Keeping It Short.

What do I write in the blogs? When do I write the blogs?

These two questions have been a part of the daily internal dialogues running in my mind right from the time I joined the firm. The only difference between then and now is that the question of ‘when’ has taken precedence over ‘what’.

There seems to be a constantly growing list of interesting conversations that occur in office that could be converted into quality content for the blog but there also seems to be an increasingly diminishing ability to maintain focus beyond the time when assigned work gets completed. Is it the stress of the changes that we’re making or the fact that gradually, everyone is becoming more accountable and responsive w.r.t the roles they play in the office, I’m not sure yet. Either way, as I’ve mentioned time and again, the general level of productivity at the end of the day seems higher than it used to be.

As with everything else, I hope time will allow us to find our groove and get back to having time for things beyond designated tasks, activities and deadlines. 

Keeping things short for probably the first time,
Namitha.

Baby Steps.

The office is alive.

That’s the only way to describe the past few days. After discussions upon discussion and talks upon talks, it finally feels like we’re going somewhere with our work.

Don’t get me wrong. We never stopped working, but we’ve only started working, very recently, with gusto. Almost all the deliberations we have nowadays are based on one word: consequence.

You’d think that there is only so much you can talk about consequences but you’d be sadly mistaken. Spend one day in our office and you’ll see various reasons to identify and link activities with corresponding consequences- not just in terms of immediate good or bad but also in terms of the manifold systems that revolve around that one word.

Another thing we’ve been touching upon is the fact that our organisation doesn’t end at the rung of interns or at the rung of people who supervise the site. Rather, our office and all that it stands for and believes in needs to reach the level of workers who ensure that all the office work is translated into something tangible.

These are, obviously, not ideas, ideals or concepts that can be introduced and implemented in one day and slowly, but surely, there is a shift in the way we view our work and as of now, the shift is one that moves us towards a better version of what we currently are.

As always,
I’ll keep you updated about the implications of these baby steps.

So long,
Namitha.

Never Ending Questions.

Somewhere in the third week of working here, I started typing questions that I needed to figure out the answers to. These could be anything- from ‘what on earth is masala in the context of site work?’ and ‘what should I write in the blog today?’ to ‘does this drawing have to be completed first or that one?’ or even ‘where do I add this in the grand scheme of pending work?’

Initially, I thought that this would just end up becoming one of those random documents scattered in my drive that contain bits and pieces of text that I will accidentally stumble across a few weeks from then. How wrong I was.

Every time one question gets answered, it seems like two more pop up- making it impossible for me to stay on top of it, let alone forget about it. And this is why soon enough, this note got the title- "never ending questions".

You'd think that this random snippet from my life has not a lot to do with office but that's not true. It is testimony to the fact that if you just look around this chaos that is slowly (very slowly) starting to get sorted out, you'll always find something new to do or figure out. It is also an indication of the way we work, the hands on experience of being thrown into the deep end and the type of environment we work in where questions are encouraged and answers don't always need to be found on Google.

I think it'd be quite interesting to see how each of the new people react to this space. Maybe, soon enough, I'll write about their experiences.

Hope you stick around!

Namitha.

Pushing the Envelope

It has been a month!

Wait.
It has only been a month?!

This first month at Sandarbh has been quite something. But it also feels like a blur. We’ve had good days and bad days and days that are so mentally exhausting that you don’t know whether it’s good or bad.

We’ve had sites that have flourished and sites where we couldn’t go the extra mile; work that got completed and files and lists that kept piling up; times where everyone was in sync and times where you didn’t even know what the person next to you was doing. But most importantly, we had people who kept pushing forward, with Sai at the helm of this movement.

As I said earlier, this month has been a month of momentum building- towards achieving even higher quality in terms of work, an even more conducive work environment and an even more holistic work life than we have. This is an ongoing journey where everyone is starting to make conscious efforts to reach the same the goal. A goal that we will achieve and hopefully even push the envelope on this year. 

In the previous blog Leena spoke about what an incredible ride 2018 has been for Sandarbh and I’m writing in hope that 2019 will be even better.

Have a great year ahead!
Namitha.

Are we there yet?

We talked too long to ourselves amongst ourselves while the majority stopped listening and progressed further. 

Architecture, Buildings - to me, seem tired. We've talked about them so much that we have nothing to emphasise on anymore. Why don't we talk about a painting, direction styles in various movies, graphics or literally anything else. 

Have we glorified Architecture to a point where we are driven by Intellectual, academic and conceptual theories? 

Maybe the task of making Architecture more accessible can be achieved not only by opening itself to other disciplines but also to itself and its end users. The more the people around you start to think about the place they inhabit, the better they'll care about Architecture. 

With the current crop, There's a fresh outlook for innate collaboration with various disciplinaries. Our sustenance is formed by having an extroverted approach to experts in various fields; learning and integrating their processes and workflow to express the best aspects of the collaboration.  

Since Architecture has sprung beyond its disciplinary boundaries, it opens up the possibility of practicing or processing in a way that does not depend on the articulate architectural way. 

Addressing reality and fighting for issues like Global warming, waste, urbanisation, overpopulation to name a few, would call for the Architects of the future to the fore. This is essentially the need of the century. Architecture and Architects are going to be driven by social issues which might shape the world for a better place than what it is today. 

They may be hypotheticals, but they pose a question on how to expand and think Architecture.

-Utsav Shah