Monday Blues.

Today didn’t feel like a Monday.

There was no lazing around in the morning; no relaxed tea break to start the week off on the right foot and certainly no positive pep talk that makes you feel like the sun is shining on your entire life.

Instead, today began with the kind of personalized bashing that only comes when you work in an environment as familial as ours. But the good side to a hand stitched pointing out of errors is that it often comes with a side of motivation; and as we all know, motivation is linked with productivity.

However, productivity has been an elusive friend to me because it seems like a lot of effort goes into office everyday but it amounts to nothing much, or even worse, the opposite of what was supposed to be done. And yet, as I mentioned in my very first blog, your day can flip from bad to good in a second and while it certainly took more time than that, it did get better.

Word processors are my friends and so are excel sheets. Combine those two with visits to showrooms and I’m like a kid with candy.

The rest of the day went in jotting down which of the shiny fittings would go into which bathroom and drawing up lists of work that need to be done these coming few days. So in a way, today was a perfect blend of indoor and outdoor time and that in itself is enough to balance everything else out.

Add to all this, the fact that tomorrow is Christmas, and quite frankly, you can’t be in a dismal mood. Even if you don’t celebrate it, no one can stay sad about a mid-week holiday.

Don’t you worry though,
I’ll write to you tomorrow, in the midst of an assumingly scrumptious cake.

So long,
Namitha.

The Architect or the Client?

As an architect, sometimes a part of our job includes convincing clients about changing decisions for designs we think works better for their home. While we go by our client's opinions most of the time, there are times when we feel strongly about a few decisions.
"Trust me when I tell you this", I have heard Sai suggest a few clients. When listening to this, I totally understand why Sai might be saying it. Sometimes as architects, we understand the usability of the spaces probably better than the client.

But what happens when you are in a scenario when you are both the architect and the client?

Recently, my parents decided to give Sandarbh the project of renovating my ancestral house. I was super excited about this .'How awesome would that be', I thought. I would get a chance to be a part of every design process. From each tile to every partition, my input would be included for every part of the house. How often would I get the chance to redesign the house my ancestors built and lived in? It was a great privilege. I was sure I was more the architect than the client for this one. We were going to do a great job on this. 

A few weeks into the design process and I wasn't sure about this anymore. As Meghna began to design the first cut of the house, I began to feel myself being uncomfortable. 'How can she shift that space? That's the space where my grandma spent her mornings. That along with a hundred other similar questions in my head wouldn't let myself willingly accept any changes bought to the house.

 'So what if the spaces are smaller?', I would think.  It's worked well all this while.

It was a constant war between the architect and the client inside me.

As this project moves forward, the experience of being the client working in the architect's office is probably going to change the way I look at clients who come to our office asking us to redesign their home. I realize that architecture is way more than a couple of walls enclosing a space. It's about feelings, about emotions and about the way people remember their fondest memories. 

Then and Now

As you join architecture school to train to become an architect, there are a lot of concepts that the professors teaching Design would teach you. They tell you that perfection is key, that one section you are doing needs to be the perfect section. The plan you draw needs to be the best plan you ever draw. 

So we would learn to skip the submissions, find our ways around deadlines and beg professors to extend dates. 

"If you were an architect and your client sees this drawing, what would they think?", they would ask.

And therefore, we picture the client, strict and serious, with a basic need for perfection.

Cut to today's scenario, when a meeting was scheduled at 5 pm, for us to showcase our best designing skills to a client with a great project we were really interested in. As the clocked ticked moving towards 5pm, I found myself freaking out - where were the perfect plans and sections? What are we supposed to show him? At college, I would have began to think of excuses, of headaches that don't exist, of stomach upsets that appeared out of nowhere, of bad food could have had the previous night.

An hour into the meeting, after we discuss about ideas, concepts and images that match the client's and our Vision, we say, "so that gives us an idea about how to proceed" and pack our bags and leave a client, who definitely didn't get mind blowing plans, but extremely happy about the meeting.

And that, led to another learning - perfection doesn't matter as much as commitment does. It didn't matter if we had an amazing plan or not, it didn't matter if the work was complete or not - it mattered that we care.

Like Sai keeps telling me, half the job is done, when you just show up!!

So the unlearning continues at Sandarbh.