DESIGNING THE SUPER-LITH: QUESTIONING THE ARCHITECT’S ROLE IN TODAY’S ENGINEERED MARVEL

Architecture has always been the ‘anonymous’ profession. This is one movie where the lead doesn't even get an honourable mention. Ironically, the word 'architect' gets used pretty generously in our lives. When we hear “Indira Gandhi was the architect of India’s victory in the ’71 war”, we know there was a Sam Maneckshaw and a host of war heroes that fought the war. But when we talk of the best architecture, what does the layman know? The Taj Mahal gets credited to Shah Jahan. Many of us think ‘Eiffel’ is some French classy word attached to a memorial, and definitely not the name of the engineer who designed it! The list is endless. Add to this that the architect for the Taj  Mahal had his hands cut off, the architect for the Taj Hotel committed suicide and the architect for the Sydney Opera House didn't get his complete fee, you have grounds for a new sob-a-thon.

This blog, however, isn't about self-pity, but about the endangered species of architecture. Engineering is once again breathing down our necks. One of my teachers told us “the Civil Engineer is your mother-in-law!” Well, that mother-in-law has a whole family plopped on our sofas, and pushing us out of our comfy zones.

How did this happen? Didn't we deal with this, centuries ago? Even in India, The Architects Act was passed in the '70s, giving architects a foot-hold on the economy.

Technology is what happened.

Yes, the same technology architects ignored in college (except the nerds). The same technology we let the engineers keep control of in the industry. We were happy enough to feel that we had the control since we hired them (the ones who got hired by the client and did not listen to us were mean !@#$^&*s).

If that weren’t bad enough, there was new technology coming in. Things that moved, things that blinked, things that opened or closed because other things were blinking; things that were becoming these mean, unmanageable thingies!

Let’s look at this further in our next blog: Who designs today’s Super-Lith? 

Dear Oh dear; my interior

In my early days in the furniture industry, I spent a lot of effort educating ‘non-architects’ the difference between ‘Architects’, ‘Interior Designers’ and ‘Interior Decorators’. It didn’t help when our technical partner from Canada came in with a new term ‘Interior Architect’.

Why did I need to educate them, anyway? On the face of it, because they were selling furniture to architects. But deep in my heart, because of this huge pecking order in the industry, going back to Indian Education System, where intelligence=marks=degree=Architect. Interior design was a still a 3 year diploma in the early ‘90s. In very crass terms, calling an architect an interior designer, or, even worse, an interior decorator was, yes I'm gong to say this - belittling him.

It looks like the debate wasn’t limited to our own little ‘egosystem’. I recently read a British book titled ‘Drawing Out the Interior’ which preambled with this definition:

Interior Architect: Does more structural changes while designing the interior

Interior Designer: More to with planning, furniture and mill-work (American for carpentry)

Interior Decorator: Colours, finish, upholstery and stuff

(I wish I had read thas book before this life defining incident happened):

This goes to the period when I had my own design practice, and clients had been introducing me as ‘My Architect’, ‘Layout Designer’, ‘Interior Designer’ and even ‘General Interior Contractor’. Of course I corrected them each time, till a client gallantly and with pomp and show introduced me to his guest as,

“this is Sanjeev, my interior.”

I felt like his you-know-what.