Good Endings and Better Beginnings

I wanted to start this blog without having to say what a year 2018 has been and how quickly it has come to an end. But the kind of year its been for Sandarbh, I will have to start with those exact same words!

What a year 2018 has been!! 

So much excitement! Everything from interesting new projects and innovative design solutions to solving glitches and running against timelines. 

Our 3 Musketeers held the fortress strong. Making sure that work culture and processes ran seamlessly, rallying Sai and I when we needed it and making sure that all of us had enough fun and laughter as we went along. 

Rambo decided to take his sabbatical finally and threw us all a fantastic farewell party! So glad though that you have decided to be a part of Sandarbh albeit remotely!

We've had a pretty large iteration this year. Lots having to leave and lots of new faces. A total of more than 800 applications for internship and at least 300 from architects looking to join us! We are overwhelmed! We've had to streamline our intake process just to accommodate the sheer numbers. Keep them coming though, we always have place for awesome, talented professionals! 

Our clients have been fantastic this year. Working with us to give them the best and being amazingly understanding and patient through the process. Will miss working with so many of you and looking forward to continuing into the new year with some of you. Thank you all for being there and trusting us as you do! 

The projects! What fun we have had in the studio debating about and coming up with solutions for projects as varied as homes in hill stations and multi dwelling units to designing kennels for 20 doggies in a farm and units to be used as hostels! We're doing projects in Pune, Trivandrum, Hyderabad and Thallasery apart from the ones in Bangalore. Its been a year of interesting detailing and brain storming sessions on structure and form. Residences, schools, store interiors, farm houses, hostels and renovations - We're as eager and enthusiastic as ever to get more diverse and unique projects! 

This year also saw us take in more interns than we usually do. Its been a fantastic decisions! Super charged, super-multi talented and super enthusiastic a bunch, they have all helped recharge and bring in a fabulous vibe and renewed energy in the studio. Miss all of you who have  gone back and looking forward to this atmosphere continuing .... 

Finally to all our people behind the scenes. Our team who makes all these designs come alive on site. They've been with us for years not and are possibly mini architects themselves! Seen us through thick and thin and stuck by. Thank you all! 

A loooong post. But I was sitting and reminiscing about how 2018 has flown by and could not help but be overwhelmed with gratitude! 

Here's to a whole new year of designing and executing, new friendships and stories, lots of ideas, innovations and most importantly, here's to more laughter, happiness and strength to the bond we all share .... 

I know it will be a super 2019!

Here's to you.

If I started to give you anecdotes about the way technology has handicapped us every single day, I probably would have enough content for the rest of the year.

But alas! That is not how this project works.

I am pretty sure that over the course of over 300 blogs, it would have come up quite a few times that generating a blog every single day is not easy. What ends up happening, more often than not, is that the writer of the blogs goes around asking everyone in office if they have any ideas or suggestions and will most definitely receive variations of the same threat:
"I swear, if you ask me this question one more time..!"

Alas, desperate times call for desperate measures and those are exactly what these incessant questions count as. But some times, these encounters can give rise to some pretty interesting, amusing or even perfectly mundane blogs.

I would've never thought that I'd ever write about Bougainvillea or Cab rides or even, more recently, scrubbing the floors. So here's a shout out to the crazy stories each member of this office comes up with.

And here's to you looking forward to the answers that come because we keep bugging others with the same question,
Always.

Namitha.

Immobile.

The initial plan today was to write about how I found it really amusing that the capacity of a home safe is measured in litres. But then I realised that it was merely because cubic metres are often expressed as litres and it ruined the whole fancy and imaginative explanation I was concocting in my mind.

So then, I was sitting here, out of ideas when it struck me that I should write about the link between mobile technology and the site life merely because of how weird it felt when my phone was dead the entire day.

First things first, nothing happens without a whatsapp group. So, obviously, the multiple office groups need to be checked various times during the day for everything from communication between the site and the office to material procurement or even deliberation on drawings. If your whatsapp is off, chances are that you have no idea what the others are up to.

Next, the probability of you carrying camera equipment when you’re out of office, either on site or in the workshop, are particularly low so, obviously, collection of photographic evidence pertaining to work, site conditions and even selected fittings and fixtures (when you’re shopping with the clients) is out of question.

Thirdly, god forbid you do not get an auto or a bus, there is no way you or anyone else can get you back to office by booking a vehicle.

All these, of course, are apart from the fact that you cannot call or message or even research something if the client or workers ask you for input on something you don’t have a great grip on.

I was thanking my stars that I was with Leena and didn’t really need to use the phone but that isn’t the point. The point is that we are all so dependent on our mobiles that even 8 hours of work without them seems like a long shot.

But, here’s to my phone finally having enough charge for me to use the hotspot to upload this blog.

Adios,
Namitha.

Some Wednesdays, We Scrub the Floors.

I was doing my regular mind mapping, idea hunting exercise to find quality content for the blog and as fate would have it, it came in the form of Rithik and Arjun walking into the garage and telling me about the start of their day. It turns out that they began their lazy morning with an activity that shouldn’t really be surprising, considering that today is the day after Christmas. But of course, it needs to be noted that what led to this said activity had nothing to do with Christmas.

It turns out that some of the previous work that had happened on site had left the beautiful ceramic floor tiles used in the house pretty dirty. On noticing that, along with a lack of workers on site early in the morning, someone decided to take things into their own hands and this is exactly why, when our boys turned up on site, they were met with the image of a man, who on close inspection, turned out to be the owner, scrubbing the bathroom floors with all his might. 

Now, imagine this situation:

You turn up on site because you’re building someone’s house and you see the said someone going full force and cleaning. What do you do?

Let’s be honest, you don’t really have a choice. You discuss what other work needs to be done and start scrubbing the floors with him. And if you’re lucky, as these guys seem to have been, there will soon be pumped up music and a constant banter filling the air as other people slowly join you and start, well, scrubbing the rest of the areas.

I couldn’t help but laugh at the image of all of these guys calling dibs on different spots and cleaning till the tiles shined.

I guess if any of us at office ever need to do some floor cleaning, we now know who the experts are!

See you tomorrow!
Namitha

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.

Elitism and Eclecticism

The two words written in the title mean things that are far from each other. The former talks about exclusivity bordering on snobbery and the latter talks about diversity and heterogeneity. But the funny thing about architecture is that it can be expressed through either of the extremes- sometimes even both.

As designers, it isn’t uncommon for people to become a little haughty and believe that their aesthetic is the best and it is equally common to experiment so much that the building looks like a mash up of too many things that you, as an individual, wouldn’t probably put together. But that is the beauty of a creative field, isn’t it? Each person seems to have a different perception of what works and what doesn’t; this idea can vary by a few degrees or by miles and this also makes it the most frustrating part of this creative field: There is no pleasing everyone. And sometimes, there is no pleasing anyone (including yourself).

This is one thing I’ve realised we all struggle with. The discussions in office regarding everything starting from the placement on one tiny half wall to the grey lines on a white marble can get incredibly interesting and sometimes, even exhausting. But that is what makes brainstorming among a group of ‘creative’ people so interesting, especially if you’re someone like me who is inclined towards conversations, especially ones that have some heat to it.

This, for me, is one of the reasons the 3 weeks in office seem to have gone so fast.

Hope to see you tomorrow,
Namitha.

Getting organised

From the moment I mentioned Architecture's interdisciplinary nature in my previous blog "Are we there yet?" , I've been trying to broaden my sense of understanding of this statement. Hoping to be bedazzled by what more I can find out.
In the past couple of days, I found out how principles of project management itself is an integral part of running the office processes in a very systematic method.

I was amazed how most things could get organised by making this kind of a planning as a second nature thought process. Be it in effectively living lives to our most efficient self or be it carrying out processes in the office. Things fall into place once we channel our efforts into getting organized.

I've always heard -  start from the bigger task and then break the problems down into smaller fragments.
Today's activity took it to a whole new level. Understanding yesterday's principles in a practical affair was what would really shackle our understanding and habits to think in a level that's more calculative - channeled towards better efficiency.
Discussion with Sai painted a broader picture about these concepts in my head.
I'm glad to have been in the right place at the right time to be  witness to this discussion. I hope that the implications of these processes help me shape a mindset that provides an edge while managing site in the immediate time span and achieve an overall sense of efficiency and management in a more larger time frame.
Exciting times ahead!