Well Well..Good evening ladies and gentlemen here. Tonight i would like to share something very critical to me. Now i have been practicing architecture for 4 years now and oh boy oh boy what a ride its been...Unbelievable ...especially to me...entering the profession with the highest of spirits believing in power of architecture to transcend our lives..to the levels the practice in India runs to the overall scenario India is developing in. It is insane.

The pace, the demand, the supply, the needs, the wants, the engagements. I have dealt projects ranging from a few sq. meters to 750 acres. We are just growing like weed all over the place. On one side its been a wonderful time exploring the realities of our field and on the other the things it comes along with. It is an extremely demanding profession not only in terms of creativity but passion, agility, perseverance, patience, balance, people management and much more. Ethics and values is something i would like to bring to light here seems to be literally taking a huge toll in the real practice. While it is on extreme ends with no ethics and values based practice to intensively ethics and value based practices.

The flux we are in is crazy and it is expanding beyond imagination. The way it is moving forward is completely going to change the way we EXIST. The planetary scale interventions of technology, globalization, AI's inclusion at urban scale, algorithmic governance models, cinema and photography's role in reading and perception of architecture to the mass, journalism's interpretation and expression of contemporary ways of building and existing is taking it to the next level. A level which I guess will define the avant garde of this century. This is the moment guys, WE are a part of a revolutionary process which will sway the world in new dimensions and ways of inhabiting life.

I am at a junction in my discovery of architecture where clouds seem to be pretty intense as it does get in the monsoons of Bengaluru. The experience from creating a meaningful impact to the world and contributing through the wonderful medium of spaces to not giving a fuck about what happens to the world, first take care of yourselves and then think and do for the world. It hits you, shakes you, tests you, grinds you to a place where you doubt hope, you question the existing realities and everything that you believe in. The core asks from within in, is it all worth... all of this chaos ?

You strive to be a self reliant individual, independent and responsible for your own self, taking matters in hand not just for your own life but the larger whole and do the best for it. But do we really know or understand the whole standpoint of where we are at this given point in time ? Do we really understand things in the perspective it is needed to be understood or are we simply getting carried away with the current trends and other things our society and our own evolution has to offer us.

We have discovered the true potentials of our race over a period of 1000's of years of evolution. To quote my dear friend koko here - " I have great great contempt for our whole human civilization". Now this ain't no kid talking this stuff, a 65 year old man with a great experience of life sharing this... What are we upto ? what have we got down to ? where are we heading to ? I have experienced some really questionable attitudes and ways people are living and existing around, doing business, collaborating for pure personal gains, benefits and satiation's..which completely disrupts the overall premise of what we are today. or rather what have be become!

We are animalistic at our cores i get it, but we also have evolved to greater depths to grow out of it. We literally within our fraternity itself behave and work in ways which demeans our entire reason for existing as a field or a profession.

I guess we internally within our faculty of minds as architects need to really re-look into the way we want to proceed further. Look, we are already collaborating leaps and bounds with other interdisciplinary faculties from psychology to visual communication to art to computer sciences to robotics to mechanics...but are we really at the true core of our own faculties to collaborate in such massive scales. Yes i am concerned, because it is out of control. The impacts are massive and the demands are immediate. The supply time is already running short at the pace we need to respond.

After this deep involvement in different faculties myself besides practicing architecture in everyday life I am certainly at a threshold where i am skeptical of the next step/steps. At one point corporations are in full swing planning, machine's take over on the industry and at the same time there are firms which are firmly grounding themselves, Both working in isolation's with their own challenges. Eco architecture has become the trend where regular stuff you used to build was nominal has become the high end style of building costing 5 times the regular things..

We are a young nation trying to live all utopias of other developed nations as they don't have that level of building to do and at the same time struggling to figure out our own utopias and what we really need. We are an adaptive clan by nature and adjust in all things, but this is really scaring me on levels of not just individuality but also existence as humans.

While i know this is a very random abrupt piece of writing, i hope it makes sense to someone...

I just hope and hope i always will as it is has no limits, that we turn around and really figure this out for our own futures sake.

Do you feel the same way? let me know your comments on the same..

Thanks