Prarambh

03-10-2020

Glenn Murcutt, in his acceptance speech for “The Pritzker Architecture Prize” in 2002 said:

“I have always believed in the act of discovery rather than creativity. Any work that exists, or which has the potential to exist is related to discovery. We do not create the work. I believe we, in fact, are discoverers”. 

This quote resonates with me. I think that being a discoverer means being aware of the unfolding of the world around, being curious to observe and to question, notice the stories going on around, engage all senses to perceive the surroundings and having an extended sense of wonder, to create intimate dialogues leading to a desire to influence these immediate and mediated surroundings.

Life is all about new ventures and I have started one with my master’s studies. Being an architect, I am not new to design field. But, looking at art and design as a way of thinking, being & seeing is assuredly new. Developing a “System thinking” the phrase used by Srivi (my program coordinator), is about being aware of all the connections and layers of a system, troubleshooting problems in that system and designing for it. What am I and why am I making it? Which side of the world I want to place myself? How to be ecologically aware? How to responsibly design (social design)? These are some of the larger questions that I must dwell upon in this new journey.

“Reimagining transitions” the program that I have enrolled myself in, is about looking at the world in transition, observing the macro shifts that are happening and how to contribute as a designer for bringing a micro shift in that. The world is currently facing the pandemic of “Covid-19”, the world we knew before this and the world we are in are totally different. Thinking about the transitions by living in transition is intriguing for me, it is like both myself and the world are parallelly building the resilience to deal with the shift.