Friday, June 20, 2008

archi-students

days of being archi-students . . .

I don't know what came over me recently but I somehow realised that I do miss learning about architorture architecture. I miss being an archi student.

Amazingly.

**please note that this is in reference to only myself and those I know.
even then, not all are like what's being mentioned... ok, maybe it's just me and my mates...**


I dunno how to start on this. Right from the days back in school, we hardly get any planning right.

HARDLY.

Maybe it's true, what they say about design students. Especially those in architecture.

The reason we seem eternally stressed is not because of the deadlines.

It's because we PROCRASTINATE to meet them deadlines.

We're screwed up like that.

But that makes student life all the more interesting, doesn't it?

We're known to play hard sometimes. Becaused we worked our asses off. Fun only taste sweeter when you've already tasted the bitterness of misery. Whatever.

ANYWAY.

While wandering into Borders Bookstore the other day, I came upon the design section and I can't help reminiscing the good old days of browsing through the likes of such books in Page One @ Ngee Ann City. Or Marine Parade library. Or the library @ Orchard.

Then there's that magazine stall at Holland Road, boasting a heyuuuge variety of books and mags of all kinds. We patronised there for our monthly dosage of design mags like Wallpaper, d+t, Space, ISH etc.

And these mags cost a bomb, going by our available budget then, as students. We usually scrimp and save just to purchase them. Most of the time, we end up buying one type of mag each and exchange them amongst those in our clique.

The initial reason for them mags were to get us design ideas/inspirations. It wasn't long before it became a habit. I still continued buying those mags even after I started working. Especially since I boast a better spending power then and became so spoilt for choice. Took me sometime to wean off those gorgeous pictures.

A few days back, YEARS after I last bought such mags, I caught sight of them again. Stacked neatly beside a well-postured man, dressed all prim and proper, albeit looking pretty chic with his stylishly-coiffed hair, ironed shirt rolled till the elbows and those neatly crossed legs fitted with ALDO shoes.

I can't help stifling a chuckle. If that's the typical image potrayed by those taking interest in such mags, just how do we come off like, back in those days?

A boisterous bunch of teens, usually 4 guys and a girl, dressed drably in frumpy jeans and t-shirts, mangy portfolio cases hung on their shoulders or a scruffy drawing tube slung across their backs.

And when cutting through Time Square @ Millenia Walk late one night, hours after the office crowd have retired to the comforts of their home, I can't help reflecting on those days when I sat in the middle of the square, music plugged in my ears and balancing a booklet of butter paper, trying to gain inspiration from the people and their surroundings, sketching furiously all the ideas that came to mind.

Hey, I think I wrote about this before...!

Then there's walking around and snapping photos of buildings till we end up having (much) more photos of them than of human subjects. And those days, digitial camera was still non-existent, okay?

To make it worse, we didn't even take photos of ourselves back then! Now I hardly have any photos of my mates from back in those days. Why waste film on people when we got buiding facades to snap? Or gorgeous interiors for ideas?

Now they are collecting dust in a shoebox somewhere... Pfft! -_-

And how I never drank coffee until my dad made me a cup to help me stay awake when I'm 3 days away from my deadline, struggling to finish something meant to be done since 3 weeks back.

That one cup led to another and over a period of less than a year, I upgraded myself to be a 'kopi-kaw' drinker. That, or a triple shot at Starbucks.

My longest night-without-sleep record?? Almost 50 hours. 4 horrendous nights that I have to endure. The one that concluded with the last sumission for my final year project. The one where I hallucinated so badly that I thought my face had turned black. Or the light from a distant airplane was a fireball headed towards me. Really!

I regained back mental stability after sleeping the rest of the day away.

And a couple days back, I saw an award winning design by a top architecture firm here. The design was reminiscent of a commercial building I proposed for my final-year project. Theirs was a residential development.

And how the inspiration was derived from a Norman Foster design. Ditto.

And they used a pneumatic system for their rubbish disposal! That's what my friends and I proposed for our 2nd-year condominium project. That was almost 7 years back, man!

I'm proud of the fact that something similar to what I've thought of years back eventually became and award winning design... Hah! As if!

. . . . . . .

Guess, I've been mulling over those days, huh? I miss them...! :'(

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