Course is starting

20 February 2016 The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder. – Ralph W. Sockman

I had a discussion with David about creating bridge between academic and practice. We have a wish to bridge the gab, by introducing course to the young architect. He came up with such interesting proposition, two streams, critic and design. David will guard the critic part and me the design part. The lecture is starting today. I found it interesting because, some of the problem, what we called it appreciation happened because the public is just lacked of information about our profession.

“The lowest form of popular culture – lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives – has overrun real journalism. ” Carl Bernstein

David wrote some part of the critic which will improve the understanding of issue, building thinking and critical framework on appreciating architecture.

” “Design is not the icing on the cake but what makes architecture out of buildings and the places we want to live and eat and shop rather than avoid. Instead of less talk, what need are more critics – citizen critics – equipped with the desire and the vocabulary to remake the city. “(Alexandra Lange)
The main objective of architecture is to accommodate activities of man through making a place of space. Therefore, we can know the quality of architecture by assessing on how it performs it to function. This might be a rudimentary or even old-fashioned – explanation on architecture yet it becomes more vital now. Nowadays as building technology and design technology have been developing so advance, we have more architectural discourses on its quality of space, details, and form making. Even though in essence architecture is still doing what it does yet it is getting more complex. In other words, architecture becomes more difficult to understand since now it is weaved with many layers.

In this manner, we need someone who can translate and digest the thick layers of architecture in order for people to understand and to make a judgment on architecture. This is significant of the role of the critic. A good criticism will connect people to architecture and in a way will put architecture back to its place as a spatial medium for a man to live their life.

This course is not aiming to train or to produce professional critic. The aims of this course are to encourage everyone to conduct a good and fair criticism. By the end of this course, we expect that each participant can write criticism in a proper framework, logic, and structure with fun. Fundamentally, the operation of criticism is an act to put something or many things into its/their proper places and order. Therefore in the era of overwhelming social media and information, we have to encourage more people to think critically, to be more patience and calm in judgment and hopefully they can share their critical thought to public through many expressions; writing, exhibitions, or publications.”

Then, I wrote some of other paragraph for the design stream, this course actually is not learning in a master class, it’s more about practicing design. It’s about all of the basic thing being an architect.

“While we are designing, we are remembering all of our aspect of our childhood, our training, and time of practicing. Being a fresh graduate, The expectation of being an architect increased, from time to time, yet the profession is getting critical than before. Building technology, material are invented in every second. The industry changing, economy changing, culture changing, the context is changed but the foundation is never changed. In order to be able to practice, you have to learn the foundation of skill as an architect. It’s about knowing what you know, then do it fluently, sometimes without you are noticing because it is in your spirit. The skill is flowing, because of the design foundation.

The design foundation consists of three components. First It’s about mastering skill as an architect or realizing your expedients. Expedients mean the resource that you have in your starting design processes iterations such as previous design experience, background or even the most important cash flow.Having expedients is the most and first critical point to be an architect.

Second the skill to maintain all of the relationships in between man to man or it is an alchemy, and the effort to designing the building, Alchemy means a seemingly magical process of transformation, creation, or combination of man to man, man to society.

Third is about experiments, it is an elaboration of the set of the deep layer of skill on practicing, to keep the intention, and perfecting the product, Experiments means a scientific procedure undertaken to make a discovery, test a hypothesis, or demonstrate a known fact. Then at the end, by going through these three cycle, architect forms a system for self-criticism to create another iteration in his or her life to be his or her own master. One master in architecture will believe that designing is sacred activity believing that doing architecture is more to nurturing our own spirit, it’s more to devotion.

This course aims for the participant to be able to practice being an architect or just increasing the appreciation of architect’s profession. This course won’t teach you being a star architect, or act like one. The aims of this course are to coach the good young architect generation. By the end of this course, we expect that each participant can have good architecture practice framework, know how to to analyze, to critic and to design, functional building by integrating MEP, Structure, and program, set a reasonable fee, contract, knowing your own limit and resources, and conduct a good practice for establishing career as an architect with optimism. Being architect is about to serve people with design capability and design responsibility.”\

I do hope what we are doing in this course will do good for young generation of architects as what we have been given so much thing in this profession. Greg, Fandi, and Rezki finally smiled, the class is already begun, and I am extremely happy, and look forward to see the alchemy started.