Men at Work

“Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.” -Theodore Roosevelt

There was one competition of high rise building,  we tried to push new ideas, spending time quite a bit to solve the planning. We proposed about having integrated atrium connecting office, meeting, and public space on one linear space connected by building facing north to south and respecting the scale and treatment of the heritage building adjacent. We did several workshop, testing bits pieces,  in order to learn much from this project.

Personally I really don’t care about winning or losing this project, there were 3 things in my mind working on this competition : First, to test the strength of process and production of our current team right now, Is the chemistry and coordination strong enough ? . Second, is to have fulfilment session to address the people in the studio, trying to appreciate their time and idea. The third, is to commit myself that this is great learning curve, and obviously we do, I really do learn in this project, for the calculation of the energy in the building, the execution of ideas, and the most difficult part, how to make the design work in terms of operational. In this third idea, the learning curve is exercised, and we need to be confident that our process were great.

In many design exercises, people tend to ask for answers. I really believe dan there are hunger of explorations in the most creative people. This creative people, whom I called them restless spirits, tend to be more cooperative, less – self centred and more willing to help other people. I tried to help them grow, nurturing their ideas. Facing all of the people in the studio, looking at the effort, reminded me of Gretchen Rubin when she asked, what did I do in our spare time ? She found that her co clerks at the supreme court : they read law journals for fun, they talked about cases during their lunch hours, they felt energised by their efforts. They showed enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is more important to mastery than innate ability, it turns out because the single most important element in developing an expertise is your willingness to practise, you’re better off pursuing a profession that comes easily and that you love because that’s where you will be more eager to practice and thereby ear a competitive advantage. I really enjoy the fun of failure. Let’s not afraid to fail.

Many people worked very hard, I looked at them on 5 a.m in the morning, everybody were very tired, and was sleeping. I felt a sleep quite bit of times at desk, sleeping- waking in the need to wake up and did the model for the development. In my mind, I remember few years back, when me and Iyok, were at the studio of DP Architect in Singapore, just both of us, turning off the lights of the studio. 

Actually, I felt guilty to have people staying this late in the office. Suddenly the face of one of the Rimba popped up in my messenger, and telling about how grateful he was, and how much he learnt in this project, and willing to push more.
I have been so fortunate to be accompany with all of beautiful people in RAW studio, there are two things matter most, first who are willing to try premise by premise, testing it, sometimes right and sometimes wrong. let the process flow. I thanked all of these efforts. Second, I looked at the product, and felt very happy with the result, and will give my best thoughts, ideas, to give the best appreciations to their efforts in this moment, this time. It’s commitment to appreciate the process.

[1] Rubin, Gretchen. The Happiness Project.