Musings
There’s an art to animated movies, a sprinkle of cartoonish mixed with a hint of realism. It’s never right if it has too much of one, or too little of…
What is LEED Sustainability has become a buzzword we can’t seem to get away from these days. And in the architecture community, that usually equates to whether a building is…
Venice: A Testament to Resilient Architecture Civilizations have historically been built along water bodies. Venice however is one of the few examples of a city built in a water body.…
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What is Phenomenology There are days when our existence in itself feels questionable. After all, what is it that makes us who we are, what is it that shapes our…
Tracing the Shift from Exploration to Innovation In a world that’s a couple of millennia, sometimes it feels like we’ve crossed the timeline of discovering things and moved on to…
The Genesis of a Literary Hub Centres of places with the exchange of ideas and knowledge have such a large impact on society around them. In 1847 what started as…
In Transit In an ostentatious bustling city like Mumbai where people always seem to be on the move, places of transit shape the city experience to a large extent. And…
Experiencial Design
image credits - @giancarlid
A researcher in Louisiana recently made a shoe which generates power when we walk.
Kind of changes our perspective of passive activities doesn’t it? Here we are just considering walking as journey to get something done and she just made the journey the destination. As an aspiring architect that’s my goal, that as people move along or inside buildings they don't just see stone and concrete stacked together, they see those stories etched that stone.
Buildings best part is the ambiguity of it. Lay men, that's what we call ourselves when venturing into a topic we're not participants in just mere spectators. But the question is should we be a passive audience or an active participant. Yes, we had no part in creating it, but creating is just the first part, utilizing it and understanding it are the main components. Journalism is all about current affairs and headlines; but architecture is the same headlines made in a solid form to be seen and understood years later.
Consider walking inside an art gallery, how do we decide what we consider a good painting and what a passable one; not by the appearance or size but how it makes us feel, how it reminds us of some better or worse time, how just by looking at it you can picture your mind frame had it been you making the painting. That’s what architecture needs to achieve. Forget aesthetics and trying to be unique, no need to be different to make a masterpiece - all it needs is a story.
Martin Heidegger once said “Why is love beyond all measure of human possibilities, because we change ourselves into what we love and yet remain ourselves”. He may have been talking about love at the time but think of it as a building instead of love, isn’t it just as applicable. Change is constant that’s a known fact, we change for the things and people we love, fashions change as the people change but through all that somehow even though the buildings remain the same its meaning changes. And that’s the key, to make something that represents what is there, but also what isn’t.