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.

Non-Christmas Christmas Hullabaloo

After a month of celebrations, January is usually considered to be a downer of a month; what with the entire year ahead of you (am I the only one who feels better towards the end of the year?) and almost no grand festivals in the near future.  However, today was a day everyone in office was excited about. Turns out that between the public holidays and breaks taken by people in the office, we’d ended up never having the pre-christmas gift exchange last year and obviously, playing Christmas santa is an activity that cannot be ignored.

After 2 date changes and a lot of hullabaloo, we finally celebrated Christmas in office today and when I say celebrate, I mean the entire shindig with a make-do Christmas tree, borrowed lights, Christmas songs on the speaker and a bucket of gifts.

Now I expected us to start playing the game towards the end of the day because I really didn’t have much faith in the probability of anyone getting back into the groove of working afterwards. However, I was perfectly pleasantly surprised when (surprise!) it took everyone about 15 minutes to switch gears and go back to whatever was on the agenda  for the day and all this…wait for it..without any cribbing or whining!

I don’t want to believe it but it turns out that all of us, actually enjoy working! That, I feel, is quite a revelation (at least for me) and a happy one, at that.

Hoping to maintaining this positivity throughout the year!

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.

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.

Guess-Break-Validate.

It has been a heavy few days at Sandarbh. There have been lengthy discussions about everything from human resource management to project management systems that can make your head go for a toss. 

Dead in the middle of this chaos of information is each of us is trying to wrap our heads around the volume of content that has been handed to us on a platter formed by years of experience.

Like everything else in life, this too has two sides: One being the cliché that you can learn from other peoples’ mistakes and the other being the fact that there is no way to guarantee that you won’t make the same mistake, unless you’ve made it once. But the funny part isn’t the possibility of making a mistake while knowing that it is one; it is that you won’t even realize that it is the same error someone else made, just in a different context.

But that isn’t what this blog is about.

This is about the things that struck me most in the entire (almost) 2 day long conversation: My favourite one being concept of breaking things down. The idea of taking something and deconstructing it is so simple in theory that we often forget how detailed everything in life can be.

Next in line is guessing and validating. Much like academic research where you start with a hypothesis and do various experiments to either affirm or negate your theory; research and small, harmless experiments on humans can be quite eye opening, especially if you are your own test subject.

And the third most interesting thing to me, was what was happening in front of my eyes- a scene where 10-15 people were huddled around one desk, listening with rapt attention for hours. The reason this is so interesting to me is because it perfectly combines the aforementioned 2 ideas in two very different ways:

1.      The first perspective is one where Sai guessed that we would benefit from such an all-encompassing talk, broke things down to make it easier for us to digest, watched us gobble up all this information and that, in turn, validated his assumption.

2.      The second perspective is one where we guessed that what Sai had to say would help us, broke the information down in our head to digest it, and today, when we tried to work using the principles discussed, found that our initial guess was validated.

Of course, realizing that there is probably a more efficient way to work might look like a win-win situation; but it rarely is. What it means, then, is that there is a lot of unlearning to do, before you reach your optimal efficiency. But that is a conversation for another day.

So long,
Namitha.

Rendezvous with the Bougainvillea

Lunch is a relatively grand affair at Sandarbh. Most of us usually go together to eat at one of the two places that are at a walking distance from office. But was it the workload, the boredom of eating from the same old places or just plain laziness that prompted us to order food a couple of times consecutively last week, I don’t know. Whatever it was, it is safe to say that when a couple of us walked to our old hangout today, we couldn’t help but feel sluggishly full and contemplative about the choice of walking on the way back.

But alas! Something good did come out of it. We realized that we all shared an almost comedic connection to the words ‘Bougainvillea’ and ‘Rendezvous’. Now that you’ve  heard the  words, I’m pretty sure you’ve guessed what I’m talking about. But in case you were a prodigy who dealt with complicated spellings right from a young age and have no idea; I’m talking about this middle school phenomenon called ‘Spelling Bee’ where everyone received, memorized and then showcased their ability to spell out a never ending list of words that you honestly couldn’t expect a 10 year old to have even heard- let alone phoneticize.

Be it stuttering on stage, stumbling with the pronunciation or even acing the contest, the possibility of finding two words that people from different parts of the country share a connection to; among the million that make up our vocabulary seems pretty astounding to me.

Here’s to finding more and more nostalgic things in common with people I barely even knew 2 weeks ago,
Namitha.

Stringing Words

Writing on a daily basis is quite the challenge.

On a regular day, I’d have excitedly chirped about the exhaustive discussion that we had today about various socio-political scenarios that seem to be unfurling around us; or about the good ol’ throwback songs that were being played in the garage that instantly took me back to impromptu jam sessions at home; or about the slightly chaotic organisation of our files that can make it quite difficult for a new person to even begin to figure out where what goes; but I can’t seem to.

It would be unfair of me to turn this into a personal blog or even to post something I’m discontented with (as I did yesterday). So here I am, signing off hoping that tomorrow comes with a fresh perspective, either mine or someone else’, and  a string of words perfect for framing the predictably unpredictable every day.

Namitha.

Tucked into the Warmth of this World.

If you saw a building being torn down on your way to office, you probably wouldn’t turn around for a second glance; but even the thought of your home being damaged a little would definitely wrench your gut.

Deny it as we might, the architecture around us seems to have 

the power to evoke emotions we often don’t even know exist within us. One could say the same thing about travel and the proof of this lies in the fact that we tend to bring back pieces of memorabilia from each holiday we take.

The feeling of your eye randomly being held captive by something that reminds you of a distant memory is quite indescribable. But the joy of moulding your home around everything that you have seen, loved and collected over the years would feel like snuggling into the warmth of a comfortable blanket.

One tiny part of this nostalgia is what I experienced when I walked into one of our sites.

The house that has been designed capitalising on the beauty of patterned tiles and upscaled wooden frames that have been strategically placed on walls and floors to offset grey and white backdrops. These plain colours come with the opportunity to add a trace of brighter shades that heighten the brilliance of the tessellations used. And let me not forget the strikingly blue doors with a hint of stained glass that frame the greenery around the house beautifully.

While I was there for barely an hour, I couldn’t help but smile at the coloured glass lights that reminded me of Turkey, the blue tiles that seem to take you to Morocco, the light switches that I vaguely remember from a time my grandmother described in her stories and the grey, textured walls that speak of a time so contemporary yet timeless that it acts as a perfect adhesive to hold all these elements of striking individual beauty together.

I may be biased towards things that help me travel without moving but why would anyone count that as a bad thing.
Right?

Looking forward to write about many such brilliant projects,
Namitha.

Iron Trails

Space planning in an ordered sense is core to the world of architecture.

As much as architecture attempts to orchestrate our perceptions of scale and proportion and expose our senses to tangible experiences, a film of safety from various external agencies that resides within the realm connecting functionality and necessity cannot be ignored.

One would think that elements such as grills would be easy to design but even the most seemingly mundane components can be a result of complex processes. In function, grills form the layer that screens the outdoor clutter from getting inside. So isn’t it obvious that our grill designs will vary as their locations do. Safe to say, these small but essential parts of the building are formed at the confluence of a rational sense of design and visual quality.

Our journey of piecing the puzzle together starts at the workshop with the assembly of various iron sections to birth frames that then host a series of thinner rods placed into holes that are punched or drilled in accordance to the design.

Once the frame is welded, punctures of the required diameter are created to allow thinner rods to easily slide in and be welded. This forms the inner core of the grill which is then transported to the site. Here, a recreation of the process of punching holes into the external frame and welding rods to hold the core is done to hold the design in place.

At the end of it all, these oft-times ignored lines of ferrous find their quiet home perched upon the mantle sill; and if one spares the time to look closely, each of these will sing of the intricate and precise skill that has gone into their creation.

Here’s to our first site story,
Utsav and Namitha.

Altering Our Course.

In these memoirs of daily life that we put up on our blog, we often forget to mention half of our story: the half of the story that depicts the realization of the work that is done within the four walls of our office. What I’m talking about, is the substantial chunk of behind the scenes action that unfurls on our various sites- slowly, but steadily.

As students, we are often told that architects are ‘the creative folk’; the people who design but don’t necessarily need to get into the nitty-gritty details of the actual construction. But that is so untrue! I don’t pretend to know how other places work, but that is definitely not how we work. There are an equal number of people on site, as they are in office- scheduling, helping, directing and facilitating the work that needs to be done. When I tell you that I hadn’t seen one or two people from our office till yesterday but knew about them and the projects they were working on, I’m not joking. This can be attributed to the constant stream of messages that pour in on our office chat, day in and day out, from 8am to even 9pm, detailing the progress, and addressing the issues that inadvertently arise on site.

The reason I am writing about this today is because, as an office, we strive towards learning and growing to the best of our abilities and that can only happen, when we learn from our each other and the people around us. And so, starting from now, we will try to split the focus of these blogs between both our office lives- the indoor and outdoor ones.

Hope you’re as excited about this as I am,
So long,
Namitha.

Static Without Static.

What do you do when the electricity fails and you watch your old laptop that has been overworked ever since you laid your architectural hands on it, die a losing battle to its rapidly dying battery?

What do you do, when after a panicked attempt at switching from laptop to phone as your medium of work, you realise that there is no way you can efficiently detail out and finish all the mails you were supposed to send out while typing on the tiny screen in your hand?

What do you do when the electricity hasn’t returned in 2 hours and you are now knee deep in work that hasn’t been done- starting from documentations to presentations; all of which that, of course, need to go out that very day?

I’ll tell you what you’ll do.
You’ll head out for an early lunch.

And while there, you will mentally prepare yourself to beat flash with the pace at which you cover ground the moment the dim light on your laptop flickers; simultaneously bringing your device and you, back to life.

You will prioritize and make a mental note of the order in which you will handle files and, unquestionably, have to multi task.

And finally, you will wrap everything up, look at the clock with surprise and file this in your head as a relaxed day at work; quietly happy that you weren’t the one on site when the electricity went out.

Hoping to see you tomorrow,
Namitha.

Fitting into the Venn Diagram of Shopping.

In a venn diagram of shopping enthusiasts and non-fans, there is a small intersection of people who don’t mind shopping for others. As a designer, it is almost necessary to fall into that category (even if you do so begrudgingly); because there are days where you spend all your time hauling yourself and your client across the town on various, undecided modes of transportation from one shop to the next- picking, sorting, rejecting and finalizing all the different elements that come together to form a cohesive, tangible space.

If the thought of that drains you, just imagine the lethargy you will be faced with when you factor in the notorious Bangalore traffic, the subsequent pollution, dust and a constant cacophony of noises. But let me take a step back to tell you that it wasn’t bad at all. Bangalore decided to be nice to us by maintaining a pleasant temperament in terms of both weather and traffic; and our client helped us a great deal by being precise, practical and to be very honest, tirelessly sprightly. Within 7 hours, we had built a comprehensive itinerary of everything from granite to geysers, along with a fair idea of the menu we spent quite some time perusing during lunch.

It would be quite deceptive to say that there were no snags at all and that we were left as energetic at the end as we were at the beginning of this day-long quest for home-building materials; but it would be equally false to declare that it was as tiring and arduous as we anticipated it to be. In the end, I guess, it should suffice to say that my first shopping trip as a part of this office was quite the success, especially since it ended with some crunchy, cheesy fries!

Until tomorrow,
Namitha.

The Home Office.

Oxymora are my thing. I’ve always been amused by the clear contradictions that govern our lives. So, when Sai sat us down and explained the implicitly explicit house rules, I couldn’t help but spend some time thinking about the stark contrast between the offices I’ve seen and heard of and the one I’m in right now.

Yes, most of it probably stems from the attitude with which Sai and Leena deal with everyone around them; but it also has to do with the biggest oxymoron of them all- ‘the home office’.

The home office takes one look at the cliché that asks you never to take your work home, and chucks it right out the window. Irrespective of whether or not you have worked in another office, this idea of doubling your house as a home and an office can either make you slip right into the thick of things or completely unnerve you; not just because of the difference in the way things work but also because you’re slammed with a realization that you are accountable for what happens within someone else’ home, let alone the fact that it is your boss’ home.

But then again, maintaining a ‘professional’ demeanour when you’re literally at home is difficult.  You do end up being more ‘yourself’ and that is where quirks start to show. And quirks are important; they not only help you understand the people you work with faster but also teach you to adapt and learn how to align yourself with the varied personalities that are now entangled in your web of day-to-day life.

The point I’m trying to make is that this home office of ours seems to be well on its way to prove that work doesn’t always have to be a dreadful affair. It can sometimes, maybe even occasionally, be a cackling mess of productivity. How? That is something I hope to figure out over the course of my time here.

So long,
Namitha.   

Square One

Real life first days don’t start with melodious background scores in a magical land surrounded by luscious greenery and friends you’ve known for ages. Instead, they often begin with bedheads, infuriating alarm clocks, ridiculously long car rides and a numbing pain in your head telling you that picking up a call from your best friend in the middle of the night might not have been the best idea when you already haven’t slept the previous couple of days.

But that’s okay. I’ve learnt today that even the most initially unsettling first days can often take a sharp turn for the better; especially when greeted by two beautiful dogs and a little girl who kindly informed me that she  prefers to be called strong over cute and says that she’d rather eat chocolates than ‘actual breakfast’. They get even better when you are told, to your face, that you’re not expected to know a whole lot. In fact, you’re expected to know nothing so that you can skip the part when you try to play it cool and impress the people around you and instead, get to put all that energy into working and learning things the right way rather than going through the whole tedious process of unlearning. And the icing on the cake is, sometimes, the fact that people around you don’t always comply with the socially accepted laws of normalcy, hierarchy or even, for that matter, personal boundaries.

The sarcasm, the eye rolls and even the nit-picking and the leg-pulling that I’ve seen around me today seems to be the basis of a camaraderie that forms the fabric of this office- a place that could be well on its way to creating a new word that combines casual and professionalism ( like athleisure, but unrelated to clothing).

I had an inkling on the day I got my first mail that I would like this place, today confirmed those feelings and hopefully, the next few months here will only add to it.

Signing off for the first time,
Namitha