07 Dec

This quarter, it was not so much about learning, but questioning.  I questioned my view on architecture, I questioned the value of a critique, I questioned the role of history and technology, I questioned the role of the architect, I questioned my plans for the future, I questioned myself and I questioned questioning.  As a result, I have traveled down three paths this quarter – one of overwhelming, one of unlearning, and one of relearning.  All have undoubtedly changed my understanding of architecture and myself as an architecture student.  Lets start with the first path, shall we?

being Overwhelmed
…can really suck sometimes.  Your brain hurts, your eyes blur, and you tend to wonder around confused and entirely belittled.  Sometimes, just Rome itself – the streets, the people, the buildings, the river – can be so overwhelming.  I remember one night getting terribly lost around the city on what was supposed to be just an innocent sketching adventure.  I thought to myself: where am I? what am I doing here?  why can I not get oriented in a city built to orient you? how am I supposed to get home? who in the world thought this was a good idea?  Oh wait, that was me.  There was definitely a point, between questioning myself, being behind on a project, and still not able to navigate around the pantheon, where I was ready to give up and run away to some random olive farm (I’ll get to that later).  But I didn’t and because of that I learned the beauty of being overwhelmed.  If you embrace it (and make sure not to have too much at a time), it is a powerful and moving experience that can make you more aware of yourself and the beauty around you.  It turns something small, like overhearing Chopin out of an open window, into a deeply emotional experience that makes you cry with joy.  Which brings me to my second path:

Unlearning
No, joy did not remind me of unlearning (because unlearning can be quite painful), piano did.  I played piano for many years until it became tedious work rather than a fulfilling passion.  Overhearing a Chopin piece I had played made me suddenly remember the emotion in music and forget the hours of practice behind it.  One might say I had an ‘unlearned occurrence’.  These tended to happen a lot this quarter.  Through questioning and the challenges these poised, I unlearned most of what I knew.  I unlearned things like the way I think about a project (its not my project, its the project, a project is about projecting), the way I approach computers (they aren’t the devil – they can be really helpful representation tools), the way to design, the way to critique, the way to view time, the way to experience light, the way to think…all more or less in order to understand the world in terms of its essence.  For four months I’ve been trying to reduce my thinking down to that of a 5 year old so that I can understand what philosophers like Heidegger and Ricoeur talk about in dense philosophical theories.  ‘Isn’t that backward?’ you might ask?  Quite the contrary.  A 5 year old understands the essence of light better than I ever will.  Although after looking up in the pantheon, I feel a hell of a lot closer to 5…maybe I’m around 6 and a half…

Relearning
Here’s the exciting part of the quarter – what in the world to do now that I’ve reduced myself down to a child.  Its easy – what does a child do?  Play.  Looking like a child, life has become a game to find the playful within the everyday, the awesome in the ordinary, the simplicity in the complex.  Yet I’ve learned life also goes beyond this into a world of depth and meaning where activity becomes ritual, playful becomes self-awareness, success becomes gratitude.  Design in such a mindset is no longer an other-worldly event where a masterpiece is set on a site for all to admire.  Rather, the building is found within the site, the existing, the milieu.  How can simple occurrences become an opportunity for something more?  A view to the mountains in the distance become just as much a building tool as steel.  Architecture is more about the way people actually live and not reduced to a machine that facilitates the needs of its occupants.  Rather than a technological barrier to the outside, architecture can facilitate a new connection with the occupants and the surroundings and perhaps themselves.  One of the hardest lessons I’ve had to accept is that technology is not going away – so then what do we do?  Do we run away and live off the land (as was my intention with the olive farm as said earlier)?  Or do you learn to work through technology – use it to facilitate something not technological, such as ritual, gratitude, playfulness.  Maybe a metaphor can help bring a lion-ness to technology and the technology-ness to a lion…