As architects we have the power to create the world. To create context. This is the way I have always seen it. We do not simply create buildings, and we certainly do not create "objects" that we place into the world. We create the setting to a story, the backdrop to our everyday lives. It isn't the mass, but the experiences we shape, that we embed into people's memories.
If our life is a story, then we are the main character. Everyone around us are supporting characters. The places we go are the setting, and the experiences we have are the plot. This is what makes architecture so significant--the role it plays in the setting of our story.
Do you really understand the power behind this idea? Let me provide a background context which may or may not help understand one architect's way of thinking.
A lot of my desire to be creative stemmed from watching anime as a young child. I grew up one such motion pictures as Studio Ghibli and Makoto Shinkai. Some of the most thought-provoking, intriguing, unexplained yet beautiful imagery I have ever seen. It portrays our life on earth in a harshly realistic, yet childishly playful manner at the same time. It finds the happy moments in the darkness.
When I was five or six, my mother used to sit down with me at our cheaply made electric piano and teach me to play songs I liked. Such was the beginning of my understanding of music composition. Music and architecture are so inexplicably intertwined, probably because they are both elements of the setting: the place, and the soundtrack. Creating music has since been something that is really important to me, as it is one of the main components of creation in general. Learning to create one thing inevitably helps you understand the process of creating something else.
I can't remember who taught me how to draw, but that was probably the most important step in my path to becoming an architect. I learned through many years of practice how to turn a plain white sheet of paper into an entire imaginary world, becoming so dynamic it feels like half my childhood was spent in a place that never really existed. But it did exist, and drawing was my way of showing that.
As a kid I was always in quiet contemplation, I wasn't actually in the classroom like all of my peers. In other words, there was a lot of disconnection between my physical and spiritual self. Luckily I was able to grow up with friends that at least partially understood my point of view, otherwise I would have been alone in my thoughts all of the time. I would always spend my time trying to perceive the world in my own way, and to create new worlds based off my perceptions, and my close friends would try hard to understand me, and were intrigued by the work I made. A lot of them wondering, where does all my seemingly endless motivation come from?
The good thing about moving around a lot as a child is that you get many different perspectives on the world in which we live. And the good thing about growing up poor is that you are forced to face life head on. You can't buy your way out of any situation. It develops you as an individual. If you want something, you have to work and save for it, then you begin to understand its value. My father always told me I would be working as soon as I turned fourteen. Did I resent him for that? No, in a way, I was thankful. Firstly, because I knew he was spending all our families earnings just to support myself and my two sisters to give us a somewhat "normal" life. I knew it would be impossible for him to set aside money just for me. But I was also thankful that he cared enough to know that having me work would be a huge step in developing my independence and help me accomplish my goals in the future.
My parents were always doing little things, that I often did not notice, to ensure that I could follow a comfortable and meaningful life. It takes a while for you to understand what it means for someone to work a physically and mentally taxing job that they hate everyday of their lives just so you don't have to. In a way its almost like they are almost giving up on their own lives to make the most out of their children's. My father was always trying to make sure I knew what I wanted to do with my life, and for that I am eternally grateful. You really need someone as a kid to ask you these questions. It might well be the most important thing anyone ever says to you.
All of this is important, but this doesn't really answer why I wanted to become an architect, does it?
It mainly has to do with the whole idea of experiences that I mentioned earlier. When I think back on the most powerful memories I have growing up, the setting was a huge part of them. To be able to create that setting for someone else, to create a quiet backdrop to other people's stories, this is the ultimate creative job for me.
One time, not too long ago, I had to say goodbye to some people that are very close to me. The extent of that goodbye was unknown to all of us. It was snowing the last night we would see each other, and we decided to go to the new music hall at the local college. We were the only ones in the building, and there was a Steinway piano sitting in the middle of the lobby area. My close friend played a few songs on it, and the sound resonated throughout the building in one of the most beautiful ways I've ever heard a piano played. Describing this experience in words does not really suffice, it was an experience only we will remember and understand.
It should also be pointed out that the architecture of this new music hall was quite awe-inspiring. In a way, it followed the characteristic of Japanese architecture in only using earthy elements and tones. But the design combined with the experience I had there, combined with the music, made it entirely unforgettable.
Architecture really is the perfect job for someone who thinks like me, because in a way we are extracting ideas out of our own experiences in order to create experiences for others. If you didn't know already, anything you come up with is a composition of memories and imagery from your past--you never create anything that is truly new. I find this fact very perplexing, that even the greatest, most aesthetically innovative buildings were extracted out of the architect's own experiences. But we will never know what.
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Hopefully all of this makes some sense and begins to explain one particular mindset of an architect. It is much deeper rooted than what I see in architecture school. And I believe only those that have that deeper motivation to create will really succeed as an architect. So let me finish by asking you once more, do you want to be an architect?
What does it mean to you?
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