Should You Stay Or Should You Go

It’s that familiar time in the year when students will be asking me for my thoughts as to whether they should pursue their architectural education locally or overseas.  I never profess that I would have the definitive answer to that but I will share here the way I see it by the options offered for the choices they can make.

 

To me it depends on how you ultimately see yourself in the profession especially in the unforeseen future; and that stems from the old adage on whether you see yourself as a worker or as a leader.  That would mean, can you only see yourself working as an architect within an architectural practice, or do you ultimately want an architectural practice of your own.  If your sights have not been cast far enough then you really should do so before you decide.  Let’s see if I can highlight the different perspectives here.

 

The Worker Ant

If all you can see now are the prospects of earning a living and establishing a lifestyle built around loans, hire purchase and monthly repayments with the view of fulfilling all the expected social forms of being a spouse, parent, etc., as soon as possible before granny-grandpa dies, then chances are you’re more of a worker ant disposition.  If that be the case, then you really need not venture any further than within the shores of your homeland.

The curriculum in local architectural faculties are really geared around preparing you into the workforce rather than developing you as a potential architect in the true sense of the profession.  Not to say that you could never become a true architect if you studied locally; no, that is not at all true.  It’s just that if you are to be an architect of such merit you’d have to discover and develop that more by yourself while the faculty concentrate more on your office proficiency skills.  You can realise this for yourself despite what the faculties profess by the way they stress more on task than objectives, production rather than perception, technicalities rather than concepts, conventions rather than convictions, discipline more than discovery, process and procedures rather than actual content – you get the picture.  If you can’t than you can find further evidence of it here.

 Even local architects have unreasonable expectations from local architectural graduates.  They actually expect the latter to have all the answers at the tips of their fingers and toes upon graduation while unfairly disregarding the fact that most of these answers are to be embedded by actual working experience.  A part 2 graduate should enter the workforce as apprenticeship to develop through stark reality what the schools can only initiate or introduce.  Unfortunately, the moment they are under salary they are deemed as machinery and expected to dispense data that the employers themselves could not immediately recall despite being in the profession for umpteenth more years.

So if your dreams are as far as being an architectural staff par excellence, then that is what you really need to work on and you can do it within our national borders.  

[-Your Name-] Architects Sdn. Bhd.

So the inverse of that would imply that universities elsewhere would approach architectural education differently?  Well, I can only speak for UK and Australia through actual and twinning experiences respectively; and in that respect the answer is yes.

 Though the syllabuses and curriculum may not be much different on paper, the teaching attitudes and approaches do differ vastly especially in terms of emphasis.  There will be more emphasis on objectives rather than mere task completion; perception rather than mere production of ideas; technicalities are integral with concepts; the sturdiness of students’ convictions more imperative than just the conventions of how they present them; discovery unbounded by homogenization; content above mere process and procedure – you get the picture.  If you can’t then, probably you should just continue locally.  The reason is that a fundamental disposition that would facilitate the description above is individuality.  Big topic to discuss, but let’s see if I can quantise it to more digestible doses.

 Local architectural faculties stress so much on task, production, technical, conventions, discipline, process and procedures.  All these are essentially neutralizing criteria to facilitate homogenization.  That means they are factors that would direct everything towards a uniform, similar or even singular form that would be easier to gauge and assess.  For instance, it’s easier to assess students’ production by the quality of their presentation and the conventions they use, rather than by the individual ideas behind what they’re trying to achieve.  The physical extent of how much or how well a students task is completed is quicker to gauge than to scrutinise each abstract objective – it’s easier to see if the student has complied to the drawing requirements by drawing count rather than if they have fulfilled the design objectives.  Formal process and procedures are more immediate to assess than underlying content.  And objective technicalities are more accessible than subjective concepts.  And the beat goes on.

 So it appears that locally the individuals are neutralised and homogenized rather than taken on as individuals.  A common task that illustrates this are site analyses. The sun will rise and set the same way for all, the wind will blow the same, as will the traffic flow.  Demographics, topography, geography, morphology, etc., would be the same for everyone for the same site.  The whole class is then broken down into groups to present the various criteria and factors of the site that all the students would agree on.  In short, the task is simply presenting common data that all would have experienced the same.  And students are marked as to how well their tutors agree with the fulfillment of the task. 

 But isn’t the true objective of a site analysis is to collect data for students to initiate their individual design processes?  That means, that the data from site analyses should be for them to response in order to develop their individual designs.  Therefore, marking students presentation of site analysis is simply marking the task, whereas assessing students response to their site analyses in their design is assessing the objectives.  That means, if you were to go to an architectural school in the UK or Australia and presented a site analysis as you would locally, you would learn the true meaning of the word redundant or the phrase ‘waste of time’.  They would be more interested in how you would react, response or relate to the site rather than just what you saw when you were there.

The approach to individuality therefore is a fundamental difference between doing architecture here than doing it there.  That means that you would be developing to function as a single identity overseas rather than be made into just one of the team locally.  And I hope this helps you see how strongly it can contribute in developing someone who eventually want their own practice rather than someone who just want to function in someone else’s practice.

As to my recommendations on whether it should be the UK or Australia?  I’ll reiterate what I’ve always said.  To the right of UK is Europe, and to its left is America.  To the left of Australia is the Indian Ocean, to the right is the Pacific Ocean.  You decide on the geographical advantages.

5 Things Design Jurors Should Not Say To (My) Students That Would Make Themselves Look Bad.

I never like to sit in on final design juries for students whom I tutor because most likely I would already know at least 90% of what it’s all about.  But I do go around listening to the dialogues that go on between them and the jurors.  And I do listen to the comments the jury will be making in the post-jury assessments, albeit from a distance so as to make sure I keep an objective stance on comments by avoiding to look at who it was who said what.

I do this solely for input for what works, what doesn’t or what’s deficient.  However, even after more than 10 years of this in various architectural faculties, I can hardly find much that I can use from the comments to work on.  That’s because there seems to be a consistent reappearance of the same set of comments over and over again, regardless of the students output.  Probably there was a much earlier time when those comments could have been taken on board to work on though in retrospect, I strongly doubt it.  Reason is because they were comments that were abound even during my diploma years in ITM almost 30 years ago, of which I had made sure my students would address each time I tutor.

 I find these comments that jurors make no longer reflect the shortcomings of the students but unfortunately highlights those of the jurors themselves.

1.     That the students spend too much time on making nice images.

I’m always asking students to produce large 3D representations of their designs, both exterior and interior, and montages so as to illustrate their desired effects and intentions.  This also includes 3D construction details for students to have a more real world visualization and appreciation of them.  However, there will be at least two persons every session who must remark that the students should spend less time making them and spend more time on more ‘architectural’ matters.  There’s even a killjoy or two [or three or four, etc,] that even declare that the students are only good at producing nice images.  Bloody cheek!  One particularly obnoxious lady even stood in front of a partition full of interior montages and was going on about how the students should spend more time developing their spaces instead of making all those nice images.  She was standing in front of interior montages.  Interior montages. Interior would be the spaces within the building.  A whole 2m x 2.5m partition full of them.  And she still talks about making more spaces and less images.  How does one present spaces without images?

Why this makes them look bad.
The average final project would be at least 9 weeks long.  I would never have seen any of those nice images during those 9 or so weeks.  That’s because the students would have to produce a design first in order to make all those nice images; because after all, those images would have to be of their design.  Therefore, if they say that the students spend so much time making nice images, then it appears that they are disregarding the actual design that was produced in 9 weeks that those images represent.  They can’t see design – all they see are just nice images.

However, I should say that this actually make the students appear really good because they produced images of quality that the jury thought would take 9 or so weeks to do; while we know students only had 2 or 3 days/nights to come up with them.  Kudos to the students!

2.     Harping on about drawing conventions.

This is such a common comment that more or less reaffirms the previous point, and is especially for jurors who just keep going on and on about it throughout the jury.  Now, we know that drawings would have only been done at the very last stage of a project.  For a 9 week project that would have begun after the 8^th or even 9^th week itself, simply because students need to come up with a design first before they could draw something.  Therefore such comments on drawings would be only  for the last stages of a design project.  So why so much emphasis on this last stage which is only about a week or so instead of more input on the design which made up at least 90% of the project time?

Why this makes them look bad.
Okay, so it seems that we are in an academic culture that seems to prioritize in producing worker ants; students are groomed to be proficient and efficient for the office.  Some actually say that students are expected to know everything about producing buildings from drawing conventions right up to authority submissions, fire regulations, contractual matters, etc.  This is particularly disturbing if the person saying it studied in a western country because they themselves would not have been trained as such.  And that is because such matters would not have been heavily imbued academically because it’s best picked up through actual working experience.

So it appears that to such jurors students are simply potential office machinery.  They appear to disregard the design acumen and skills displayed and can only see production quality but not content.  That’s assuming of course that they can actually recognize content in the first place.

3.     Insisting on the basics.

I can’t say enough how despairing it is to hear my contemporaries continually asking students for basics.  Actually, I no longer know what these basics are that they request or need to see so badly.  So I’ll address this in general.

In a nutshell, basics are what you would acquire in formal subjects such as building construction, structures, services, materials, drawing, theory etc.  They are the fundamentals to your understanding of a subject matter.  But come Design Studio, you should not merely regurgitate those basics into an architectural design.  I would expect students to explore, exploit and expound on those basics to come up with their own creative design solutions.  As far as I’m concerned, the only basic or fundamental rule that I insist they comply unequivocally to is gravity.

So naturally the students would have designs that are very far removed from those illustrated in books on the various subjects.  I would even encourage students to explore presentation techniques to the point of even seeing it as an art piece for some.  They should explore communicating moods and effect above the technical information.  But the moment the works display beyond the overtly familiar, the students are under immediate suspicion of ignorance of basics, without due or fair process for what is actually on display.

Why this makes them look bad.
Best guess is the juror can’t see beyond the dry and the familiar.  To be fair, they are most probably conserving mental energy especially if they are to see more than 3 students at the session; because looking at the non-familiar does take more mental energy to process.  It’s just a crying shame that they choose not to look close and long enough at how far the students have come ahead from the basics.

4.     Remarking on the lack of architectural clichés or the generic in the students work.

This point is very much in tandem with the previous one.  I’ve actually written on this before after a particularly mind-numbing jury session.  This is where they insist on seeing what is familiar in the architecture around them within the students’ work and a refusal to accept anything that is not immediately recognizable.  Furthermore, they actually dismiss and disregard the justifications by the students for their respective idiosyncratic solutions.  They just brush aside what they don’t like simply because it’s different – to them.

This also include clichés such as insisting that it goes without saying that one has to relate when within vicinity of historical or heritage sites without the possibility of responding or reacting to it,  even if one finds said site to be simply horrendous.

Why this makes them look bad.

What’s ironic is that these are jurors who would encourage students to be explorative and innovative in their design.  It’s just that somehow when presented with something new, they ask for the more familiar and the generic.  I wonder what does the word innovative actually mean to them?  Whatever it is, one thing’s sure – they don’t think the students can be so.

This is also a symptom of those who see architectural design as a design by catalogue process.  That means that they have established architecture as a process of putting together pre-catalogued clichés and components into ‘creative’ configurations.  Thus they could never see newer solutions – just new formations.

5.     Accusing the students of mere form making.

I’m more interested in students seeking newer solutions by constant reassessment of familiar problems, rather than students just coming up with new forms as envelope to the usual, normal solutions for usual generic problems.  Traditionally, this is called critical thinking.  Examples of this covers everything from making actual office spaces exciting rather than just their main lobby, making circulation interesting rather than just merely keeping it short and convenient, to even reassessing the necessity for economics and compactness of toilet and service core design.  This is an integrative process and hence generates and evolves new and exciting forms.  What that means is that if the form captures your attention, you could trace it back to how it is a product of response or reaction to what is inside.  Of which if you don’t do so, then all you will see are just exciting forms and not much else.

Why this makes them look bad.
They did not do so thus all they see are exciting forms and not much else.

Malaysian Pavilion

“The basic ideology of an exposition is that the packaging is more important than the product, meaning that the building and the objects in it should communicate the value of a culture, the image of a civilization.”

-       ‘How An Exposition Exposes Itself’, Umberto Eco.

With a sinking heart laden with grievous despair, that my fellow Malaysians is an unadulterated photo of the Malaysian Pavilion currently standing within the Shanghai Expo 2010.

Let’s see now, I really should be objective so what would be a likely interpretation of the pavilion or the circumstances behind it?

1. The way to peoples’ hearts is through their stomach, so getting our pavilion to look very much like a roadside Tom Yam joint should bring in the masses?
2. As a display of sustainable correctness, Malaysia told the Expo organizers not to demolish the temporary site office because with some red, yellow and brown paint, we could make it our pavilion?
3. Someone mixed up the drawings and built the housing of the workers for the pavilion instead of the actual pavilion?
4. We thought we might be able to boast having the highest number of hits or visitors by making our pavilion look like where the public toilets are?
5. Someone misread the brief for the expo and thought that the requirement was for a pavlova instead of a pavilion, hence we ended up building a design meant for a dessert?
6. Rather than go through the rigmaroles and formalities of putting up an official pavilion, we just snuck in and made a squatter pavilion?
7. There was a pondok Pak Guard somewhere that was such an epitome of Malaysia that applying the digital technology of mirror-duplicate and resize to it would result in a pavilion that would be such a showcase for application of technology onto the vernacular?
8. The pavilion intends to attract shopping tourists to Malaysia by giving them a precognition of the kind of buildings to look for when they want the really, really cheap and tacky stuff?

If architecture is a reflection of the peoples, in this case a nation, than what is the pavilion saying about us?  No matter really, because I believe many of us already know that it wasn’t designed in Malaysia.  So whatever it says of us, it is not us who said it ourselves nor want to be said of us.  However, it does say that whenever Malaysia wants to have something to show the world, Malaysia gets others to do it for them.  In that case, what it DOES say about us is that we are most definitely a third-world nation.

Nevertheless, even if that was the route Malaysia chose to take, couldn’t the choice have been made with a sense of aesthetic or integrity higher than that of a street peddler of cheap imitations?

Oh, and by the way, here’s a portion of it at night, enough to illustrate the creative technology of illumination from Malaysia, as would be familiar to anyone who had a budget for blinking lights from Giant or Mydin during a festive season.

Or of course, anyone who has patronised a roadside Tom Yam joint.

To my UPM students of today; [and to those from before.]

During your post jury mortem today you might have realised that I was doing the rounds assessing the final work while the respective jury panels were saying their piece.  That’s what you’d find me doing at all the final juries for the studios I’m involved in.  Today however, I was especially eager to get my marking done fast because, as some of you have noticed, I’ve just had my hair cut and for some reason I thought it was a good idea to use my son’s hair spray to maintain it’s body; but it turned out to not affect me well at all under today’s heat.

Anyway, I was scarcely paying much attention to what was said even though I couldn’t help noticing most of the remarks amplified through the gallery.  I did not pay much heed to those remarks because as I was randomly marking the works, I could not see the validity of such remarks in the works I was assessing – I really could not see how anyone could come up with those comments if they saw the same work that I was marking.  So I was hardly affected by what was said, scathing though it may have sounded.  After all, this was such a normal occurrence for me even in juries at others places like LimKokWing, Taylors, and even UM; which would probably make another interesting thing to write about at some point.

Nevertheless, after all was said and done, and I was asked to address the studio in the aftermath, it was heart rending to see the enthusiastic and eager sea of familiar faces of this morning turn into a sea of zombies.  I do apologise if I appeared nonchalant or insensitive to the whole thing; I never realised how much emotional immunity I have acquired over the years from such phenomena until I was faced with half the cast of Zombieland just now.  Even though I have addressed you on the matter, I did still have a long hard think over the drive back on what was really wrong for such a thing to keep happening over all these years – and here, in a nutshell, is my theory; and it also applies to my students of the past who can still recall similar incidents.

You are simply the victim of design by codes, which is the prevalent modus operandi of most practitioners and the preoccupation of most architectural ‘preachers’.  I won’t elaborate this in theory form because I wouldn’t know where to start nor where to stop.  So I’ll do it by examples, especially on those still fresh with you from today.

Architectural codes are those elements that are being applied to denote some things, such as a porch to denote an entry point, a whooping big door to denote main entrance, a corridor to denote circulation, a guard house denotes security, walls around a floor to denote a space, and so forth – you get the idea.  Of course, these do have a function in the course of denotation but after a while, those functions are taken for granted and the form then becomes codes.  For example, the porch does not necessarily provide shade or shelter for entry but becomes a index or symbol for entry and are used as such even if the entry does not need to be shaded or sheltered from the sun or rain.  A whooping big door is necessary if large amounts of people enter through it regularly but after awhile it becomes a symbol of main entrance or even welcoming even if only a few people go through it sporadically.

If you can grasp that brief introduction to architectural codes, then I trust you can begin to see how wrong your schemes could appear to some, because most of your designs don’t have them – and that is because I never wanted you to rely on them.  But don’t get me wrong, I made sure the functions of those codes were fulfilled in your schemes during tutorials– it’s just that I got you to be creative about how you designed them under the special circumstances of your design development.  Some of you even had problems incorporating those codes into your design and I distinctly remember helping you fulfill those functions without the codes in more idiosyncratic and innovative ways.  That’s why I don’t see that fault in your design.  But to some, the absence of such familiar codes was akin to an architectural crime hence the overly strong and unnecessarily harsh remarks against your efforts.  The most unfortunate part was that it never got across how you solved or fulfilled those functions without the use of familiar codes.  The question of competency then is not yours, unless you can see your own fault in neglecting to explain it to the panel.

Just off the top of my head, these are some further examples based on what happened today:

-                you would not have the typical layout of an office because you did not have the clear demarcation of function of an office like the corridor for circulation nor did you lay out in clear blocks the rooms for functions, or the space saving service core of an office tower.  The reason you did not have them is because those are for huge corporate offices with an impersonal amount of staffing pigeonholed in more departments that what you have; or for offices to be rented out to persons or parties yet unknown.  But yours was only a 25 people office with varying departments which ultimately serve the same service; hence the opportunity to be more casual about inter-spatial and personnel relationships.
-                For someone who relies on space being defined by walls to create a room entered only by a door, a lot of your plans were messy.  That’s because you enlarged corridors to accommodate more informal casual discussion spaces, staff lounges, rest areas, etc.  So you can imagine the horror when these people see that you do not provide rooms to put those functions in – never mind that with only 25 full-time staff, it would be such a dead office building if everyone of them were tucked nicely away into rooms even when they relax.  So for someone whose idea of design is extruded bubble diagrams, your layout would not even be considered covering basic design.  [Strange how ‘basic’ seems to be the way a lot of jurors insist on seeing in a design jury even for the 3^rd year.]
-                Most of you devised staggered security systems that allowed for common spaces to be open out of office hours while the office spaces be secured.  It’s just a shame that this was missed because you did not have a single entry point to everything that can be locked up at one go.  Nor did you have PGFs [Pak Guard Facilities].

-                For someone visiting the offices for the first time, wavy corridors might be a bit daunting.  But if you work there 8/5, you must be such a moron if you still trip over these corridors everyday at work.

-                Personally I prefer parking in basements because they reduce open carbon emissions and surface temperature.  It would have been worth more with energy saving venting devices and encouraging natural light funnels rather than dismissing it altogether.  [Remember, some of your green precedents had basement parking.]

So I hope with those few examples you will believe there was no real negative issue with your output overall; and I’m not saying it just because I’m your tutor and blindly defending your work.  I have my reasons and my logic.  The logic that someone said was missing from your work is probably the logic of codes, which is what I mentioned as conventional logic, which does not necessarily encapsulate design logic, i.e., the logic we were trying to instill into you.

If however you are worried that you are missing something by not going through the design by code method, no worries, it really does not take more than 1 or 2 weeks to come up with such a design.  If you have ever seen the typical way a 5 storey office is laid out you’d understand why.  You could have wrapped the layout in 2 weeks, than spend the rest of the 8-10 weeks working on its form and presentation.  To prove this point, think back to some early sketches you presented in tutorials – they were based on what were typical office layouts.  If we let you go with them, you could have started presenting in mid-term if you got the form you want.  But I personally refuse to allow you to be that mindless and shallow about design – that has always been my personal preference for which I make no apologies or excuses for.

Besides, there were still some of you who did present design by code schemes and they were much favoured by the panel.  It’s just those of you who pushed the envelopes of convention that were vilified.  This does make me wonder, what does innovation really mean to some people?

Anyway, as you’ve been told, you’re not ready for UPM 4^th year.  Well, I hope with what you can see for yourselves, now you can choose the direction you want to take after this and decide where or when you want to continue the next years of your architectural education.  But that’s just one person from 4^th year’s opinion.  As for me, my objective has always been to ensure you have a portfolio worthy of applying to any school even out of here.  So you figure for yourselves then your own worthiness.

On a final note, I thought you dudes and dudesses were collectively rather smart today.  So who were the motley crew that got you a remark on having to dress well?  Someone thought it was her because of her t-shirt, but she looked nice even if it was a collarless shirt.  I guess that’s just one code I can’t tutor on simply because I wouldn’t know how – the dress code.

4 P O A

Four Points of Admonishment

Have you noticed that local teachers, tutors, lecturers, elders, employers, etc., have a certain sequence of points they consistently go through when they reproach or castigate their pupils, students, subjects, youngers, employees, etc.? Here’s how it goes:

1. The “You-all” opening –
   This is where they clump you into some fraternity that seems to be synonymous with the trait or fault for which you are being reproached. Examples, “You-all never seem to realize . . . ”, “You-all just can’t . . .”, “You-all just don’t . . .”, “You-all just won’t . . .”,  – and so forth y’all.  [There are times it's only you in the room being talked to but when they go "You-all . . ", you can't help but wonder who else do they see in the room with you? C'est bizzare!]

   Why? I suppose it’s to shame you into realizing that you belong to a conglomeration of negatives. And of course it goes without saying, that they would in turn shine forth as not being, and could never be, a member of such a gawky gaggle.

2. The “You-know what I went through” reminder –
   This is to begin to tell you in case you didn’t know already, the rigmaroles, trials and tribulations they had to go through for you to be in the position you are in; such as setting up the task for you, nominating you for the task, giving birth to you, etc.

   Why? Feel the guilt you insensitive ingrate!

3. The “In my time” soliloquy –
   Now you hear how they [or others they know] did it, would have done it or how it was done in their personal time-space continuum.

   Why? Apart from making you feel more hapless than they expect you to already – they just enjoy it I guess, because they seem to do it at every other opportunity they think warrants it.

4. “So now, . . . ” -
   By this time, I would have forgotten what the admonishment was for in the first place. This is when they just reiterate what needs to be done, sometimes in a pep-talk manner – probably to give some semblance of relevance or culmination to the three preceding points they were waffling on about. But I’m not normally convinced that this would be the last time we’ll be hearing all this.

   Why? They never tell the ‘how’s that you actually need so you could complete the matter at hand to a level of satisfaction that would immunize you from having to endure further variations of the 4 POAs.

CONCEPTS 2009

Concepts simply refers to what’s in your mind; as opposed to what’s on your mind.

What is in your mind are those intrinsic [internal] qualities that come from your inner make-up at any particular time; these are your likes, dislikes, persona, personal philosophy, paradigm, preferences, etc. So your concepts would be referring to these; which means your architectural concept for a project at any particular time refers to your ‘likes, dislikes, persona, personal philosophy, paradigm, preferences, etc.’ at that time – therefore that project will be put together by you along those lines – of what you like, dislike, are like etc.

What is on your mind are secondhand, extrinsic [external] matters that you pile upon yourselves; these are the ‘what’s and ‘how’s of other people such as how would they respond, what/how would they think, what/how would they want (it), would they like or dislike, etc. These are those haunting or nagging thoughts like “How would they like it to be done?”, “What do they like?”, “They like those kind of things thus I should do it like that”, “What would impress them?”,  “What would make me appear different/intellectual/interesting/radical?” – you get the picture. If you have completed your project based on what is on your mind, chances are strong that you would not have a clue how you are going to present the scheme. You’ll know this if you find yourself going around whining “what is my concept?” because you just can’t bring yourself to admit that your project was propelled by other people’s opinions and preferences that you imagined. Hence the phenomenon of students coming up with aphorisms, maxims or one-liners such as ‘Dynamics in Simplicity’, ‘Fluidity in Motion’, ‘The Confluence of Antediluvian Forces Within the Morphological Stratosphere of Non-Euclidean Geodesic Geometry”. [Okay I admit, I made up that last one.]; or chest-thumping pronouncements like “My concept is Stability” or “My concept is Shelter” or “My concept is Openings” – as if they live in a world of unstable buildings that do not provide shelter or have any windows.

Thus the farce or tragic-comedy that comes about when your project is generated not by concepts based on how you would put things together, but by how you think others want/expect you to put together.

When you work on concepts that refers to what is in your mind, presenting it is a matter of articulation of language; assuming you are bold enough to do so. Notice that architects when describing their works in publication barely start of by saying “My concept is . . .” They just make architectural statements in whatever linguistic manner suits them to get across; and as for those for whom words fail or are insufficient, there are conceptual illustrations such as sketches, paintings, montages, models, sculpture, poetry, haikus, etc.

Despite this brief clarification, you could explain your concept in the way that best suits you but are still faced with tutors and jurors who get in your face and demand, “What is your concept?” and insist that the answer begin with “My concept is …”, and the statement ends in a single breadth. This is especially apparent with those who do not have the word “concept” in their native tongue, which makes it difficult for them to grasp the concept of concepts; hence they have to give it a deliberate form for them to recognize it.

In situations like this, the answer would most likely lie with social-psychological-anthropological-cultural issues involving human relations which is out of the scope of this essay and its author.

The Continual Chain of Colonialism

Will it forever be unbroken?.

There was the historical colonialist era by big burly bearded Europeans. They built for us much sturdier achitecture and broaden our cognisance of building materials and technology. The wider their empires, the more references they brought to our golden shores and built facsimilies of those at our pride and pleasure.

Then they left and we were independent to build our own. So without haste we sent our own to their shores to learn how its done while we made the most of our independence by choosing for ourselves which architecture of theirs we’d like for our shores.

Our own came back and built for us what was going on from the land of those past colonials. At some point in time, the colonials themselves had a change of mind and questioned if they might have got things wrong for themselves. We too wondered if maybe we’ve always been a bit too hasty ourselves in adapting from them. We feared we were losing our identity.

We paused and went in search of it, ironically emulating cultures that were never colonised. But all the while when we were being influenced by the colonials, we never realised how much of our lifestyles had changed accordingly. So when we eventually found our identity, it was almost redundant simply because we do not want to live like that anymore. So not to let it all go to waste, we used what we collected about our identity as a library or catalogue of sorts from which we borrowed heavily and stuck them onto our architecture to make our buildings look like they can only belong to us and nowhere else. They did, and they did not look like they belong anywhere else, because nowhere else would have anything so ridiculous. We were unperturbed, but we eventually ran out of indigenous artifacts to borrow from so we moved forward and borrowed from our colonial past. Suddenly we were proud of our colonial heritage as if we were very proud to have been colonised. The built scapes began to look like the colonials had never left. Or like we could not come up with anything newer or better since.

And all this while we were still sending our own overseas but after they came back full of new promises, they found that time had regressed to the earlier architecture of the colonials whose countries they had just left and whose latest architecture they were eager to introduce back home.

Then three quarters of the world was coming over and we needed to show them that we have moved on since independence from colonial times, and we needed to show them fast. But as our own were preoccupied with the post colonial till it was hard to tell from the original colonial, we got others to come and build for us because they seem to have moved on during those years. They came, they built and they left such an indelible mark that we kept calling them back to do more for us, hence the beginning of another form and era of colonialisation, but this time at our behest.

Now those in the profession including those whom we sent overseas had only to look around locally and emulate the designs of the new colonials. If more competitive designs were required, their contemporaries with more established names were roped in to do them. So much so that soon the name of them alone would be enough to ensure a laudable and well received design. This eventually continued and began to be branded as, well, branding.

So now like some self imposed form of neo-colonialsim, we flock them here to our golden shores to build, no longer at, but for and as, our pride and pleasure.