This is a very debatable topic that I have thought of to write on today.
There are numerous interpretations of what it means to different people coming from different countries, strata’s and cultures on our planet. Even I as a student of Architecture have been studying formally what it is, and what it signifies.
But here I deviate from what is taught in the school imparting knowledge of architecture to the mass, I am just writing my thoughts of what it means to me.
Architecture to me is simple planning (done and practiced by everyone alive), it is not something which comes from a formal education, or simply by learning things in the class. What I mean by this is............. like observed and accepted that “You can’t be a philosopher just by studying Philosophy “
This statement holds true for architecture too. Its like you cant simply be an Architect by completing you degree course or by just learning from the books and doing good in the exams.
In one of the many conversations at the tea stall at station on one normal night ,one of my friend made a remark which was: If you are an architect straight out, a thorough academician and a ranker of every sort, then u really got to think again and realize- that you are no good than a blank sheet of paper “
Well I agree that it was a bit exaggerated but then it wasn’t completely wrong, at some place it is the truth to the core. Just like philosophy, you know that just by a degree proving your education in that field it doesn’t mean that you are a philosopher too. Your education would only state that you could quote a few good lines from the book penned down by someone as great as Dante, Aristotle, and Plato and so on.
Similarly Architecture is definitely not a course, not something that you could learn just from books. It is the system, the road that helps us to solve anything and everything thrown at us. It is somewhere all the time and everywhere sometime.
You know, it need not necessarily be ,a design problem of a building, but it means any problem.
A solution thought of, planned and executed is what Architecture truly is. That is why I would say that we all are architects, we all Architecture our lives every single day, every hour, every minute, and every second. There is never this blank wall that we come to, and if we do come to it ,we plan our way out of it.
That ability and methodology is what is -the soul, the life and the sense of Architecture.
We are always looking at progression; in all possible things may it be money matters, love, family, anything and everything under the sun. So then there is an Architect in all of us.
This reminds me of the words which said “Architecture is the philosophy of design” to which I would make an alteration and put it as “Architecture is the philosophy of life”. As design to me is not just designing the materialistic things, it to me is like a problem. A problem that we all come to while living life wherein we all want to have and come to something better. So in order to solve it there has to be considerations made, analyzed, mind put to work, all in all it is like a linear progression towards our goal.
This linear progression which opens and exposes us to a lot of different directions, methods, things, different permutations etc. and in turn helps us learn new things all the while at the same time moving towards our goal, this is what is ARCHITECTURE in the true sense.
