I was having a conversation a week or so
ago with a friend about Architecture. For the record I do not talk about Architecture
all the time, sometimes I talk about Architecture. Just had to put that in.
Anyhoo we were on the bus back to campus from Church and we were discussing my
main project for the semester which is a wellness center, for those of you who
care. I told him how I had initially gone for circular type shapes but had
since scrapped that to go for the more common addition and subtraction from
four sided shapes. As you may imagine I was called boring and I was accused of
going for the easy way out but that was not my reasoning and the best tittle
for my reasoning is actually the tittle of this. Allow me to ethplain.
From the top, what I think I will do. When
we go to university/college most of us have this fancy idea of what we want to
achieve at the end of the day. For the Architect it would probably be something
along the lines of designing some ridiculous sky scraper or the next
Guggenheim, I’m using broad strokes here. For the Banker it could be working in
The World Bank or the central bank of the person’s home country. For the
computer guy it could be making some big program or even hacking into some
secret service computer etc. Bottom line is most of us have this vivid picture
of the “end product”.
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| The Guggenheim Bilbao |
What I do now. When we arrive at
university/college there is a lot of enthusiasm towards what we learn, for some
this phase lasts a couple weeks but there are special cases where this lasts
only a day or two. I’m not that old but I have seen the latter in action, it’s
a sad sight. The enthusiasm is “killed” when the guy, I’ll call him the guy, realizes
he’s being taken through the basics. But the thing is the guy wants to learn
all the “good stuff” now. The most common thing done at this level is to switch
on auto pilot. Auto pilot is the mode that has us doing our work just for the
result, in short no learning is done. I have to say auto pilot is triggered by
several other factors not just this one, the most famous one being when things get hard just pass. Back
home they phrase it “umuntu ku kliya”. Rough translation just get over the
line.
The problem with auto pilot is it’s easier
to turn on than it is to turn off. It starts as a potential solution then turns
into a habit. Habits are actually harder to stop than addictions. So when the
time comes for the so called interesting stuff to come in they rarely become
that good at it. They work just to get by. Plus a lot of the work done at this
point is improved drastically by the foundation level stuff which the guy does
not know because he skimmed right through at that point. Two avenues exist at
this point. Either they over reach pushing for attractive work or they go on
with the habit and spend the majority if not the rest of their life producing
mediocre work, accepted but mediocre work.
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| It's almost like a theme these days |
What I will actually do. This part mainly
affects the guys who over reach and produce attractive work. I will use
Architecture for this as that is my field of study and it is the one in which I
am the most versed. The guy gets into the industry and upon arrival he is given
small projects; a two bedroomed house on a ridiculous sized piece of land,
maybe classrooms for a school. Problem is he was expecting Guggenheim, where is
Guggenheim? After all, he did study for it. Guggenheim, for those who don’t know
is a foundation that commissioned the building of a number of modern buildings,
the most famous of which are the Guggenheim Museum in New York and the
Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. You have seen at least one of the buildings at
least once if you look at magazines or even use your phone quite a bit, trust
me.
Anyway the guy expects the chance to show
the world the designs he was working with in university/college. The fancy
circles, the fancy concepts etc. and yet the chance is just not coming. All he
is getting is conversions from kitchen to laundry rooms, little joke from the
place I did my internship last summer. The result in most cases is
disappointment and then he joins the other guy in spending the majority if not
the rest of his life producing mediocre work, accepted but mediocre work. As you
may have guessed I am anti mediocre work, I hate it with a passion, especially
when it comes from me.
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| The moment you realize the Guggenheim is not coming your way |
The reality is that very few of us will
ever get to work on the architectural equivalent of the Guggenheim. It’s the
truth but don’t get me wrong, this is not a takedown piece of the industry, I love
the industry, it has its flaws but I love it. The problem lies in our lust of
the explicit and exotic and abandoning the common. The reason we are taught
things from the basic/foundation is known but not appreciated. Because these
are the principles that allow us to make the common and obvious not so mundane
and at a higher level to properly work with the complex at a later stage. A
person who is good at his craft should be able to get something simple and go
one up on that. If you look at the people who have made advances in anything I think
one of the things you will find in common between most is they started off on
the simple and did the best that could be done, they went above the normal not
just in extravagance but in function as well.
I won’t give example of this because you
know a lot. That song has been sung. What I am preaching is to come to terms
with giving your all and then some. Produce fine and beautiful work on the
simple and so called mundane. What I am preaching is work ethic. What I am
preaching is something not common in today’s day and age, in my opinion it has
never been common. Being lazy is easy, it doesn’t take a genius. Producing accepted
work is doable, maybe not easy but doable. But the thing that gives pride to us
is one that after throwing our all into will make us sit back and appreciate the
diligence and the result, that’s work. That is what we need to produce
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