red + blue
Architects can be very eccentric. Here's two - Takaharu + Yui Tezuka - a talented pair of Japanese architects, who presented their work at the GSD last week. He always wears blue and she always wears red, and its not even shades and tints but the EXACT same blue and red. He is the exuberant showman, with an impeccable sense of timing, always punctuating his talk with a joke or an anecdote at precisely the right moments, to great effect. She is the reticent, more calculative half, a great sense of economy in both words and action. Of course, that has nothing to do with their colour fetishism. They mentioned that their daughter is always made to wear yellow, and their recently born son, green, on account of the daughter's possessiveness with her colour yellow. The kids might have to go through some very extended therapy later on in life, I'm afraid. Mark Mulligan speculates, however, that the colours may be more than just a neurotic streak, but rather a definition of identity. The name Tezuka isn't exactly the most memorable, he argues, and perhaps 'oh the red-and-blue duo' is just a branding tactic than anything else. It's just hilarious, I think, and I'll buy any explanation that anyone has to offer. Their work was very interesting though, you can catch a glimpse on their website. They've amassed an impressively large body of built work in a rather short period of time, for a young boutique practice such as theirs. I'm just happy that architects are wearing something other than black!
...and found!
lost
I am a rather sentimental person, and those who know me will readily agree. I don't like too much of anything, and tend to hold on rather steadfastly to the things that I value. This post is about two seemingly simple things that I have lost in the past year... a few months ago, the watch that I had been wearing for the previous 12 years, and just this morning, my glasses, that I had been using for the past 4 years. Very few things have 'fit' me as well as these two did. It is rather hard to find replacements for such perfect fits... and those who know me long enough will recall that I am still looking for a pair of floaters to adequately replace the brown reeboks. Perhaps these will return to me, as have repeatedly, my tattered oxford pocket dictionary and my black parker with its cracked barrel. Or perhaps, and maybe for good reason, like the nokia 8250, they will be forever lost.
an english summer (of 2009)
It was perhaps somewhere in the middle of my third week (out of 8) in London that, as I lay on my bed after a rather full day at work, I realized that I had already recieved so much of what I had wanted for a long time, big things and small. It was through Hanif Kara's good offices that I had landed an internship with Allford Hall Monaghan Morris LLP, but it was one of those 'universe conspires' situations of how it actually came about. After my aggressive pursuit of the encouraging leads from the GSD job-fair had ended with no result and much disappointment, San Francisco and New York's loss (at the risk of sounding immodest) turned out to be London's gain. Since the visa application process eroded the possibility of a full three-month working internship, I bargained for a six-week stint, but with a focus on 'observing the firm towards pursuing my interest in practice management'. I do not believe that was the selling point, but more the alignment that Simon Allford and more important, Peter Morris (two of AHMM's named partners) saw in my professional goals with their practice philosophy.I was welcomed to London by a heat-wave, but I soldiered on, distracted of course by the Scotland trip over my first weekend with the JJ alums. After considering a host of options for accommodation, I more than happily 'settled' for a room in a typical terrace house in Mornington Crescent, a quiet quarter within the bustling Camden Area. That evening as I lay on my bed I realized that while in America I had always wanted to stay in a house-type different from a flat in a tower, and had never really gotten around to it with the hideous Huron Towers in Ann Arbor and the delightful Sert-designed Peabody Terrace during my first year in Cambridge, MA. I quite enjoyed having a stoop to sit on in the evenings, munching on crisps and watching the passers-by, or reading in the backyard, interrupted occasionally by squeals of playing children that lived in the lower-ground flat. The view from the kitchen window, of the neighbour's backyard which was much better maintained than ours, was particularly pleasing. Perhaps I am making too much of this but it is an experience which I can never afford in Bombay, where even the luxury of a balcony is scanty now. I enjoyed the city most as I walked a different route every evening after work, allowing myself to be delighted by surprises at almost every turn. I appreciated the city so much more, being markedly different from the outrightly boring American cities that extend infinitely over a grid, for the most part. Downtown Boston and SF with its topography are exceptions, although even they cannot escape the general sterility that is so ubiquitous in America. Perhaps the highlight were the parks, where I have spent many an afternoon over the weekends, snoozing under the boughs of luxuriant trees. The gastronomic experience was truly unforgettable. For sheer range of cuisines it would be hard to beat London, and of course the eating only gets better when there is good company to go with it, in this case my trusted JJ foodies were mostly in tow. From sushi and dumplings to gourmet burgers and the choicest continental fare, even pretty decent indian food for that matter, it was one big unending binge. AHMM was the perfect environment for the 'project' that I had arrived in London with. Most important, however, was that they were exceedingly generous, allowing me the opportunity to interact with the partners, operational leaders and senior staff perhaps more than the average employee would be granted. There were certainly some raised eye-brows wondering what exactly was it that I was doing there... I quite enjoyed playing on their inquisitiveness! AHMM are quite like the Beatles - 4 close friends with complementary skills that have combined to build a remarkably formidable practice in a rather short span of time; they celebrated their 20 years of establishment during my first week. The fact that they were awarded BD's Arhcitect of the year for 2009 is clear testament to this. Perhaps all things do happen for a reason, after all. It was hard to stomach the Harvard disappointment the first time around, but then that allowed eventually, for experience at two top schools rather than one. It was the HARDEST decision to pick Harvard over UCL the following year, and my fair judgement was considerably impeded by the strong desire to live in London. The resultant acquaintance with people like Hanif and the Harvard privileges combined to present this fantastic opportunity, one that I relished to the fullest.No reason to abandon optimism just yet, then.
impatience
its the hardest when you get yourself a new camera and have to wait several hours for the battery to get charged, before you can actually play with it...rev_01: ...as also when the internet dies on you just when you are about to publish your two-line post!
back in Cambridge
I am slowly getting warmed up (no pun intended) to Cambridge and Harvard this winter, as I inch along my final semester and my final four months in the United States as a student. This morning, it was rather pleasant to meet perhaps all the people that I know at the GSD within a span of about an hour, as they came by the Chauhaus to get their morning coffee. Many polite promises for coffees/ lunches/ dinners at some tentative, unscheduled time over the semster were made, and I thought to myself, "It's probably not so bad after all".It hasn't been the easiest time getting back into the groove here; with my class schedule not being very heavy, there is ample time to think about 'the emptiness'. My apartment in the unfurnished state that it has been over the past week lends physical dimension to this void. However, a sore back is a pleasant distraction from a sore mind. The Carpenter Center has been an absolute blessing in the midst of all this, with some very interesting offerings in film that have helped keep me adequately entertained. Bob Eccles's class 'Leading Professional Services Firms' has provided much fodder to the canons in my head. A veritable war is raging between pieces of my mind that seem to be shouting rather contradictorily about what my next steps should be - where do I fit within GDS, within Mumbai, and where they fit within me. An unplanned, informal, thirty-minute chat with Hanif over coffee just before his departure to London, talking about Simon and AHMM, Mophogenesis and FOA, CABE and the Venice Biennale, Harvard and the AA, Europe, America and India... perhaps went the farthest in reaffirming that I was right in coming here in the first place.
