Mohammad Irfan Andhikaputra – Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember

The Tip of the Iceberg in Architecture

As I wrote this letter, I have been passing a whole 2 months of internship in RAW Architecture. Overall, my last impression is “real architecture knowledge lays on these real workshop of architecture firm, college gets you nothing”. These past two months has taken many of my time, since work at here is over a 12-hours per day. Most of my time I felt so exhausted, because it is out of my habit to get home at late night. At first I really felt uncomfortable with the work hours in here, but as the time goes by, I managed to adapt myself to the work hours here. I think this is like an introduction for me, that the world of architecture must have taken your whole day. It is not like I’m blaming the time management here, but I think we should be able to push our self until the rest of the day. Architecture has taken most of my time here, drawing, thinking, reading, and wandering give myself a new thought for architecture. I’m impressed here that the everyone here work at almost 10PM to 11PM per day, and everyone seems to love their own works. I think I should take their positive energy of work till the end of the day. Though that I’m still at the development stage of becoming architect, hopefully, I need to learn more about architecture, and I need to reveal those ‘rest of the iceberg’ by having real work at architecture firms. Formal education may provide me with the ship that I could use for sailing in search for architecture, but the architecture knowledge sank between the huge iceberg in the vast ocean. So this is like the beginning in my journey.

RAW Architecture has been really nice since the people here are willing to teach the interns. Of course, I earn so much at for this last two months, not only I felt better at technical skills such as drawing and illustrating, but I also feel improved in my teamwork skills. I met new people, with different background and different thought. I think the beauty of teamwork lays in those disagreement, disapproval, and how to reduce our egos for the sake of team. Architecture has so many different philosophy, different nature for each person, but here everyone seems to compromise that, to be a singular team and produce a well-designed works. I think that the most important of learning architecture, to be able to work in team, and work as a team. Here, the standard operation procedure is used properly, start from basic things like color pallets until the more complicated things like render settings, and to follow that rule means to be able work in team.

Architecture has a very wide scope to learn, and may take years to fully understand what architecture is. I think this is a small step for my journey to really understand architecture, and RAW Architecture has provided me with the right provision for my early learn of architecture. I felt more ready to continue my learning in architecture.

I’ll miss my time here exposed by gentle breeze through the perforated panel, surrounded by concrete and metal, while I kept learn to understand architecture.

Thank You. RAW Architecture.

Regards,

Mohammad Irfan Andhikaputra – Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember