Hi-Ho, the Derry-O, A Grudge We Shall Hold

We’re in the mood to bring back a grudge from the past. 

I studied architecture in my undergraduate years. I was really interested in architecture, in a dreamy, idyllic and imaginative sort of way. I loved dreaming up the feeling a space would bring. I did like form and structure too, in the way that some forms’ repetition created beauty in their structure - like tensile bridges. But, oh! How the architecture education in my neck of the woods killed my creativity. Boy, it really dampened the spirit.

It may have been a 4th semester design project, I think. We were to design a seaside resort. I remember creating these cozy brick cottages facing the sea that followed the topography of the land. I designed sunken seating in the larger cottages - wouldn’t it be so relaxing to step down and sit in them gazing out at the sea and having a completely different perspective of the sights before you? Like, descend downwards and go within…you know? That kind of thing. At the design review, we had what’s called an ‘external evaluator’ (a practicing architect) come in and critique our project. This evaluator was established in the profession and ran a successful firm. He asked why the sunken area didn’t have a ‘nala’, a drain with a drain cover. He wanted to know how the sunken floor would be washed, as is traditionally done, with a coconut broomstick, detergent and water. I gave him the benefit of the doubt all these years. It was a valid question. If the vernacular way of cleaning a space was to gush down mug-fulls of water and sweep it away towards the drain, why didn’t I design for it?

Today, I feel inclined to take back that benefit. To not mince words anymore either, I think that critique was stupid. There can be many different ways of cleaning a space. Perhaps, that sunken floor could just be mopped and that would serve the purpose. Compliance and deference are key features of life in this part of the world. So of course, I didn’t defend my design that day. Not only did I not defend my design, I came away with the view, as always happened, that I was wrong in some way. 

The resort cottage I designed with sunken seating

This was a double-bed cottage. I still love these creations.

Restaurants and such at the resort

I liked that I played with roof form that reflected the sloping land

The front view of the restaurant

I lined the resort cottages along natural topography to get sea views

The cover sheet of my portfolio that took days to create but no professors liked it

Yet another time, it may have been the 7th semester, and I had designed a university campus as part of the design ask. That campus had swirling pathways circling around magnificent granite boulders of the Dharwar Craton which were part of the site. The library grandly arose from the top of the site’s pinnacle, a hillock, in the tradition of the Golconda Fort and also Grecian temples. You journeyed up to seek something, to find something…safety…knowledge…that kind of thing. That overarching knowledge looked over the whole campus like a beacon…

The uni library I designed encircling rocks

Journeying up...connecting to nature and to self within

And at the design review, the evaluator asked me how students would make their way to different buildings when it was raining. How indeed?! With an umbrella or a raincoat? Those are the obvious answers now but at that point, I was so brainwashed into saying and doing the ‘correct’ thing, I sadly said that I would modify my design to have covered walkways. And well, that took away the soul of my design. I would like to add a big aside here that I am NOT like Howard Roark in maintaining some sort of purity to my designs, or being obnoxiously arrogant about them. I didn’t have the courage to push back then and say that it wasn’t cost-effective to cover up every path with a roof, it wasn’t that uncommon to have exposed roads and walkways in a large public space like a university campus, and it wasn’t expected for designs to account for every discomfort that could potentially arise in such a large built environment. It was a silly critique. 

Campus pathways that a prof wanted covered to avoid rain

I’ve designed in unconventional ways a great many things. In those undergrad years, my non-traditional designs were critiqued into oblivion. It was maybe another 6th-semester project to design an apartment building. My design had apartments not neatly stacked onto a tall rectangle but each apartment twisted on its axis. How will the utilities work? How will the elevator and stairwell work? (Well, I provided a central fixed spine around which apartments were rotated). How will something or the other work? Isn’t it your job to guide me and help me figure out the practicalities of a creative solution? I’m still the student, not the experienced practicing architect you are. 

The apartments I designed that blew professors minds in a bad way! 

By the time I got to the 9th-semester, the all-important design thesis year, my design was insipid. All creativity had been squashed out from me in favor of survival and getting the points I needed to pass that semester. Which meant that the joy of architecture I used to feel went away too.

The round hobbit doors of the Shire and Ikea’s glass mugs with an artistic chunk of glass as a handle? They would probably never have seen the light of day with these evaluators. 

A few years later, in another part of the world, when I designed a campus square and placed slides, yeah gigantic slides, out of campus buildings converging in the square, I was encouraged to take that playful approach and run with it. How fun to jump down a slide and zooooom down to run to the next class? Wouldn’t that take away from some of the stress of being a student? And even a professor? 

I do want to be cautious though of not wanting to pit one part of the world against another because I have come to learn that every part of the world has a deep dark unpleasant underbelly in tandem with the more pleasant aspects. I would rather go through life taking the best of each place - living with the best of all worlds.