Happy Independence Day!!
Since tomorrow is our Independence day, I thought of making a list of things that architects (and mostly me) would love freedom from.
1. Those *$#%#$%% Byelaws!
I understand why municipal authorities make building byelaws. They want to maintain a certain minimum quality of buildings and having some basic guidelines is usually a great idea. Sadly, these have mutated into a monstrosity that nobody has had the foresight to change with the changing times. They are archaic, unreasonable, non-contextual, non site-specific and do not take into account a million technological innovations that have taken place since they were first written on papyrus. My pet hate - setbacks! Why the hell do we need to leave setbacks? Some of us architects are smart enough to decide how much space we need to leave around a building and possibly the best judge of that on a particular site.
2. Irresponsible Contractors
If you ask me, the biggest hurdle to making a great building is not having a great client(although it is a prerequisite) and not being the best designer(i am sure other people have this problem) but getting it built to a certain quality! Anyone who has tried even the smallest of home projects will agree that the toughest issue is trying to make people understand the notion of quality - It requires a shift in attitude and cant be done overnight. Good contractors understand that quality matters and Great contractors have people at site who understand that quality matters. It is definitely top-down approach and like i said, the attitude of the actual person working at site is the most critical component of getting the job done right.
3. The CAD Monkey Approach
I often say this in college(I teach at my alma mater) that designing & drafting are two very different things. There are so many times during a day when I sketch out something only for it to be handed back to me as a print with a thousand things wrong. The problem is not that there is a lack of drafting skill or a lack of comprehension of what was required. The problem is that the importance of the end result was lost in the translation of the medium. While the discussion was happening on paper, there are ideas and mutual understanding. The moment the CAD screen comes up, the lines are simply an abstraction of the issue and take precedence. The reason of why the drawing has to be made gets lost in the actual making of the drawing. I struggle with this in office occasionally but as employees slowly understand what is required from the drawing, their design skills improve to match their drafting skills. Drawing is only what is required to communicate design.
4. Delhi's Unbelievable Traffic
Do you live in Delhi? If not, then you simply won't understand. Let me tell you what I did today. I started off in Vasant Vihar, went to Anand Niketan(1km), then ITO(18km), Sunder Nagar(6km), Defence Colony(3km), Kailash Colony(4km), Panchsheel Park(6km) and back to Vasant Vihar(8km). One of our senior site supervisors is off for the week and I thought I might have a look at some of the ongoing projects in the city. I actually thought I could cover some more, but by the time we reached mid-way, I cancelled some of them. Let me give you a summary of the distance travelled, time actually spent in site review and total time spent from start to finish. I travelled all of 46km, spent a sum total of 4hours 40minutes in meetings(of which 2hours and 45minutes were in one long one) and was out for 7hours and 30minutes. That's a 2hours and 50minutes on the road to travel 46km. Admittedly, I was driven around, so it wasn't personally stressful and I did get some sketching done in the back, but really! What a colossal waste of everyone's time.
5. Technology that Acts Up
As architects we spend a whole lot of time in trying to make things better. We take time to design spaces well, even going so far as to simplify construction details so that things are easier to build. Why can't everybody do their job properly? I hate it when technology that is working just fine for 6 months suddenly decides that some TLC is required. Printers, Phones, Networks, Software - you name it and something related to it is going wrong as I type this (Ctrl+S) Why cant things simply work the way they are supposed to? I understand that things grow old and malfunction from use/abuse, but then we must establish a reasonable period of how long a product is supposed to last when we buy it. If HP told me that the printer is going to be tip-top for the first year(the warranty period, how ironic), may act up from year 2 to year 4 and thereafter may simply pack up without warning, I probably wouldn't be very upset when it happens. Be predictable please.
That's enough of a wishlist for now. Have a good weekend(those of you who are deviously going to take Friday off) and Happy Independence Day!
Ak
p.s. I made that graphic from a pictures of our projects and was pleasantly surprised with the result so its going on the home page of our website for the day.
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