Recently my brother has completed his bachelors degree in architecture and our house is filled by our collective sigh. Me and my mom who had no clue about the course are well equipped now. It wasn’t my journey but I played a very important role in it and it was a bitter sweet journey. My dad who is an communication engineer didn't have an inkling of what my brother is doing and thought he was acting like a kinder gardener by playing with dough, cutting and pasting chart papers. Little did he know it was my brother’s course work.
During the first year he had this subject MMBC(Material and methods in building construction) and I must say he was terrible at it but still he managed to get a very good grade. All thanks to me and my mom since we made his models. The first assignment was to make a monument out of plaster of Paris. After a thorough research we decided to make Charminar and bought all the necessary ingredients. This is where our treacheries began, We eagerly mixed everything without considering any proportions and poured it into the mould(kitchen utensils)little did we know that we were in for a disaster. After packing everything I saw a Vaseline bottle beside me and I asked my brother about it ,he said that we were supposed to grease the mould with Vaseline and then pour in the mixture .By that time it was a bit too late, my mom tried removing the piece but to her vain the mixture had become rock solid. First she gently patted the vessel to get the piece out. It didn’t budge. Then she started beating the vessels. The shape of the vessels changed but the piece wasn’t willing to come out. Then we had to google it and watch a few videos to succeed in the second attempt. However in this Charminar episode my mom’s precious vessels had become martyrs in the war and till date bear the valiant scars. I think he got a seven on ten because they were a bit broken from the sides.
Next was the Daub and Wattle and don’t get fooled by the fancy name. It is a hut, as usual it was our assignment. This time we managed to get him a nine on ten since unexpectedly it turned out well but for making it we had to go hay hunting and our house was filled with dried hay enough to feed ten cows.
Then came the tensile structure, boulder and phone booth they were not much of a pain or maybe we had become experts by then I think it is the latter. Then he designed a very complicated bus stop. For me and you a bus stop is supposed to have a shed and bench who knew that he would design a very fancy bus stop with rainwater harvesting. By that time we both were fed up and refused to help him with the model ,somehow he managed to make it though not perfect but decent enough. Everything was fine with the model but the material he used for making it didn’t like the paint and it took five coats of silver paint to make it stick. All his models whether small or big received royal treatment so they went to college and came back home in cab.
By this time our house was filled with rolls of various papers, even his room wasn't enough to accommodate all his paraphernalia. A normal pencil costs fifty paisa but the pencils he used were ninety rupees each. We were shocked to know that some of the pencil sets were available on EMI. Who knew that we’d see these days .Stationery shop owners and art suppliers considered us to be VIP customers. I still remember the materials list the college had given which was longer than the great wall of China. He had only one textbook the Banister Fletcher it was one big fat book which weighed more than me at that time, which he never opened and is being used as a weight.
Time flew he finished first year and his model making business came to an end and everything became more digital he started learning new software and started drafting on computer though it was not messy like drawing on sheets and model making but it had its own cons. Frequently the computer used to hang because of heavy design or it used to take hours together to render a structure. My brother who never finished work on time and always waited for the last minute. This habit costed him a lot just the night before submission his computer hanged then somehow he managed to finish the design and just half and hour before the viva he was at the printing shop taking print outs and reached the venue just in time. I must say it was a narrow escape. Also during this time we used to get a daily dose of software talk. He used to talk about sketch up, Revit ,CAD,3D,twin motion though we didn't understand much me and my mom both nodded our heads in agreement since we didn't have to make models anymore.
He was inspired by the legendary architect Zaha Hadid, all his designs were complex, difficult for us normal human beings to understand ranging from buildings in the shape of barcode and what not. Though he was bad in model making I must mention that he is very creative. His designs were very original and very unique and some of his best works include sports village, mixed development center and the best idea he came up with was the transit parking facility near his college. Though he is a procrastinator and is very lazy he has a thorough knowledge of all the buildings in the world .Whenever I needed help in naming something he is the first one to come up with the best idea.
At the blink of an eye it was his last semester and he had to complete his thesis .The thesis project was to design a science center .he spent months in designing it, the science center resembled the structure of an atom .He showed us the walk through ,you might be wondering what’s an walk through It is a short video which gives you a virtual tour of the designed building .His walk through made us The witches of Oz as it whizzed us through the walls and made our heads spin. With the completion of his thesis he finished his degree. During his final year he started dealing with more advanced software with fancy names like Maya, grasshopper and rhino.
Now he has entered the design world and is planning to pursue higher studies in the field of parametric architecture. I wonder what new stunts he is going to pull in masters degree, Let’s see if I get a chance to write a sequel :)
