Sketches

What I have learned from my studio class

RUS104 is a mandatory, studio class for Housing, Building and planning students. This class comprises lots of practical, hands-on drawing, building skills required for an architecture student. 

I have to say that a good, 4 months of going through this course has enabled me to think about art in a more creative and out of the box manner. I have to admit I had not paid too much attention to art appreciation in the last decade or so as I was busy chasing my ambition in the corporate world. To me, the first year of architecture school has a heavy emphasis on art appreciation - how to sketch, draw, paint with watercolor, shading , etc. which is why I relate my experience from this class to art appreciation frequently.

That said,the weekly project showcase session (sharing of students' work) and interaction with the lecturers gave me a perspective of the type of work that people here of this generation admires or appreciates, which is contemporary, modern art or architecture. I, of course, had a hard time accepting this as fact since I have a strong preference towards traditional, organic elements fused with contemporary style. That may be because having been away from this country for a long time has allowed me to appreciate the beautiful, intrinsic, traditional art from this region better. Part of the reason of choosing to study architecture in this part of the world is so I can have a piece of the "Malaysiana", South East Asian influence in my future "art" work. I really hope that my peer and lecturers will learn to understand that I am not merely choosing "old" designs because I'm "old" but to know that there's gems in the rich, traditional South East Asian architecture and artwork. Do not lose touch with it! 

Lastly, now that I'm a more mature student, I have to say my art appreciation and design influence is heavily governed by my logic, practicality and definitely business sense. It was hard to let my ideas fly wild like most other students did without compartmentalizing it into my reality thinking box. I would always go, "seriously, you wouldn't want that for your house?" Or "you would have to pay me thousands of $ to like what you proposed and preached." But lots of times I've learnt to bite my tongue and try to see it from others' perspective. I learnt to be a kid who dreams without boundaries and learnt to dream like an academia. Till one day, my mentor, who has worked and taught as an architect gave this piece of advice to me - this is your time to go wild with your designs. You don't get to do too much of that in the real world. I can accept this for now.

We will see what the next step brings...