Saturday, July 01, 2006

Faculties of Architecture

The human faculties that an architect absolutely cannot do without:

Hands - The most important. Needed to sketch his ideas, then translate them to working drawings. What used to be pencil, pen and paper is now keyboard, mouse and screen.

Vision - Both in terms of thinking and eyesight. Eyes to perceive a space, to interpret already built works, and the thought to imagine and conceive new spaces, as well as materials.

Touch - To experience texture, as this is the most immediate and physical realisation of a built work. To compare raw concrete and smooth marble, to know the different levels of tactility between materials.

Memory - To remember mistakes, to remember what others did wrong, what can be improved. Life can't move forward if one does not possess knowledge of the past.

The Peripheral Senses - useful but not crucial to the realisation of buildings.

Smell - Hardly used in the enjoyment of a built space. Maybe the oxygen of greenery can be enjoyed. But most often, greenery is appreciated for its visually pleasing qualities and ability to 'soften' a building. And other times, if you can smell a building, it'll most probably be toxic.

Hearing - Perhaps to hear how noise penetrates a building, how a concert hall absorbs unwanted echoes, etc...

Taste - No one's going to lick a building.


Warning: whiney cliched words ahead.

Hai. How time flies. Just a year back, I was a freshman in a school completely different from what I have been used to. No more uniforms, hardly the same rules. The choice so far has been without regret. Instead of only studying the achievements of others, I've learnt to produce works of my own, because that's what design is all about. There's no way around this fact: once you have something which is a direct product of you, you automatically become attached to it, work hard on it, and would rise to defend it, just like the way a mother would protect her child in an inferno.

True, these years only yield a diploma, and I wish so much it were a degree. The journey's far from over, as my interest and passion for the true realisation of habitats for humanity grows. I'd chase down this dream, no matter how far away from me it may run. The only things concrete about my life so far are plans for the future, and surely some religious folks would have something to say about this sentence.

I'd fly away, to somewhere I've never been, plant a seed and let the roots grow. The world's a big place, but it's becoming smaller every day. What's the use of staying on an island? There's already enough people here to take care of it. Build for the world, I say, from the rich to the poor, build for them, put a roof over their heads, give them the framework on which they can splash the colour of life across. Don't be shoddy in deed, no matter what. A line in a drawing is as thin as a sheet paper, mechanically useless, two dimensional, almost purely decorative. But once you take the time to accompany it with another line, it becomes a wall, one that can shield from rain, hail, snow, sunlight, or bullets. And when that wall is joined with another, and another, and another, it becomes a room, one that can hold a family for decades.

So build for the world. Use what God gave you. Create.

An SP Archi graduate dedicated to classmates on national radio, "Build on, my friends."

And that's what life means to me.

jOhn thought at 10:30 PM