stable and it has a more regulated approach because most of these people who are hiring UX designers are very well-established IT firms.

We don’t get PF in architecture because it’s non-regularized

IA - How do you keep yourself engaged in the work that you have opted for currently and how has it made you grow as a person as well as a professional as you just changed the field altogether? Can you throw some light on the niche that you’re creating for yourself and the aspiration behind it?

HARSHIT -There are three questions. In the very first one of how I keep myself engaged, good news for me, and you, because I followed that rule- 66 days you do a thing and then it’s your habit, I tried that.

IA - 21 days, it is pretty much about 21 days!

Oh! I was fooled by someone, doing that for 66 days!

My Mind is blown. I was today years old when I got to know that! I did not have a habit of reading before July of 2021. But having had a lot of time during covid, I always wanted to read books. I was the guy who would read 2 pages and then leave it. Then I followed this 66 day rule which was actually supposed to be 21 days. I went on reading for 66 days and I read almost seven or eight books last year, which is a very big feat because I was not a reader at all. And that was something that made me grow as a person.

Secondly, we’re talking about being engaged in work. I’ve never had that kind of an ego problem, even in architecture. That

helped me a lot in keeping myself under the hood. That helped me a lot in keeping myself under the hood. That has been there since school and I am continuing with that. I do not overutilize myself or overwork, I keep a work-life balance and that is one of the biggest reasons that I’m engaged now. I’ve been termed as ‘Besharm’ (shameless) sometimes, if you are paying me for 8 hours, then I should be working for eight hours. I did that in architecture as well, even my principal architect (after the job and when I shifted into UX) told me that I had to work on Saturday. I had started with German classes, not in the literal sense, so when I was asked about the timing, my reply was that it’s a weekend course, so for the whole day. I was very ‘besharm’ in that sense- “6:30 sab merko bolte they ki are abhi toh ma’am hi nai niakli hai’’- Everyone used to say that even ma’am has not left yet, why are you going out? I used to reply saying- “ma’am may sit till 10, it’s her office and business, I am being paid for 8 hours only, pay me for an extra hour then, I don’t care.”

That is the whole point, you have to be the one who does not care. If you are the person who cares a lot and you are not able to do that thinking what will someone say about you. There is a work-life balance and that helps me in being engaged in work for the next day.

The next part, how it has made me a person and a professional. I have mentioned before, the habit of arguing is gone, I don’t defend myself, I let the data reflect that. If you have recorded proof of someone saying something, it can even be the CEO of the whole product team, they cannot say anything about that particular decision because that has directly come out of the user’s mouth, the biggest source of data that you can throw on someone’s face. Otherwise just keep quiet, it could be the worst design in your whole life and your user might find it the most interesting and most usable.

The user is the king. I’ve not become better financially but I consider myself a little more financially stable than I was two years back. I’m happy that the trajectory is good and the fact that this particular field is growing day-by-day. I shifted my focus from learning all the different skills to honing a particular skill. In architecture we used to learn 3d Max, Rhino, Grasshopper, and every new software that comes in the field. The architect has to know, I have left that habit because I was very freakishly savvy about learning every software I knew: Grasshopper, Rhino, 3DS Max, Revit plus Dynamo because I was intrigued by software. I have loved that since I was in 4th class. I’m currently focusing on the strategy and research part of the process, I don’t care about UI because that is for another day and that is usually what happens when you go around in a single vertical line. You split up at the very edge, you either go to a strategy site or you go to a UI site. There has to be a differentiation between all these processes, so I’m going more towards strategy and research and that is where I’m honing my skills.

I’ve stopped learning everything and being a Jack of all trades. It works well for a few of your timelines, maybe for next seven years,

but post that you need to be a master of something. Otherwise you will be a Jack of all trades for the next 20 years.

Coming to the third question where you asked me to throw some light on the niche that I’m creating for myself. No, I’m not creating any niche for myself. I’m just going with the flow; we need to just relax, sit back and think about all the things that we are grateful for. I’m grateful for all the things right now and I enjoy time with my family and one of the reasons that I left such a good job in Field Architects was because I was missing my family.

Architecture was my aspiration three years back. Although, the problem with the human mind is that once you meet your aspirations, it changes. I just look back at all that I wanted to be, it is happening right now, I’m getting my work-life balance. Salary is a different portion that will grow once you go much deeper, all the other things that you wanted as a person, I’m achieving those or at least close to some of the targets. In retrospect, there is no niche that I’m trying to create, I’m just being myself and challenging myself with why, how, what with a lot of things.

IA - Lastly, to set an example for the students in the field, what is your advice for young students?

HARSHIT - I’ve already written an answer in my one note here. Do not make anyone your example, that is the most idiotic thing that we do and keep on doing. For example, if you see someone, even on Instagram, their business model is who you can envy.

IA - I am not getting trapped in their business model. I don’t use it!

HARSHIT - that’s great and I’m also trying to get out of that. Coming to the business model, what it is that you are selling?

Envy, nothing else! You do not have to make anyone your role model, you have a completely different life and no one can be you, take it in a positive sense or a negative sense, but no one can be you and you cannot be anyone. You are your awesome self.

Architecture was my aspiration three years back. Although, the problem with the human mind is that once you meet your aspirations, it changes. I just look back at all that I wanted to be, it is happening right now, I’m getting my work-life balance. Salary is a different portion that will grow once you go much deeper, all the other things that you wanted as a person, I’m achieving those or at least close to some of the targets. In retrospect, there is no niche that I’m trying to create, I’m just being myself and challenging myself with why, how, what with a lot of things.

IA- Yeah, personality types!

HARSHIT - yeah exactly! These personality traits do not define you. You can be the same in all your decisions, but the time you took one decision of putting a bedroom on the Southside and someone decided to put that on the Westside, that’s the multiverse we know!

You just need to be you and that is the whole point of being the most exclusive that you can be, that’s it! The best thing that you need to learn today is to not make anyone your example, ever.

Illustration by Vaishnavi Jadhav

By Kallem Vivek Vardhan reddy

THE IFFY EXPLORER

Curated by Dania Irshad, Ayushi Nigam, and Sandali Rathore

Niharika, or as she is popularly known as @the_iffy_explorer, is a digital content creator. She graduated as an architect from Jamia Millia Islamia with her passion inclined towards travelling. Being an introverted kid, she used to be engrossed in her own world until she discovered the world of travel. After graduation, she pursued her passion for exploration and became a full-time traveller. Let’s dive into her story to know more about this offbeat field as a career and how she ended up at it.

Instagram: @the_iffy_explorer

IA: When you were in school, what did you aspire to become? Was it architecture you wanted to pursue, or was it something else, and then you came into this?

N: I was a very artistic person in school; I thought I would pursue something related to the arts. In class 10th, I happened to incline towards architecture as I read a lot about buildings and then saw them all around me. I also realized that architecture is a technical field, culminating in art and engineering. So I wanted a combination of both. However, I did not wish to indelve into a purely artistic lot, so in the end, in 10th grade, I decided to go with architecture

IA: When you started your career as an architect, did you ever plan to take a different career course, or had you been very passionate about being an architect?

N: I was very passionate. I used to get excellent grades in college. Till the 5th year, I thought I would become the next Zaha Hadid because I was into parametric structures. I don’t believe I still remember that word, but I was into it. As soon as the 5th year arrived, I was doing my thesis, and some medical problem happened in my family, and I realized that I didn’t want to spend a lot of my life in an office just primarily drafting. So, I wanted to be on the field, on the ground, so I majorly diverged from there.

IA: What are some of the cherished moments from your undergraduate days?

N: The field trips, of course. Especially in our college. First-year used to be north India, the second year used to be west India, then south India, and northeast India. So this was the pattern, and I used to love the field trips, although I was an introverted kid. And, of course, the NASA convention days. During the sleepless nights, I was learning so much and getting so much exposure which I wasn’t used to, so that was my favourite part.

IA: Were you always a traveller at heart or is there anything incident from grad school that inspired you to become a traveller? At what moment did you decide that travelling was your calling?

happened, but once I entered architecture, they say that you get to a point, so that you can get to another point. I think, somehow, that universe works out, and everything works out for you. So from one end, I got to another point. Due to architecture, I got into travelling. So during field trips, when I did surveys going to villages, I realized I like travelling. I never got to do this before, and when I did, I loved it, and I wanted to pursue it moving forward.

IA: Back then, who was your inspiration?

N: In college, of course, Zaha Hadid was my inspiration, and Charles Correa. This one architect used to travel a lot and draw inspiration from their travel to design. I learnt from him that a journey could transform your entire perspective, and it reflects in your art. For blogging-vlogging, around 2018-2019, many vloggers started vlogging. Casey Neistat, Peter McKinnon, and many bloggers like Shreya Nath, primarily from India, and many international bloggers were well known. I thought I would give writing a try, so I gradually got into travelling and writing simultaneously.

IA: Do you ever think of architecture as a mistaken step in your career, or do you regret your formal degree?

N: Not. People say that what are you doing with your degree, I would say that the kind of perspective that architecture gives, I mean we learn everything, everything. A- z you get to know everything. Even the law side of it, the graphic designing side of it, the framing part of it, the survey part. When I watch my fellow creators, I realize that this person lacks this, this person lacks this. But I know that I have learned this in college, I have learned this in college, so I have everything in my pot right now, and I did not regret it, or it was not a mistake.

IA: How did you end up in such an offbeat career? How was your journey from graduation till here?

N: During the 5th year before submitting my thesis, I won this international trip to Nepal sponsored. I just participated in a contest on Instagram, I got on Instagram because of a batchmate of mine. She called me on Instagram on our Kerala trip. She told me that I take good photos I could post them on Instagram. It’s an excellent way to stay connected with people. So I started doing that in my third year.

N: I was a very introverted kid, always in my room, in my space doing something or another, painting or learning about something on the internet. It wasn’t that I loved traveling much or that my family made me travel a lot. Nothing like that ever

On Instagram, I got to participate in this contest, go to Nepal, and discover what it is like to travel solo, and how much fun it is as you get to meet so many people. Your perspective changes, and you develop the confidence to be independent and do things on your own. I liked that. I chose Mumbai as my thesis site because I wanted to travel. So, I went to Mumbai for my site survey and all the documentation. I submitted my thesis and did my internship. Once the internship was over, college was over. Everything was over. I started looking for travel

volunteering work, and then I travelled to make some sponsored trips. So, when all of this happened, a flow was formed.

IA: Do understanding architecture and our built heritage ever help you in your travel journeys and blogging and vlogging?

N: Especially photography, framing and graphic designing. These three significant aspects helped me. If I still look at works of creators, the aesthetics do not seem pleasing from an architectural point of view. It should be aesthetically pleasing so that even the people watching it can enjoy it and remain hooked. I take care of this. For example, if the teacher does not like the work in architecture, they might tear off the sheets. I assume that if they do not like it, then the entire content is a waste.

IA: So you said that you started writing simultaneously. How did you become a digital creator? How did this shift happen?

N: During fests in our college, different workshops used to be held, and I gradually got into poetry. I started writing through poetry. Also, I was reading many books to improve myself. After indulging in these, I started blogging. I got my domain by the end of the 5th year during my internship. The shift happened because I was also into photography since class 10th. I realized that many people are already blogging, and I have both the skills, so I started with that.

empire from zero. You are building it from scratch without having any backup.

Along with travelling you have to do ten other things simultaneously, at least at the start when you are all alone without a team. I still do some freelancing work, and I currently don’t have a team. Freelancing sometimes includes graphic designing, writing, managing social media, and often doing videography, architectural photography, or photography work

IA: Do you have any travel rituals?

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IA: How is travelling financially feasible as a career? How do you support yourself?

N: Travelling in itself is not a viable career. One cannot earn from travelling, and this I realized after a year of graduating from college. Nobody makes it from travelling. People earn from the content creation that they do on their trips or any other form of documentation that you further sell. Either you sell it on social media or however you want to, depending on the level you are documenting. How it became a full-time thing for me is that at first I used to do volunteering.

What happens is that they sponsor your end-to-end trip and you don’t get paid, but everything is taken care of. So what do you give the brand in return? you give them your services, like a blog. You can provide the videos, depending on your skills or you can manage their hostels, or promote them on Instagram. This is how it usually works. I do it now as I have developed videography skills.

I make videos for brands, documentaries for tourism boards like the state tourism boards such as Gujarat and Ladakh. Hence, they pay me for that, and then simultaneously, my travel expenses are also taken care of. If you want to make a brand out of yourself to become financially feasible for you lifelong, you have to work hard, because you are building an

N: What has become a ritual now is to connect with the locals, go to their homes, learn about their lives, we used to do a lot of that in architecture. So, how to talk to them, know about their lives, what they are doing, what they celebrate, what their homes are made up of and learning about their vernacular architecture. I think doing these things has become a ritual now. And on a trip, if I don’t do that, I feel incomplete, and I feel like I haven’t seen the local side of a place. N: What has become a ritual now is to connect with the locals, go to their homes, learn about their lives, we used to do a lot of that in architecture. So, how to talk to them, know about their lives, what they are doing, what they celebrate, what their homes are made up of and learning about their vernacular architecture. I think doing these things has become a ritual now. And on a trip, if I don’t do that, I feel incomplete, and I feel like I haven’t seen the local side of a place.

IA: How did you get funds for your travel when you started?

N: Architecture is always a costly course. Any course related to arts is expensive. But luckily, I was in a government college, so the fees were not much. When our trips happened in college, I used to ask the cost of the trip, which used to be around 12000 to 14000. We used to travel in lower-class seats on the train, so then, my father used to fund my trips. But after

college, when I started, I did volunteer work, so it did not take up much of my funds. Then, I developed my freelancing skills, so now I fund my own travels.

IA: Why backpacking solo across India? Why did you start travelling solo, and what gave you the courage to travel by yourself?

N: Solo because we made many group trips during college in which 40 students used to travel together. It used to be a very hotchpotch situation. I once got to go to South Africa with my mother, it was a tiny group, and I enjoyed being in a small group. Then again, I have already mentioned winning a trip to Nepal, and it was only one ticket, so this was a chance for me to discover and travel solo.

Then I went to Mumbai, again solo, for my thesis. So due to these two or three trips, I realized that you do not have any restrictions; you are free to explore the place. It is up to you and what you want to do. It also gives you the confidence to depend on yourself. You are not dependent on anybody else. This, I think, is an achievement in one’s life. And I think travelling gives you that confidence.

IA: What are some of the challenges you face in day-to-day life? What is the driving factor that keeps you going?

N: So while travelling, there’s a lot of physical exertion, especially when you are documenting your travel alongside. I take a minimum of 10 days to make a trip. Sometimes, when my family asks me to come back soon, I have to cut down the days of the journey at times. Every single day you have to be productive. So it causes exertion. But of course, physical exertion is better than mental exertion, so I am always up for it. Sometimes, it is not easy on solo trips to document your travels because you have to hold a camera, you have to direct, you have to act, you have to anchor, and everything else. That becomes difficult.

IA: Was your family supportive of you traveling full time? Did their concerns about your safety ever interfere with your plans? How did you convince them to leave architecture and dive into something so risky and adventurous at the same time?

N: After 1-2 years of college, they were very concerned and called during my trips to ask how I was doing and asked for the number of people around me. This still happens, by the way. They were concerned, but they were also supportive that travel would lead to confidence and exposure. Then, they expected me to go back to architecture, but that did not happen. So after 3-4 years, they told me to do whatever I want to. But still, they hope and expect that I go back to architecture, because, of course, a job with a salary is always a safer option.

But if you don’t take risks, how will you be able to do what you want? And if you’re going to do something different, then taking risks is a part of it.

IA: How did you make them understand? How did the conversation go?

N: It is not just me who is travelling like this. Many other female creators are also doing this, and they are doing better than me. So I expose them to this content on social media. ‘This woman achieved this. Now she is in this country. She is getting published a lot. Stories are published in newspapers.’ So I try to make them understand that the way I started architecture from the first year and took me five years to complete, achieving something in traveling might take time too. So, they develop a slight perspective which needs to be reminded now and then, because this is very new to every parent for our generation.

IA: How do you find work? Does it come to you, or do you seek it out?

N: It works both ways. When I did not have a portfolio for travelling, I used to seek out brands to take me for volunteering work or on a barter basis to create content. Then, slowly and gradually, I developed a portfolio, and many brands used to come due to Instagram following, Youtube presence, and social media presence. But to date, and I think even in the future, I would have to seek out brands because it’s a newly formed industry, so it happens both ways. If you like a brand, you seek out them because they might not be able to track you. After all, there’s a lot of influx of creators on social media.

information about it on the internet, so I decided to go there next.

During my college years, we used to do a dissertation at the end of the year, so even in that, I took a village called Chitkul, which is in Kinnaur, Himachal Pradesh. During 2014-2015, it was an undocumented village. It has been exposed to people and acts as a tourist spot. It was then that I went and documented the town. It felt very adventurous to me that there was no previous data or information associated with the project.

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IA: What makes your content different from the many travel bloggers in India?

IA: Why do you often travel to remote Indian villages instead of famous or glamorous travel destinations?

N: I cannot go to places that are crowded. I run from there. If for instance, the entire of India is going to Manali, I will not go there. And the primary reason is that I want to see and show what other people haven’t explored yet. It is usually a raw experience. I love to see things raw, as they are. So that is why I go to villages, plus they are the safest and homely places to travel to. It is such a pleasant experience when you sit together and have lunch and dinner. You get to know about their lives and how hardworking the people are.

IA: How do you decide your following travel destinations?

N: Now, most of my trips are work trips, 90% of which is a good thing. Previously when work trips were not that frequent, I used to explore virtually through google maps to see which area sounds interesting and then google it to get more information about the site. I then noticed that there is not much

N: Currently, I am more inclined towards videography, I don’t blog anymore. I plan to shut down my blog as the audience is decreasing, so I’m thinking of putting in more effort on youtube. I also like doing videos more. I used to watch videos of different vloggers to understand what they are doing to understand what was happening around me. And I realized that a lot of them sugar coat their experiences and those videos made me feel cringe. And there is still similar content available on the internet, and I don’t know why people consume such content. So, I did not want to be a part of that cringe.

I realized that the rawer you are, the better it is for an audience to feel how you are showing the content. So that they do not think of a different experience than what they saw after visiting there. I wanted my content to generate excitement among the audience and not a disappointment when they take the same trip. I wanted people to choose the not-so-chosen path. I want them to experience something different. So I have aimed to decentralize the traffic.

IA: What was the most adventurous trip that you did?

N: I think this trip to Ladakh in 2019. It was the first time I

travelled to Ladakh, and someone texted me on Facebook that the Kargil Festival is happening in Ladakh and that I should go. Initially, the situation felt sketchy, and I told the person to take care of my stay as I would be travelling for the first time there. I was ready to backpack all along. It used to be a 1020 days long trip. It was a self-sponsored trip, so I did a little budgeting, then decided to take a bus, crossed Kashmir, and reached Kargil, Ladakh. The experience included taking a lift, staying with locals, and making friends all through the journey. It got to such an extent that I now call Kargil my second home. So, I think that was the most adventurous trip of my life.

IA: Can you tell us about the other variety of content you’ve started creating along with travel vlogs?

N: Variety is harmful sometimes because you cannot create your niche. Gradually, I got into spirituality, and soon I will open another channel based on wellness. So Ayurveda, massages, healing, meditation will be included in that. If you experience something good, you try to make others experience the same. That would be the motive of that channel.

Everything is rooted in videography only because I like to play with the camera. So I started with photography and got into videography now. Reels have come up in such a short form of content. I love to do raw travel vlogs and educational content around remote corners and borders. For borders, I am doing “what’s at the border series,” for which I have to travel for an entire year. Currently, I have covered two states. I do many vlogging courses as well, so that is also a form of revenue. I also do workshops, courses, and sell my courses online.

IA: How did people react when you decided to become a full-time traveller?

N: It is like a hobby for them. They think that I am pursuing a hobby. It isn’t a profession for them yet, probably because of

the height at which they see me. I was always an excellent student, so I think, maybe, I haven’t reached that platform for them yet. So they always see it as a hobby. So perhaps, once I cross their expectations, they will consider it a profession someday. So currently, their reaction is casual.

IA: How did you manage to have made Indian travelers aware of the rich culture in the unspoken places of India?

N: People always connect with your experiences. If you create an ad and show them, they might go to the place, but they won’t connect. The connection won’t be formed just through an advertisement. When you connect and share your experiences, that is when the audience also creates a bond.

Similarly, people connect better in vlogs because you are experiencing that particular thing and presenting it on a screen. That connection through travel vlogs, I can show to the people. If they come to a particular region of India, they will see an unexplored part of the country.

Post covid-19, since people could not make international trips, they started exploring the villages, the unknown territory of India. People went on road trips to learn about different corners of India, different homestays, what kind of food they would get, and what experiences they will go through with travel vlogs. They found these experiences much better than the sugarcoated experiences or hotels. Social media helped in building that connection.

IA: You talk about “getting lost” in these trips as a traveller. Do you have a story about such an adventure?

N: It happens on every trip. On trips, I am always in a ‘flow state’. A ‘flow state’ is a state of mind where you are entirely immersed in work, and you don’t care to get distracted. People are coming and going, the world is revolving, but you do not

care about anything else. You are wholly immersed at that moment. During travel, I realized that I love this and that it is the same ‘flow state’ I used to be in while doing architecture. I never wanted to be in an office. I wanted to achieve that ‘flow state’. I found that in travel and thought to take it up professionally. I feel happy. I can also generate revenues through this. This flow state happens with every trip. I never feel like coming back.

IA: What differences have there been in understanding and learning to read about the architecture and culture in books and lectures vs. to experience them?

N: There is a north-south difference in this. I wish now that we would have been more practically involved in certain things back in college. I wish they would have taken us to a village, made us interact with the locals, and asked us to design homes for them and build them. It would have been better for our understanding. When we complete college, our expectations are something else, and we get something else. So, it becomes a disappointment. Rather than just theory, more emphasis should be given to practical aspects for a better understanding. At the internship, we again start from zero even after studying architecture for five years. It is just a waste of time. I wish the curriculum in the future would incorporate these aspects.

IA: What are some of the basic life skills one needs to pursue in this field?

N: To become a traveller, you need to be like water. Be adaptable in every place, with every person you meet, and with every culture you get into. Be like water, be adaptable. That is the most crucial life skill.

IA: Most students go through something we’d like to call a ‘mid-course crisis’ where we start doubting our career choice altogether.

Did you ever go through something similar in your time? Did it lead you to venture into content creation and travelling?

N: Mid-course crisis happened to me when I learned that architecture is not a sustainable solution as we build concrete structures one after another. It is not sustainable. Back then, I was very interested in vernacular and sustainable architecture. Vernacular architecture asks you to work in a rural setup, and it does not have any earnings. Sustainable architecture requires you to get many technical abilities through technical courses. So this was my mid-course crisis because I realized that I either did not possess specific skills or that the job won’t be fulfilling for me.

IA: What should be on the bucket list of an architecture student?

N: For an architecture student, the bucket list should comprise Barcelona and places in Europe constituting examples of medieval architecture. It gives a lot of exposure. If you can afford it, you should go. It would be best if you did not hesitate to go to any international convention or competition. That is a way you get exposure. In India, there should be places from all four corners of the country to understand different climatic zones and the architecture that governs these places.

IA: As I believe you have a varied understanding of architecture and traveling, how has the architecture and culture changed in India within different regions?

Vernacular architecture is disappearing now, which is sad. Some fellow architects that I know are working to preserve it, but again, it is tedious and requires labour investments for the vernacular part of it. As a traveller and as an ex-architect, it is sad to see that it is disappearing gradually and after ten to fifteen years it would become difficult to find old homes in villages. Therefore, I utilize my time to see them and document them for future generations as long as they exist.

Some fellow architects that I know are working to preserve it, but again, it is tedious and requires labour investments for the vernacular part of it. As a traveller and as an ex-architect, it is sad to see that it is disappearing gradually and after ten to fifteen years it would become difficult to find old homes in villages. Therefore, I utilize my time to see them and document them for future generations as long as they exist.

IA: How can students travel on a low-budget trip in our tedious architecture field?

N: Again, for this, you have to be like water, very adaptable. If you need to travel from the third AC or sleeper class, you should do it. You should stay at people’s homes if they invite you to. Nowadays, villagers are very welcoming. Pack your bags, visit a village, they see you alone, and they ask you to stay in their home. That is as easy as it can get. At around Rs. 5000-10,000, you can easily make a trip. To save this amount, do many internships. On my part, I did not do many internships. Due to that, I did not get much exposure in the office field. I do regret that. So, every year, do one internship. Whatever your capability is and whatever amount they offer to you. That itself is an excellent thing.

IA: Do you have any stories you heard on your travels and wish to share?

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IA: You pack your bags and stay at people’s homes. How do you filter out if the people are trustworthy?

N: In the remotest location, people are really helpful since they are difficult locations. You get all the facilities in cities, so people here tend to take advantage of you. The more you travel, the more you depend on your instincts or your sixth sense. The travel experience helps you understand whom you should talk to and who is helpful. This helps in filtering out untrustworthy people.

IA: For young architects, do you think it is feasible to choose an offbeat career? What is the key to success in going for an unconventional field as a career path?

N: Before covid-19, it could have been feasible. But after that, the travel industry has been hit hard. It was not easy before covid, but post covid, it has become more complex. Do not venture into it unless you have something different to offer. Until you find it, you could freelance not to be utterly dependent on travelling as a career. Simultaneously, you have to work harder than usual. That’s how it is usually done and should be done.

N: Since I’ve been traveling for the border projects to the corners of India, I got to know the story of war times; it was not just because of the Army that the winning happened, but it was a group effort from both the Army and the locals. In the Kargil areas, the locals used to assist the Army in reaching the highest points or in transporting their materials. In Gujarat, Madhavpur, three hundred women reconstructed the airstrip on the words of a Colonel in about eight days because there was a shortage of workforce. They created the airstrips so that the aircraft could be launched. That was an inspiring story

IA: What advice do you have for the young architects venturing into the same path as yours?

N: I would say they should get a lot of exposure. They should go to NASA Conventions. They should go on international trips. They should talk to many people. Speaking and understanding other peoples’ perspectives is a crucial life skill. They have to be ready to learn whatever comes in their life. Learn new software and new skills like photography and videography. Try to evolve yourself with the changing times. Do many intern ships and save money. Go on many trips. Spend your money on gaining life experiences and not collecting commodities.

Illustration by Lakshmi A

Illustration by Lakshmi A

Citation WAT-62-034A - Z101

School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi by

M.S.Sriniwas

Women and Architecture

A man’s presence is dependent upon the promise of power which he embodies. . . The promised power may be moral, physical, temperamental, economic, social, sexual – but its object is always exterior to the man. . . By contrast, a woman’s presence expresses her own attitude to herself, and defines what can and cannot be done to her. . . One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear.

-Berger, J. (1972; 2008). Ways of Seeing. pp. 45-47. WWW.NASAINDIA.CO

Berger’s unravelling of gender identities might seem too radical for some. But looking at the shocking state of women in the architectural profession, it is perhaps only a radical expla nation that can do justice.

Almost two decades into the twenty-first century, architecture continues to be a male-domi nated profession. Women have practically no room at the highest levels. Combining Berger’s social theories with the realities of the architectural profession, this essay attempts to under stand the patterns that hold women back. We then ask, what can we do about this? Can architectural education correct the course of professional practice?

Architecture is an act of creation. By merely being an act, an external exercise, it becomes a man’s game, Berger would say. But it doesn’t end there. An act of creation is a demon stration of power. A male architect embodies the power to raise edifices and alter land scapes, giving unto himself immense presence.

-Denise Scott (2009; 1989) says in her essay Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in the Architecture. Why do architects need stars? She says that architects, “grappling with the intangibles of design, select a guru whose work gives them personal help in areas where there are few rules to follow. . . the relationship is personal, and necessarily one-to-one.” These “gurus” have to impress and lead. It is no surprise that they have to be male.

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What is the presence of a woman architect like? The woman appears, and is therefore sur veyed, says Berger. Those who judge this appearance are her surveyors. It is not only men who survey; other women survey too. In fact, the woman develops a surveyor within herself, as a mechanism of coping with patriarchy. So when a woman acts, what does she say about her attitude to herself? What is her appearance? The woman architect must be an uncom fortable presence for her surveyors.

The ACSA (Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture) (Chang, 2014) explains suc cinctly the problem women face in architecture. In 2013, 43% of architecture students (in cluding postgraduate and doctoral students, in the United States) were female. 41-42% of students who graduated in architecture were female. 40% of people who took the ARE (licensing test) were women. Beyond this point, the numbers fall drastically. The percentage of practising women architects, women lecturers and deans in architecture schools, women AIA members, all fall between 15-25%. The verdict is clear. Students can be women. Junior architects can be women. Star architects cannot be women.

Implicit in Scott’s essay is the idea that it is architects who elevate other architects to star ship, and validate their mystique. As Levinson (2005) notes, the audience for architects con sists mostly of architects. Now, most students entering architecture school usually come with limited understanding of the profession. It is architecture school that assimilates them into this group that indulges in this cult of personality. Therefore, the best way to address the star-system is through architectural education.

For all talk of creative genius and demonstration of power, the contemporary truth of archi tecture is one of collaboration and consultation. A 2010 report by Building Futures, RIBA’s think-tank, sees design losing importance as a singular activity (Jamieson, 2010). They note that because of the increasing technological expertise that architecture demands, subcon tractors are taking over significant portions of the design work. This can be uncomfortable for architects who have established their identity in the modernist tradition, but this is reality.

But architecture school seems to be in denial of this. At the time of writing this essay, I am designing, for my studio, a 20,000 square-metre brain research campus. This is in consul tation with experts in neuroscience, laboratory design, product refrigeration, biochemical storage and environmental impact – all me. Presentation takes precedence over substance.

Simultaneously, conversation in the school promotes the idea that there is a lone man (or Zaha Hadid) behind the greatest works and ideas of architecture. Many such as Gürel and Anthony (2006) have established how “the grand narrative of architecture” excludes women, perhaps in a Berger-ian discomfort. Architectural history prefers to present itself as a series of achievements by privileged men.

Then, visiting professionals leak the profession’s prejudice into the college. For students that haven’t seen many architects until architecture school, these professionals shape their im age of the architect. And what do they look like? They are most often pompous men, teach ing subjects such as Construction exclusively. Women are more frequently academics, and attempt to be “nurturing” or “smiling” (Lester, 2011, p.156).

All this plants and reinforces certain ideas in the heads of tobe architects. The image of the architect begins to resemble to image of God – a middle-aged man. And then we wonder why women don’t fit this image.

Reference List

• Berger, J. (2008). Ways of Seeing. India: Penguin Publishers.

• Chang, L C. (2014). Where Are the Women? Measuring Progress on Gender in Architec ture [Online]. Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture. Available at: www.acsa arch.org/ resources/data-resources/where-are-the-women-measuringprogress-on-gender in-architecture/ (Accessed: 10.11.2019).

• Gürel, O M and Anthony, K A. (2006). ‘The Canon and the Void: Gender, Race, and Archi tectural History Texts’, Journal of Architectural Education, p66-76.

• Jamieson, C (2010). ‘The Future for Architects?’ London: RIBA.

• Lester, J. (2011). ‘Acting on the Collegiate Stage: Managing Impressions in the Workplace’, Feminist Formations Vol. 23, No. 1 (Spring 2011), p155-181

• Levinson, N. (2005). ‘Notes on Fame’, Perspecta Vol. 37, p18-23.

• Scott Brown, D. (2009). ‘Room at the Top? Sexism and the Star System in Architecture’, AA Words Four: Having Words, p79-89.

It is clear how architecture schools, even if unknowingly, enable sexism in the profession. But unlike practices, these schools have academic structures that can be reformed by for ward-looking intellectuals. If there is any hope, it is from these schools. By emphasizing on collaboration and keeping out professional prejudice, they can produce progressive architects who will eventually transform the profession. In conclusion, architecture’s discomfort with female ambition is nothing new. This is a con sequence of both a prejudiced society, and the structure of architectural practices – partic ularly the star-system. And the star-system probably cannot be abolished. But schools can work to tone it down. Maybe we can eventually have fewer and more diverse stars. And maybe some woman, who could not have been more than a woman ten years ago, will be the harbinger of an architectural revolution ten years from now.

School of Planning and Architecture, Vijayawada by

Vartika Khare

Many of the tourists and citizens still walk through the beautiful bazaar unaware and oblivious to the fact that the architect for the place was none other than Jahanara Begum, the eldest daughter of Shah Jahan. She was also an architect for the Sarai situated in Shahjahanabad which had a huge span of 50acres and was known as ‘Begum Ka Baag’. She also happened to be the architect for her tomb, which is currently in the Nizammudin Dargah complex. Even today history profoundly mentions and talks about the achievements of the Mughal rulers and their extensive contribution to architecture, but where is the mention of all the contribution made by the women? History has constantly provided us with an impactful insight into the intricate meritocracy, which has till date been followed in our society.

The prejudice against women which exists in today’s day has continued since the onset of the civilizations where women have been pronounced to work within the confines of their home. The absence of women architects in decision-making committees thus favours the privileged sex, which usually consists of interviews with male architects, which are further sent to other male architects who sanction them. This interdependence of system on one another, while completely omitting the role of female architects, contaminates the system. Thekla Schild was the first women architect in Germany. Since childhood, she had an inclination towards science and art. She found architecture to be an appealing course but yet she was sceptical whether a woman would be awarded a corresponding degree. Being the only woman in her study program, she faced many obstacles. From gaining the acceptance of her faculty and her fellow students to being the only female traveller for excursions in a maledominated environment. Schild maintained an architectural memoir throughout her course. This memoir remained unpublished and was not recognized. As rightly quoted by the architectural historian Beatrix Colomina, Thekla Schild’s work was crucial yet she became invisible and unknown to the world of architecture until very recently when her name and prominence in architecture were rediscovered. This was an example of how the work established by women over so many centuries along with their names have been lost under the oppression in the field of architecture, which like any other sector was commanded by the loud patriarchal society.

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India became an independent country in 1947 and is regarded as the biggest democracy in the world. It also has the largest population index. However, the women in India still had to struggle for freedom and their rights, and till this date, they continue to do so. Post-Independence, there was a need to establish new institutions for the newly independent India. Women, architects such as Hema Sankalia and Urmila Eulie Chowdhury faced difficulties to get approvals for their designs. However, they managed to build housing projects, state institutions, etc. after many difficulties that weren’t faced by the male architects. In a country with such a drastic difference in treatment towards two different genders, it would automatically create an environment of a patriarchal society. Misogynistic mindset is valued and anyone with even slightly opposing views is scowled at and looked down upon. A country where education for all is an agenda yet to be accomplished, expecting a system where all women are entitled to education and equal status in the job sector is an improbable scenario. Today’s feminism’ is argued against. We are constantly reminded of all the equal opportunities and rights that have been given to women, but the statistics and stories from over the country suggest something different altogether. We continue to live in a country where women live in constant fear, where the safest place for them is within the confines of their homes. So have we actually progressed? It has always been argued that the reason we have less female in any field is because the literacy ratio is less, yet have we ever bothered to ask why the literacy ratio is less. Whereat one hand we have uneducated women, who even fear to step out of their homes, forget sitting with them as equals to study and earn for the family at the other hand we have well-educated women from the urban areas who in spite of having a corresponding degree sit without a job. Nearly 50-70 % of women are registered architects however these numbers drop by 20% when it comes to jobs or practice.

History has constantly provided us with an impactful insight into the intricate meritocracy, which has till date been followed in our society. Chandani Chowk, Delhi’s biggest and oldest market space. It was originally in a half-moon shape with canals diving and reflecting the moonlight and it continues to hold the true essence of Old Delhi, reminding each visitor of the rich history that our country, especially the capital harbours.

Women cannot succeed in an environment where their capabilities are questioned at each step, where their success is overshadowed by the success of their opposite gender peers. Arielle Assouline Litchen once said in an interview that the initial step to vanquish gender inequality in the field of architecture would be by preaching the concept of ‘Design for Equity’. Design with equity is a concept where we look into systems that unfairly prefer some over the others to come up with counter solutions to address the inequality and bring everyone on the same level. Hence, we require this particular shift of culture towards an equitable and fair environment in practice. In a field like architecture, reviews are predominantly led by males. The ‘Internal Archive of Women in Architecture’ was created by Milka Bliznakov, a Bulgarian architect. The centre is located at Virginia Tech. The absolute negligence of the work done by the first cohort of female Architects resulted in the loss of decades of records, theories, and designs. This wasn’t just an unfortunate loss for women but the entire architectural community. This instigated Milka Bliznakov to come up with the Archive centre to supplement the documentation conventionally. MS. Ogbu is known for designing shelters for low housing groups and immigrant labourers providing them with a safe and hygienic environment. She has time and again quoted and spoken for the field of architecture to be an epitome of the current authoritative system. She has taken her stand on the matter and has reached out to help the neglected strata of the society, as she draws an analogy between their situation and that of women architects Delving into the philosophical portrayal of buildings, it is observed how tall skyscrapers signify the strength and supreme status of male architects in the society in today’s date ‘architects’.

References

Chopra, P. (2011). A JOINT ENTERPRISE: INDIAN ELITES AND THE MAKING OF BRITISH BOMBAY. Lange, A. (2013). Necessary Hauntings: Why Architecture Must Listen to its Forgotten Women. ArchDaily, 1. STRATIGAKOS, D. (2016). Unforgetting Women Architects: From the Pritzker to Wikipedia. PLACES, 1.

There are fewer women architects to look up to and observe as role models yet these numbers are nothing but the result of the ignorance of the society towards gender. Feminists’ critique of modern Architecture condemns the proliferation of this small scale model of the patriarchal society through Architectural education. These architects believe that to bring about a change in the attitude of the people’s mind-set and to establish an equal and prominent place in the society, we need to start making eminent changes in the roots of Architecture, i.e. during the education phase where providing the facility isn’t enough but also making sure that it is advocated through with equal respect and authority is important. This would help in the distinguishable change in the outlook of architects towards their women counterparts and would provide them with an equal status quo in the society where they aren’t referred to as ‘women architects’, but just as ‘architects’.

WAT-62-034C - Z101

School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi

by Himani Bindal, Navya Khurana and Nikhita Venu Gopal

Natural caregivers. It is only fitting that the Roman goddess of the hearth is Vesta, the virgin goddess of the home, hearth and family. Even before the Romans, women were the primary caregivers. They were responsible for the life they created and were expected to take care of them; to gather herbs, roots and fruits, and to take care of the fire.

Look at what we like to refer to as the modern era of civilization: cities and towns that were primarily designed by men, and according to men. Concepts in city planning such as the zoning of activities into residential, institutional and recreational, created the requirement of vehicles to transport you from the home to the office making it more difficult for women to commute to and fro while managing their responsibilities at home, thus excluding them, and without access to private vehicles, confining them to the home, acting as a tacit reinforcement of traditional gender roles (Matrix, 1984). Later when the workplaces shifted closer to home, allowing women to participate in the office, employers used women’s need for proximity of the home to the workplace as an excuse to under-pay them. (Boys, 1984)

Several trends in the housing industry also reflect the deep-rooted conditioning of societal ideas of women. In today’s society, mostly consisting of nuclear families, cooking is often a responsibility that lies entirely in the hands of the mother. Take the example of the open plan kitchen, a concept that is omnipresent in nearly all ‘modern’ houses. The idea was borrowed from the West, when around the 1960s, domestic servants were much harder to find, and women started entering the workplace (Cieraad, 2002). The traditional walls dividing and isolating the kitchen (and by extension, the woman) from the rest of the house would no longer do. It allowed incoming visitors to oftentimes directly interact with the kitchen, traditionally the woman’s domain, making the space more transparent (Matrix, 1984), and at the same time also bringing the rest of family into the kitchen. But in our context, women were still the primary meal makers, and home keepers. The open plan added another layer of responsibility: to keep the kitchen clean along with the living room, especially with guests over, to protect their image as the perfect wife and mother.

While it is a very small example, several small implicit examples lead to the creation of a larger less implicit problem, difficult to pin down to one cause. Most architects’ attempts to deal with the issues related to a ‘woman’s place’ are nothing more than a scratch at the surface: often misunderstanding or ignoring the realities of society.

Women design differently. Think differently and have different needs. Men often cannot account for all of these needs simply due to a lack of experience, or the lack of sensitivity. The subject of universal accessibility, having gained traction and held up as an architect’s responsibility and a requirement mandated by laws do not consider the needs or requirements of pregnant or nursing women.

It is hard to imagine what a park with steps everywhere and no ramps would mean to a woman with a baby in the stroller, or a mall without a feeding room. Male privilege is often implicit and not often expressed or thought about. And even if it is, it is not generally applied to the field of design. In an example of the continuous reinforcement of the roles of the female sex,

the design of men’s washrooms rarely dedicate a changing station inside it, reinforcing the idea that the responsibility of the child is of the woman and not the man

The star system in architecture is rooted in the romantic period of western history where the ‘ideal’ man is created. In architecture, the ideal architect was the Renaissance man, a multi talented man with handsome features capable of heroic feats and actions. Even now, architectural design is romanticized to be the brainchild of one man. Undertaking the project on his own, dictating the design decisions and representing his personal narratives. Women are seen as the muses, inspiring the ultimate idea but not credited for it. (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993)

An increased awareness of the special requirements that half of the population requires is an integral part of addressing the continual denial of women’s needs. It is ironic almost, the need for fairer design practices require an increased number of female architects to introduce a woman’s viewpoint into the design brief but the existing social and familial structures make it difficult to break through the vicious cycle.

Women architects oftentimes do not want to be known as “good women architects” they would prefer to be simply recognized as “good architects” (Ahrentzen & Anthony, 1993). To be judged on the same standards as men: a fair demand in a utopian world. Unfortunately, ours is not one. Because we have not yet transcended to the ideal society with ideal values, works of architecture created by women need to be talked about, to fill the void of women’s names in architectural education and practice. However, the design ideals, the spaces, and the interactions within them need to be analysed, under the same standards. The only way to sensitize the matter is to introduce it into the architectural discourse.

Architecture today is no longer being designed by star architects. Design is community based, as it used to be in the very beginning. There is a push towards sustainability in all of its aspects: social, economic and environmental. The focus is slowly shifting to include a contextual design sensitive to the intricacies of Indian culture with less emphasis on making a statement and more emphasis on the nuances of design. This change in the way we design will hopefully bring more women to the forefront of architecture, and thus create a better environment for women to practice in, increasing participation from women and finally breaking the glass ceiling..

References

Ahrentzen, S. & Anthony, K. H., 1993. Sex, Stars and Studios: A look at gendered educational practices in Architecture. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 47(1), pp. 11-28. Boys, J., 1984. Is there a feminist analysis of architecture?. Built environment, 10(Women and the environment), pp. 25-34. Cieraad, I., 2002. “Out of my kitchen!” Architecture, gender and Domestic efficiancy. The journal of Architecture, 7(3), pp. 263-279. Matrix, 1984. Making space- Women and the man made environment. 1st ed. London: Pluto Press.

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Satish Misal Educational Foundation’s BRICK School of Architecture

by Manokamna Bajaj, Rutu shah

Through her book , I.W. Criado Perez throws light on how even everyday objects , the technology that surrounds us and our day to day experiences – from cars to voice recognition software to public restrooms are not only in most cases designed by men but also for them.

For example, the standard symptoms of a heart attack – pain in the chest and in the left arm are symptoms for the male body. The symptoms for the female body are completely different. They ex- perience fatigue, nausea, breathlessness and feeling of indigestion when they experience a heart attack. This is not a commonly known fact, even some doctors don’t know about them and people have lost their lives due to this reason, mostly females!

One such example of gender biasness in the technology surrounding us was pointed out by Hanna Rozenberg, a graduate from the Royal College Of Arts. She talks about how even google translator is, maybe unknowingly, biased.

According to her study, if you translate the sentence “she is a leader” from English to Estonian and then back to English the sentence changes the pronoun from she to he and the new sentence thus obtained is “ he is a leader “. Similarly when the sentence “he is an assistant is translated from English to Estonian and then back to English, the pronoun is again changes in the new sentence and it becomes “she is an assistant”.

Another piece of tech that has become an essential part of almost all our lives is the voice recogni- tion software. Its frequencies are set in such a way that it is able to recognize male voices better that the female voices. Due to this, sometimes cars voice commands fail to recognize what a female driver is saying or there are errors, this might even lead to serious accidents.

The cars are also not designed well enough to cater women during their pregnancies. Seatbelts in many cars are not enough to fit a pregnant lady in her third trimester of pregnancy.

At many public spaces, the male and the female toilets have the same floor area. It might seem fair on the face of it. But for various reasons it is not, such as, the women sometimes take more time in toilets to change their sanitary napkins, this might cause a queue to form and hence the ladies washroom require more waiting area. Sometimes women might bring her child of an elderly person to the toilet who might need assistance. Hence the stall area which is typically designed for the use of one person at a time might seem less in such situations and cause inconvenience.

As architects and designers it is our moral responsibility to be able to take into consideration the well being and comfort of all the users. Most of the architects try to design comfortable living spac- es for their clients using the anthropometric data. They acquire this data from ‘the human scale’ by le Corbusier. He considered a 6 foot tall man with his hand raised as the ‘modular man’. Now how do we expect a gender-neutral design if we don’t even have sufficient data for it.

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In Karlskoga, Sweden a study showed that their snow clearing schedules were designed to meet the needs of men. Studies show that there is a considerable amount of difference between the travel pat- terns of men and women. Men tend to have simpler travel patters as they commute to and fro from work places mainly. Women, on the other hand, tend to travel in more complex patters. The reason behind these com- plex routes is that women have to combine their paid work and routine work. They happen to make more short and interconnected trips.

When the officials at Karlskoga switched the routine around they noticed that the amount of distress calls or admission to the emergency room fell dramatically. Even our car and its safety features are designed according to the male anatomy. The seat belts and air bags fail to provide 100% safety to all its users. the air bags are designed in such a way that in case of a collision it protects the upper body and the face is left free so that the person can breathe. But the female anatomy or body is smaller than the male’s, these air bags can also suffocate the per- son. The driver’s seats too are not exactly comfortable for the females as they are designed for large users. Many women need to move their seats far too forward to reach the pedals and steering wheels.

These are just some of the examples of how things that men and women use alike in their daily lives lack consideration of the female necessities, and anatomy. But we all can agree that this ignorance or negligence is not deliberate but a result of the patriarchal society that we live in, where since ages, the working force is mostly comprised of men. We all know that necessity is the mother of invention, inventions that make our lives more convenient and easy. Most of these inventors happen to be men, hence most of the problems are related to them and so are their solutions.

Most of the times we relate men to strength and dependence while women to delicacy and fragile. Hence for jobs that require more strength or field work we prefer men. In many cases it is seen that people don’t consider women to be capable enough to work in certain fields. This is not entirely wrong that work at certain places may be challenging for women. But completely excluding them from the process of designing or deriving solutions is not the answer. This will lead to more and more not so user friendly designs for women.

We all think about eradicating gender inequality by providing both the men and the women with equal status, money, power and job opportunities. But it does not seem to be working. And that is because the real problem is with our mindsets. Our society has been dominated by males for a very long time. So to truly and totally eradicate this social stigma of gender inequality we need to make a difference in the way we think. A difference in our perspectives.

MEN AND WOMEN NEED TO LEARN TO THINK INCLUSIVE OF MEN AND WOMEN.

WAT-62-144C -Z520

Acharya’s NRV School of Architecture

by Padmini Shukla

The challenge

A perspective to pedagogical change

“It is time that we all see gender as a spectrum instead of two sets of opposing ideals.” - Emma Watson

Architecture is a plethora of solutions irrespective of who or which individual addresses it. Primarily, it is the structure or the commendable work that stands out, then comes the secondary aspect of who built it? Why did they build? What did they think of? Through history, focusing on issues close to home, India has witnessed great inventive works by women architects. The famous virupaksha temple in Hampi was built by a woman, queen Lokamahadevi in 740 AD; The infamous Rani Ki vav in Gujrat was built by queen Udaymati; Itmaud Ud Daula in Agra was built by Noor Jehan; Humayun’s tomb in Delhi was built by his wife, Hamida Banu Begum and many more. When time witnesses a spectrum of binaries, it is indifferentiable to the momentary period. Yet balancing the spectrum of change, it proves that everything sheds but the mark is left only by the dedication.

Are we tired of gender specific debates/ conversation?

Yes! The world is moving at its pace and one is being nosy about gender partialities? It’s absurd that when 11,000 scientists have declared climate emergency across the globe, you are here worried about statistics of gender and its ratios among graduates and working professionals. Literally, what and how are you going to change if there is no earth left to live?

Wanting a pedagogical change in education is respecting the demands of ‘present context’. Our entire education revolves around “context”, where the world is busy bringing up solutions to resolve the climate crisis, is in fact, a step to pedagogical change. We, on the other hand, are avidly showcasing the mightier than the sword talent in addressing a petty issue which wouldn’t even matter in the near future. Gulping the “awareness” and architecture together.

How crazy are you?

Passion is very minimal when it comes to architecture, you have to be crazy about it and mad in your approach. There is no safe way prescribed, as the ridiculousness either quenches your thirst for a good design or leaves you with a lesson of life time. Both indeed are madness.

One such madness, which seemed to be impossible a decade ago, brought to life by renowned architect, Zaha Hadid is the parametric form and deconstructivism. Until then curves were treated as unstable and impractical. Heydar Aliyev Centre in Baku, Azerbaijan is one of the structures that is referred as a classic example of dynamism and fluidity of the structure.

Now imagine, if Hadid was busy prying about being paid less, and questioning, why are we living in a patriarchal society? Would her design be referred as classics of ‘seemed to be impossible’ deconstructivism?

“When you are overworked and exhausted, there is a sense of kind of delirium and that’s why I think architects do all-nighters and they kind of do those deadlines. For four days I remember doing four nights in one row with no sleep. I mean nobody, unless you are crazy, would do that, but you are totally focused on the project.”

– Zaha Hadid

Come out of your cocoon

Definitely the boomers agree with the fact that millennials are being spoon fed but they didn’t mostly debate about climate crisis and changing education system. Where the era was preparing to be rich, the next gen, gen-z is preparing to breathe.

Remember in your design class when faculties looped the entire procedure of design? All over again, the same thing, not a redo but reiterating a monotony. Gets boring right? The debatable conversation on gender parity is over-rated and saturated with loads of statistical data of marginal change or a standstill.

Yes! That’s where you are soaked and had enough, you gear up, accelerate to the context. Certainly, the situation is improving and will improve further but let’s not forget our priorities. Act right, Now and in context

When William Golding quoted that women are foolish to compare themselves to men as they are far superior and have always been, there were two prompt reactions: (1) an outrage of a half read statement, and (2) an agreement with the statement. Where the binaries are clear distinction of societies and stigmas as well, let’s not neglect the duties performed by either group to balance and harmonize lives. It’s critical and a non-ignorant fact that architecture as well has to balance and harmonize lives. Every era/ period of time has its own demands and one must fulfil it. Times change and duties too. Women have always been a part of the great history of architecture and will always be. Counting them into minorities and addressing your society as patriarchal demarcates the narrowness of thoughts in educated minds.

So, why not be the change you wish to see?

Hey to the world of existence Hello to the unparalleled. What do you want?

Your stories of existence to be stitched In the most aesthetic manner Check-ins, party, life, vacation And what not

Wonder what life is beyond those lenses?

Worry not, count in you. Perspectives, opinions and freedom? We live in an artificial kingdom. Rulers you ask? Those screens that surround you. Modern problem requires modern solutions Settings standards, learning and inspiring Well, chained in the dungeon of influences.

Where are you? What are you? Comparing and complaining Hey to the world of existence Hello to the unparalleled. What do you want?

Your stories of existence to be stitched In the most aesthetic manner Check-ins, party, life, vacation And what not

Wonder what life is beyond those lenses?

Worry not, count in you. Perspectives, opinions and freedom? We live in an artificial kingdom. Rulers you ask? Those screens that surround you. Modern problem requires modern solutions Settings standards, learning and inspiring Well, chained in the dungeon of influences. Where are you? What are you? Comparing and complaining

Illustration by Hardik Shirolkar

Illustration by Ch. Naveen

Illustration by Hari H

A tune of relentless growth.

by Vajjrashri.A

Storytelling : How architecture changed your perspective

An unreal experience with space. A captivating walk down an aesthetic street.The dramatic play of honest materials. The vitality of scale; proportions and a surreal feeling of being consumed by spaces.

Or just a blind decision and curiosity to explore this beautiful profession. All of those descriptions above are probably why you chose architecture. Your reason might be more unique and not even listed here, regardless; you’re here. Most likely taking a break from the mindless pile of work or procrastinating working on your upcoming sheet submission. Read on about how architecture evolved my perspective. Hope this article makes you reflect on how architecture might have changed your perception, added value to your existing beliefs and made you a space-conscious thinker.

A slI ce of

how? I perce Ive plAces.

What has been listed below is an asymmetrical collection of architectural experiences and realizations that moved me.

1.

Architecture is a mosaic jar of everything that makes a city. Cultures. Places. And the presence of its people.

I had been living and experiencing these ideas arbitrarily like colours placed in different hollows of a palette.

Each colour speaking of its individual description.

Architecture; in its most raw form, allowed me to view it as an eccentric mix of these colours. Observing kaleidoscopic patterns and indulgence of cultures in buildings and buildings in people.

The MG Road metro station in Bangalore for instance is a station of art. It’s aesthetics and street art transports you even before the metro does.

There is a cohesive movement of the users, metros and the piece of metro memory that stays within you.

Bangalore metro is just one example of many art murals and street paintings created by St+art. It is an art loving organization that is creating quite an impression on the citizens of Indian cities.

A meaningful visual narrative painted on a wall in Kannagi Art district ,Chennai.

2.

Architecture bridging the yawning gap between the elite and the penurious

Another example is a hands-on project that I was involved in. As a part of an experiential workshop in auroville, architecture students are often invited to help build structures for the children who are in great need of them. The after school Tamarai, located near the outskirts of auroville is an example of how architecture manifests change through materials. Brick, bamboo and ferrocement forming structures that translate security and happiness to the young children who are deprived.

Rapid settlement that arrives every 12 years; Stays,functions and disappears

3.

A prominent example that has stayed with me is the Meti school in Bangladesh by Ar. Anna Heringer. It is fascinating how she has utilized native materials and local labour to create something so empowering and bridging. It is an organic space that was built with simple vernacular architecture yet brought about a huge wave of change; curating a safe learning space for the underprivileged children of the neighbourhood. This story is motivating hundreds of humans with every passing day.

Adaptability of structures and curation of impermanent experiences that are timeless.

Prior to my architecture days, I believed that the very nature of structures and built spaces was to stay. To sustain weather, time and exist. To serve its function for a long period.

And architectural education let me explore and understand the idea of impermanence unconventionally.

Ar. Rahul Mehrotra explores this concept and speaks about The Kumbh Mela. A mega religious festival of India. Thousands of families are housed in a temporary city that is built up in weeks, celebrates the religious festival and swiftly disassembles into a barren land as it was.

Ar. Rahul Mehrotra emphasizes impermanent cities that can travel, reshape or retreat with the least possible effects on the environment.

This certain example broadened my perspective as I contemplated over the hinge of architecture and impermanence.

A secure vernacular structure composed with pockets of colours leading to a new world

not Just the curves.

by Akshada Choudhary

“Interarticulate, hybridise, morph, deterritorialize, deform, iterate, use splines, NURB, generative components, script rather than model” - Patrik Schumacher’s definition of positive heuristics of parametricism. It is primarily the practice of integrating mathematical algorithms to generate forms beyond the ideas of aesthetics and create theories of social, bio-mimetic, and environmentally informed architecture. The challenges presented by contemporary complexities put forth by society enable architecture to incubate enormous opportunities. The sense of responsibility for designers to build meaningful space within the context of history, future, and environment, pushes the thinking process to adapt digital advancements for a better future. But the main goal remains to be the compatibility of social organisation and the built environment.

According to Donald Norman’s Emotional Design Theory, designs shall focus on people’s emotional feelings and experiences and yield a contextual interaction between people and the design. It will help create a design that will allow people to enjoy good emotions full of fun and beauty (Donald Norman, 2004). The psychological effects induced in the people allow space to reconfigure and change with a responsive pattern of use and occupation. The

forms are responsive to the user pattern made over time using real-time Artificial Intelligence. The curvature modulation emerges in the urban environment with the inbuilt capacity to rethink the spatial experience based on one’s own peculiar ‘sense of space’. The spatial forms control your feelings and directly affect your mental health; similar to what you experience living in rectangular or square-ish buildings with grid patterns. Neuroscience has proved that curves lead to less stress or negative emotions and generate an energetic sense in an individual.

The fascinating curves and spectacular futuristic forms are not all that define parametricism. The potential results that can be generated by the correlation of nature and humans in design, consciously or unconsciously, positively affect the lives of individuals. The idea of Biophilic is also the same. It strives to study nature’s element in detail and use it to coordinate the built environment. The curves emphasize empathy towards nature by fostering a strong relationship between the built environment and the users. The more we articulate our unveiling ideologies by the metamorphosis of built forms, the easier it is to get individuals to understand them. If we work together to adhere to biophilic ideology and parametric design practices, we can build a sustainable future that will have a huge share of user support as they will be more psychologically connected to the spaces.

The cities and their construction have undergone exponential changes. Maybe there are constraints like functionality, material production, budget, land-use efficiency to pull back from the goal. But the more efficiently we can design, the better places we get. Architecture is always in the ongoing cycle of new adaptations with changing needs. Parametric architecture can significantly affect and positively change the systematic approach to architectural design. Starting from Antoni Gaudi and Frei Otto to Zaha Hadid, the style has evolved over the years. It has got tangled with different fields of study to give optimal output with the assemblage of designers, space, and people.

Illustration by Preethi

Illustration by Samitha Shyam

M

entAl heAlth In

Arch Itecture.

By Sania

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Architects and mental health professionals agreed that we need to talk about mental health more openly. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) recently announced a Mental Health Initiative, which will encourage architects to discuss the topic and help those who are in need. AIA president Thomas Vonier said: “Architects are uniquely positioned to offer hope and healing for those who suffer from mental health challenges, as well as helping them understand the importance of self-care.

Mental health has been described as “the total well-being of the individual”, which we can connect to the idea of spaces around us that include and make us feel at home.In this way, mental illness can be seen as a byproduct of an unhealthy environment.Mental health and architecture have always had a connection. Architecture is not only about space and form, but also about people and their environment and surroundings.It is a very highstress profession that requires imagination, perfectionism and dedication from its workers.These traits have been linked to mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, so it’s not surprising that architects are more likely to have these problems than the average person. It is estimated that 15-25% of architects suffer from some kind of mental health issues and in some cases the rate of mentalhealth problems are even higher

”Mental health in architecture is an issue that is often overlooked and ignored, but it is something we should not ignore any longer. In recent years, architects have been more coscious about designing spaces that promote mental health. The most famous example is probably Piet Oudolf’s design for Storm King Art Center in New York State which was completed in 2006.

As far as we students of architecture are concerned, we can start byoptimizing our architecture curriculum to include more courses on psychology and sociology, which will help us better understand the human mind and how it interacts with the environment. We should also make sure that we provide all architects with adequate time to take care of their mental health, such as providing them withaccess to therapists or counsellors. It is a topic that has not been discussed enough or at least not enough to start a dialogue. The architects have more power than they know, but they need to have the knowledge and information of mental health in order to present a new approach for architecture.

In this day and age of global warming, terrorism, famine and natural calamities, it is more important for architects to take responsibility for their work for a balanced design to cater the needs of individuals and to take care of adverse effects on their mental health.

Meraj

Arch Itecture Across the Ages.

By Jagruti Kasle

To begin with, I come from a place that underwent drastic infrastructural changes – Kachchh. It was a land of the desert where the people introduced various traditional architectural techniques with a glimpse of handicrafts on the walls. Considering the climate of the ‘Rann’ (dessert in Gujarati), the Bhunga house was the traditional form of architecture in Kachchh. The Bhunga house was a circular hut-like structure made from mud, covered with thatched roof, supported by bamboo/timber and decorated by a traditional art form called ‘Lippan Kam’. Today, on its journey to becoming a smart city, the place is covered up like a concrete jungle, overlooking the essence of the old city. The new architecture here fails to have the Bhunga or any other traditional art or architecture. The places lost their significance to a great extent and hence the cities here look smart but not original.

From the basic need for shelter to designed spaces, architecture has come a long way. It defines the culture, traditions and values of the people and land. The past, present and future of the place can be narrated through the architecture of a place. The changing needs and desires along with other factors like materials affect the overall spatial design; from vintage architecture to contemporary. I believe that new architecture should continue the essence of the tradition, culture and people like that of rooted, vernacular architecture. The vernacular architecture of a region maintains the uniqueness and authenticity of the site hence it is more site responsive.

Traditional

architecture: during the reign of Indian kings

The exotic Indian architecture was witnessed during the reign of Indian kings and their dynasties like the Dravidians, the Cholas, the Rajputs, the Marathas and many more. They had an ornamental influence over the designs while their purpose was not only restricted to ornamentation but also served different purposes. For instance, the ‘Kalasha’ of the temples were not only used as an element of ornamentation but also used to store grains during the war. Similarly, the figures on the walls of the temples educated the fellow generations about the culture, art, Vedas, music, stories, etc. The authenticity of ancient Indian architecture is still witnessed in the age-old temples, caves and step wells. The minute and intricate detailing of the spaces and their remarkable construction technologies demanded a lot of patience supported with dedicated workmanship.

Architecture in contemporary years

Architecture is less focused on the ornamentation of the buildings and more towards understanding and working on spatial planning with varying levels of extravagance. For example, past ages had a kitchen as a preparation area, while now in the contemporary times, consumption and preparation are categorised into kitchen, dining, service counters and storage areas. Hence, the architecture in contemporary times seems to be more organised and categorised in terms of spaces. Architecture is more explored in terms of form, interiors and materials. The new architecture and construction industry is more time saving and has birthed new terminologies like pre-cast members. Modern-day architecture proposes high-rise structures and luxurious living. This has in turn invited encroachment, pollution and disrespect to nature; whereas vernacular architecture was much more in harmony with nature and was more sustainable.

I hereby urge and propose we revive the bond between the old and new architecture. We should strive to maintain the diversity and authenticity of the places across our country. Let the future architecture be more humble to history and more gentle to nature.

Illustration by Kiran Shankar

Illustration by kiran Shankar

whAt they lI ke ? vs whAt Is rI ght ?

A c rItI c on Arch ItecturAl e ducAtI on.

By

but, it also results in under-qualified staff taking classes of about eighty students. Ideally, it shouldn’t be like this, for the intricate and precise education of architecture needs to be undertaken with much care and patience. Moreover, the situation might just have been a humble one if it was some other field of education, but when it comes to a professional course like that of architecture, it can result in a major fall back, for Architectural education and profession isn’t an isolated field. Rather, it affects most of the other fields, and on a broader perspective the whole society.

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Julia Morgan once quoted that “Architecture is a visual art and the buildings speak for themselves.”

But now, when we think about the same in the context of India, the very quotes come into question. For, what the architectural education and style has become now is not very artistic or self explanatory at all. It is rather like a piece of repetitive industrial product that seems to be coming from one store. It might seem a rather delusive observation, but when looked on the ground level, is more than alarming, even more so is the source of it i.e. “the architectural education system”.

From the Indian room and the training of architecture at sir j.j. School to the formal education under the C.O.A, the Indian education system might just have come a longway however, progressing and evolving at a very fast rate. The architectural education system being practised in India has many loopholes and that on a national level is influencing this formal profession drastically. For once, the system is yet to address the crisis that has emerged with an immense expansion of architectural courses over the last few years. This very problem not only has had many severe impacts on the standards of architectural education

Yet, another spectrum that needs to be addressed is the content that is being taught and which hasn’t changed much since the last 10 to 15 years, and in some ways is lagging to keep pace with the changing time and standards on a wider platform. The course which revolves to a period of about 5 years, starting from the basic concepts and going up to the major skills and nuances of the field is in its own ways very calculated and precisely drafted. However, the level of work and design is often correlated to the level of knowledge they have gained so far from other technical subjects like Building Construction or Building Material Science, which they implicate in the following design. This sometimes results in an incomplete output or a limited one to be precise. And, hence, the student with limited time period cuts corners by copying the designs from apps like Pinterest or Behance and even pay others to do their works, write thesis and prepare renders and models. The situation is such that these services are even advertised on social media. This not only results in ineptitude in terms of practicality but also results in impractical and non-feasible designs to be generated on much larger scale in the field work.

Now the question is, what needs to be done to reform the education system of Architecture and make it as per standard. Ensuring industrial exposure, filtering outdated theory, reinstating institutional infrastructure, focusing on innovation and practicality, and maintaining a standard in faculty and teaching staff could be some of the steps that could help. But, the most important step that is both vital and urgent is to include the dialogues of architectural critics in both institutes and in the profession so as to achieve a level of introspection in every way.

The field of architecture is illuminating and enlightening, it can provide a society with professionals who can create an enchantment to capture history and evoke legacy. It is a path that goes on shaping and moulding everything that it touches. That is what Indian Architecture speaks for. And hence, the need is there to conserve this and evolve with time and keep upgrading. Upgrading and resolving the loopholes, especially in the educational system. For, it is the education that shapes a profession which then shapes the society.

Shubham Kr. Sagar

onlI ne world.

By Y. Parthavi Satya Priya

LIFE BEFORE PANDEMIC

I wouldn’t say life before the pandemic was so beautiful, like all flowers and happiness. But, still, there were things like daily routine, like going to college, being with friends, travelling on a bus to college, and eating outside or having fun outdoors. But there were some things which we never cared or appreciated, something like daily travelling in college bus, watching everybody daily and interacting with them or eating outside food........ these kinds of things which we particularly never appreciate daily.

Life kind of became mechanical as generation was getting developed with every year.......like you know the increase in technology in phones and social media, so the human interaction or talking to an

other human had become less. But due to pandemics,all we were left with was the technology we always wanted.

As we all know, going to college in the morning was so hectic. Now it got way more complicated than we could ever expect, online teaching and all was fine for some time. Still, after that, some time passed, it started to get worse like literally everybody started to go crazy. Basically, for me, it started getting much more irritating because I’m an architecture student, and half of the time, I always keep on working by using software on my laptop, so it’s either working on my computer or sleeping, and there was no in-between.

And that really happened to become my daily routine for one year, like imagine that staying indoors and all you do is online work and sleeping. So I really don’t like the idea of the same daily routine, but I survived that routine for a whole year, which made me realize many things, literally many things.

LIFE DURING PANDEMIC

But that kind of compact mindset, which we all developed in quarantine, was never easy for anyone to adopt or process. This pandemic life started in March2020, when we all shouted ”HAPPY NEW YEAR 2020” and did not expect this kind of outcome......Like every year, we all thought at least this year we all gonna do our best in our life. But the universe had plans for us........It’s already been the first year of pandemic life, and this first year of life felt so long than ever expected.

It taught us many things, like how it feels to spend all your entire time with your family and how you are going to survive this pandemic? How you are gonna only stay indoors? Even to take a good breath, it got complicated. The time got so tricky and low that we even masked ourselves in our own homes. I thought that this was the end of the world and there was no hope.

But things, struggles, and circumstances made us realize many things, like appreciating small things in life, even we started to like something which we

Always hated. But after the one severe quarantine life, we realized that we don’t take everything for granted and just appreciate small things in lift The whole one year of pandemic life has been online. For some time, it was all okay, but after two months, people started going crazy, and that’s when we all realized the value of our “hectic daily routine,” and I, myself, craved for that routine to get back. People were so relaxed at starting quarantine, but when the time passed, they just wanted their usual routine back, which everyone took granted for and even myself.

After the one suffocated year, things started to get back on track. Even though a lot has changed in society, everything has to get back on track like always, and then everyone who lost their loved ones has mourned in peace, missed their loved ones, and close people have united and bonded in peace.

That’s when everyone started to thank everything they had and appreciate them.

Illustration by Preethi B and Rashi

Illustration by Shivam Purohit

Arch Itecture In

M ed IA.

By Arushi Ponnala

Game Of Thrones : An architecturalwonder

Through the production design and art direction of Game of Thrones - one of the most critically acclaimed series ever produced, Deborah Riley and her team has managed to get the practical world that we live in to believe in Magic, Dragons and Undead Creatures. They had spent ten years going around the world, taking inspiration and choosing exotic and dramatically natural locations for the series.

Game of Thrones is adapted and inspired by George R.R. Martin’s saga - A Song of Ice and Fire is a fictional series based on the treacherous battle between seven kingdoms and their thirst for power. Known for its extravagant visual aesthetic, it is evident that colour, texture and pattern were given a lot of importance in the process of the set direction; these factors ended up playing a dominant role in making the sets seem magnificent yet realistic at the same time. The backdrop flows into the story, enhancing the cinematic experience and adding to the narration. Though a huge chunk of filming was shot in studios, many locations are real places open to the public. From intricately detailed castles to majestic pyramids, these locations are spread across the world, in places like Ireland, Iceland, Croatia and Spain; where scenic spots were chosen to shoot this impending drama, making it dauntlessly outstanding. Inspiration was also drawn from real-world, modern references like the buildings that rise from the banks of Ganges in Varanasi. These inspirations roused the idea that the House of Black and White was to be faceless. For the Hall of Faces, the exquisite and delicate stonework of the Ellora Caves was drawn inspiration from. Riley believed that taking references from real-world architecture as a means of defining different locations within the universe of the show made the series more rooted in reality.

The magnum opus epitomizes the perfect blend between the need to focus on the architectural aspects of cinematography and its importance to support the plot.

A letter fro M coronA

to the world

If at all she gets a chance to write one

By D.Harikamanogna

Hey guys!!! How have you been? I know you haven’t been well because of me. But I am not sorry for that. Yes you heard it right, I am neither regretting it nor I am sorry for it. Let me explain myself because I feel, all of you deserve an explanation.I made all of you to shut yourselves up at home not to make you sad for not meeting your friends but to bless you with the time to spend with your parents. Its been quite a long time talking to them and playing with them, right!!

You were told to clean yourselves a little because I have seen you being untidy for a long time and want to change you and I don’t want anybody like me to come and hurt you all over again. So, be clean and safe. You were demanded of not going on rides on your expensive bikes and cars, yes, that’s because of me too. Because I have seen mother earth cry since decades and I want her to heal all by herself. She’s done it , she’s healed and is dancing in joy right now. I did it just for her and I hope you continue to do it After all it’s our mother earth and Mother Nature deserves more than what she’s got. Don’t think I made you bored ,I do follow Instagram and I know that there are a lot of hashtags under my belt .I think I made people realize their inner talents. People have been cooking ,practicing yoga writing poetry ,gardening and what not. But have you ever thought why I did this? I wanted you to realize, how blessed you are to live in this world .I want to make you feel alive again. I know most of you are done being dead for a very long time .I have taught you care ,cleanliness, concern, peace ,responsibility and love .But don’t hate me, please don’t hate me. After all... you and I are the same. You destroy things in thisworld and can be seen, I too destroy things in this world but I can’t be seen .But, what both of us want isto live .Yes it is to live.

You want to live by killing me in you and I want to live by being me in you

How can your urge to live be right and mine be called as a disaster but still that’s okay. Someday, I’m going to leave this world and be gone forever, at least then realize that the most important thing ,you can be happy about today is that YOU ARE ALIVE This is corona ,signing off!!!.

Illustration by Akhil Ponnuru

D LE E BL EP YA PLOY

Illustration by Samhita Shyam

If we look closely at nature, we can see various examples of organisms that can transform themselves. Extensible worms, deployable worms,and wings of insects and some of many examples we can see. We have also designed products that can be altered according to context and space available at that time. The umbrella provides a layer of protection from rain, it can also be transformed to fit inside a bag when not in use. In terms of similar development in an architectural context we can talk about the invention of tents. Tents were initially developed to suit the bands of people who were nomadic. The light materials and the structural integrity it provided helped in easy installing and dismantling of it.

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deployAble structures

By Sravani Saileela

The word deployable means to spread out, arrange or utilise for a specific purpose. Etymologically, it derives from the Latin word “displacer”that means to unfold. Deployable structures boast about their capacity to adapt and transform themselves into various configurations. This allows ease in transportation and dismantling of the structures after their use. It paved way for research in sustainable materials and various structural forms. The interest in these structures and their applications increased a lot in the second half of the 20th century when people started looking at a futuristic approach to design. Their main purpose was to tackle over population and excessive migration by providing structures that can be easily transformed and transported. These structures hold the ability to change according to weather conditions and natural disasters which gives designers more scope to experiment with the structural integrity.

The materials used by early humans for the construction of these huts were mainly animal bones and tree branches. These materials were easily available in any new area they decided to settle at. In later ages the tents served as shelter for army. The materials used for these kinds of tents were leather, ropes and wooden supports. These tents occupied less space and housed more soldiers. History reveals that architects and engineers have constantly sought new and creative structural systems. Many special systems have thus evolved, namely, deployable structures, tensegrity, tensioned membrane and other unconventional systems. Deployable structures find use in terrestrial architecture and outer-space applications. Disaster relief and other emergency shelters need minimal storage space and rapid assembly on site. Temporary events such as market spaces and Worlds’ Fairs have similar requirements. Space explorations require compact and rapidly deployable assemblies,these include solar arrays, antennas, reflectors, among others. Beyond these applications, there is also excitement and inspiration that deployable geometries offer to artists, industrial designers, mathematicians, and biologists. Building structures are conventionally designed to have a long life span. Structural designers are trained to think about design of s stable structures. Materials and systems mostly have been discovered to support that sentiment. There is, however, an advantage in introducing measured instability in structures. The result is a whole new world of transformable structures whose effectiveness and survival may depend on their adaptability to external conditions. The architecture of future is one that can respond and adapt.

A building with such attributes would serve human needs better. They also represent a dynamism and excitement that architecture constantly seeks. The field of deployable structures has been evolutionary and progress in realizing built forms has been relatively slow. It also remarked that acceptance of kinetic architecture would force substantive changes to traditional practices of which will now need to be recognized as a continuous and evolving process that would not stop when the building is erected. The pandemic has forced people to change and rethink the ways of traditional construction.Deployment is the transformation of a structure from a compact closed configuration to a relatively large open configuration. The design of deployable structures requires solving three problems,namely: geometrical, mechanical, and structural. The goals are, to develop maximum deployable and foldable structures; To design connections that provide the required movements of members while keeping them together; and to create strong and stiff structures under applied loading. This should be followed by a reliability analysis to ensure that structures would deploy and fold without collision of members. These members could be used as vaccination camps or also serve as temporary hospital spaces. Since the biggest challenge is to maintain distance and sanitize everything , it would be easier to use a structure that can transform itself in way its easier to sanitize.

AdAptIve reuse

By Sravani Saileela

As the term suggests Adaptive reuse is a branch in Architecture that deals with the repurposing or remodelling of an existing built form in a way its adaptable to current times and can be reused by the public. This allows us to preserve our heritage and culture and helps the future generations find the relevance of these structures. These days the working with existing buildings and repairing them has become a creative and new fascination for architects.Remodelling of an existing structure comes with its own set of challenges. It initially started off as a strategy to conserve the heritage structures.

Repurposing it in a way it serves the function in relation with the current. context is a recent development. The idea of making these alterations was not a very new one. For example, the churches of the Renaissance era were used as military centres when the French took over them. Though the idea of it was introduced theoretically when Eugène Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc (1814–1879) recognized adaptive reuse to preserve historic monuments. He argued that “the best way to preserve a building is to find a use for it, and then to satisfy so well the needs dictated by that use that there will never be any further need to make any further changes in the building”. These theories were strongly objected by William Morris who believed that it is “impossible, as impossible as to raise the dead, to restore anything that has ever been great or beautiful in architecture” and instead of restoration he favoured regular care and maintenance to ensure the preservation of this historic building.

Although all typologies of built structures are eligible for such a transformation, this approach is most applied to historic spacesAlthough all typologies of built structures are eligible for such a transformation, this approach is most applied to historic spaces that are valuable to their community. People belonging to a certain community tend to get attached to these spaces and restore them for generations together. For example, In India most temples existed not only as a religious space but also a space for education, entertainment and culture.

Though the activities of the spaces changed overtime. The community which primarily consists of the ones who are descendants of the people who lived there before are continuing to preserve these places. The question of relevance of the space in today’s context keeps arising. Therefore, adaptive reuse not only preserves the cultural aspects of a building but also benefits the current context, environment, and the economy. Reusing any space this way consumes lesser resources and results in an overall reduced life cycle environmental impact. The pandemic has opened our eyes to various topics to explore. The ideology of Adaptive reuse work well during this time. The constructions costs are reduced, it requires lesser labour as compare to the number required to construct a building from scratch. It has also brought attention to a lot of heritage spaces that were illegally being taken advantage of the people in the area and do not recognize its significance.

The oldest Alembic Industrial building in Vadodara, now almost 113 years old was renovated in 2018 by Karan Grover and Associates. Originally developed to manufacture penicillin, this landmark is now a museum with paces dedicated to art studios,exhibitions, and display. While several alterations have been done to this industrial building, the utmost care has been taken to preserve its true spirit. The original materials, physical quality of spaces, and the riveted trusses in the roof were not altered significantly to keep intact the conventional physical appearance of the industrial building. Being able to preserve the original aesthetic while giving the space a completely new definition without losing its previous charm is the main intention of this typology of design.

Illustration by Akhil Ponnuru

Illustration by Samhita Shyam

escApI sM

By Shruthakeerti Karthikeyan

William Styron authored a short story collection in 1995 called ‘ATidewater Morning’ in which he wrote “We each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.” Thoughthe character in the book was talking literally to gain an advantage on his captors, there is truth to that statement in mundanities of life as well. We all seek to run away from what we cannot stand to deal with any more and we do it through means that suits us best. Escapism is not just a mere coping mechanism or a diversion though. Escapism is a way of us to think of an ideal world the snippets of which we can then use to make the world a little closer to the fantasy we dream of existing. Everyone has something that they use to escape from the harsh trials of realitymost common of them being art, media, music, nature. Basically, anything that can create an illusionwhere you don’t have to be you works. Architecture is a very weighty word for it connect as escapism

in our brain though, which is funny considering all other mediums use world building to create a comforting illusion. Architecture may not be the first thing in anyone’s mind when they think about escapism. But architecture was a result of us wanting to take physical control over a world that was unpredictable and cruel. What is that if not ultimate escapism? It has become such an intrinsic part of our life to a point that we don’t view it for the level of control it provides us. Then it is simply up to us to manipulate the environment and create our fantasies once again.In fact, examples of it can be seen around us with sites we visit that we make an event or a weekend out of. The Wizarding World of Harry Potter is an escapist fantasy made into reality for all those who wanted to be witches and wizards realised through architecture. Similarly, Disney world is a constructed fiction which creates an immersive escapist experience.Outside of theme parks, nature is being transported indoors too with artificial beaches, rainforests and waterfalls flourishing due to engineering feats.

The Rosemont hotel and residences are part of a two-tower development being constructed by ZAS Group in Dubai which in addition to a rainforest also has anight club, retail spaces, a shisha café and other luxury spaces.That is not where it ends. With explorations in virtual reality and the use of VR technology becoming common place in architecture, sky is the limit for what you can imagine and experience.

Architects are going beyond just allowing their clients to experience spaces though. Research is being conducted for VR to start predicting human behaviours within a given space as well. This could revolutionise the way we think about design.There is no real objection to escapism, except that a lot of escapism,especially that we consider fiction is just a deeper thought into branches of existence near or far. It is hope for a tomorrow that is more bearable. It is a longing for a past that we hope to be able to visit. It is an alternate reality where we get to disconnect from responsibilities for a while. Most of all, escapism is hope that maybe one day we won’t have anything we would need to escape from and architecture will be a part of it even if you are not actively putting in the forefront of the fantasy.

new.

By B.Sai Shanmukh

Every place has a story for it and in it. For ages, the places we live have been changed and evolved gradually with different factors and reasons. Not just people, but even a habitat is also one of the storytellers ever since their existence. Beginning with the caves, the story deals with the early humans and their tough survival.

Next comes the age of kingdoms, where there used to be a contrast of elements- like the castles on one side and the katcha houses on the other. Both of them hold a different story. The royal families living in that multi-storied castle have all the amenities and a luxurious life. They can see the people living around them in houses, within poverty, surviving within a small space with just four walls, thinking about their life after the sunrise. I call it land with two stories.

In the world of modernization, the role of buildings have increased widely. As a result, every action has a set of places for it- family, public, entertainment, privacy, education, attractions, and many.

Now, the world needs to carry more people, and they need to rest under shades. Some live in huts, tiny houses, apartments, bungalows, etc. Every place has things to see, problems to face, happiness, a joy to laugh about, etc. This differs from the economic status and the place they feel. The person who lives in a hut thinks of how to earn money and fill his needs the next day in that tiny place. Meanwhile, as of the people living in an apartment, every individual has a story to express changing with age.

A kid thinks of his homework when he needs to submit it the next day, and how to play with his friends living in the other black right now. When it comes to parents, they think about how to repay the loans, fees to pay, and what to cook. They think about their jobs, and about how quickly they need to start from the top floor to reach the ground floor and reach their workplace. The old ones complain about the lift that’s not working. The bachelors think of their lives and money and how fast they can get to a better place from here. The elderly people feel about their lives they lived up until this moment, counting the days, and reminiscing the happy and sad memories. They think about things to complete before the natural sleep, about their childhood, the mud house and the open-top roofs. The owner thinks about how to pack in more people and earn a lot more money in that tiny space he got.

The rich people living in their luxury places, apartments and islands think about money, facing problems of their own, and brainstorming about how to spend their money.

Be it any person, they need shelter above their head, irrespective of their altitude and attitude. They look through different windows from different heights and see the same world. This feels like ‘DIFFERENT STORIES IN THE SAME STORYBOOK,’ some read, some unread, some seen, some hidden, some free, some restricted, some loud and some unspoken.

The stories of storeys will be increasing with the increase of buildings and people. They pile up with the history of how people are sheltered under different structures, from apes to humans, from caves to buildings. With the ticking of the clock, with laying of brick, with the foundation laid, with slab cast, with paint drops splattered, with tile laid and the shades will be rising with all these.

Acknowledgement

The IndianArch team would like to extend our sincere gratitude to the following people who made this edition into a reality:

The Interviewees:

Ar. Reza Kabul sir

Ar. Ashutosh Jha

Ar. Rishabh Wadhwa

Ar. Harshit Daga

Ar. Malaksingh sir

Ar. Amit Pasricha

Ar. Niharika

Ar. Philipp Meuser

Ar. Niels Schoenfelder

The Writers and editors:

Harish

Vajjrashri.A

Akshada Choudhary

Sania Meraj

Shubham Kr. Sagar

Jagruti Kasle

Shruti Kuwar

Arushi Ponnala

B.Sai Shanmukh

D.HARIKAMANOGNA

Y. Parthavi Satya Priya

Sravani Saileela

Shruthakeerti Karthikeyan

The Illustrators and photographers:

Ch. Naveen

Hardik Shirolkar

Lakshmi A

Vaishnavi Jadhav

Prerana Paralikar

Michelle mariam

Krishti khandelwal

Lignesh JY

Saahithi

Rajath A

Tanya Avhad

Abbas

Niharika S

Image creditswww.architectrezakabul.com www.kaarwan.com www.youtube.com/blessedarch diginomica.com miro.medium.com public-media.interaction-design.org instagram.com/indialostandfound instagram.com/the_iffy_explorer inscribingarchitecture.com images.squarespace-cdn.com

We would also like to thank all the people who extended their support in making this magazine a success.

Until next time! Much love, Team IA.

WWW.NASAINDIA.CO