The Law, a very long digression into Architecture and Planning, and the significance of Hardware and Software and a hop back into Architecture :P

I wanted to be a lawyer... operative suffix... -ed... :D    Like everyone else - I thought lawyers were cool - with specimens such as Ally Mcbeal, or Tom Cruise in the Firm... etc. etc. Of course it wasn't just a shallow, superficial career option... I really did generously think I had the... uh... powers of reasoning to cut it.

Of course this was well before I went all out into architecture... I told my folks about this thing with the Law... my mom was not so sold - she said that I'll have to pony up the grades to make it into a decent pre-law / law program. Dad on the other hand - in his typical response to non-architecture/design careers for his son - poo-pooed the idea as a product of youthful ignorance.

So I decided to take up Architecture instead - and as so often discussed in my previous blogposts - learned to love and cherish a profession - that in my mind gives me the best opportunity to help change / shape our world into something relatively better.

And as I got more into the nitty-gritty of design - as what usually happens to my peers - I evolved an even bigger ego and quite ignorantly got self-absorbed about the ability and omnipotence of the designer. As Winston Churchill pointed out - and I carelessly paraphrase - We shape our buildings, and our buildings shape us. I was proud about the fact that - not only did we think and imagine things - we produced tangible products. Something that couldn't be said about a profession that I used to aspire to - where lawyers spew out arguments - architects were designing and building real things.

But something interesting happened - the deeper I got into design - the more I realized how innately powerless the designer/architect was with respect to the much broader context in which we all operate in. This conflict is so pervasive in the history of Architectural and Planning discourse that it has birthed the Post-Modern movement in architecture - contrary to the massive tabula-rasa prescriptive change that the Modernists advocated for - Architects fell into the bottomless pit of petty form-making - resigned to being powerless to the real (albeit) harsh demands of the clients - developers - governments - and markets.

This scared the bejeezus out of me -  where does that leave me? An architect not so intent on "form-making" or "trending" or "imagemaking." Sure as hell - at least on a superficial level - I'm the furthest from trendy, fashionable, or imageable. Where does an oldschool, stuck-in-rational functionality, modernist like myself belong in an age where architects are turned by the fates into "make-up artists" for the built environment?

Koolhaas writes so well about this - (although I'm nowhere near this Starchitect's stature) he talks about how powerless he is when dealing with the reality and context of his work.

Then I went into Grad School - and during that short stint - I was rattled from my "architect/designer" frame of mind and was introduced to the concept of strategy and policy. While I was busy thinking about how to compensate for my lack of "form-making" ability - my professors dismantled the whole notion of form-making on an urban level and focused on the various factors that shape our urban environment. In their eyes (probably in everyone else's) - buildings were all the same - boxes.

Where the architect grapples about "puffed-up" mundane issues such as materials, the textures, windows, the "sexiness" of a building, etc. The planner sees numbers, populations, market demand, capital flows, traffic, etc.

That is the difference of architecture/design and urban/city/environmental planning. And as an architect trying to learn about urbanism/urban design - its embarrasing to be the mundane joe stuck at 1:300m while your mentors are busy hovering at 1:10,000m

That's when I realized that at the end of the day - design can only take you so far - hardware is as good as useless without the software to govern and help people use it.

Fast forward to today... with me serving  boyfriend BARops for Patring - seeing just a short segment of what is an entire spectrum of hard slogging in their development as lawyers. I get a glimpse of the software that governs and conducts everything else.

As I start seeing things on the other side of the fence - the more I am humbled as a designer - it puts things in perspective. Removing the blinders of specialization truly opens a whole host of doors into wisdom. While its good to build the professional depth needed to practice competently - it would be a tragic mistake not to build up the breadth of experience and understanding of the plural voices and factors that whirl in the real world's vortex.

It was good to see that - while idealistic "hardware" guys like my peers were learning the ropes - a fresh batch of equally idealistic "software" people were also being concurrently produced. God-willing - with a lot more of these kinds of people - hope is not lost.  

And taking a page from Rem Koolhaas - Maybe that's what separates the good architects from the true visionaries - the ability to see beyond form - into everything else. Its one thing to nit-pick a plan of rooms - its another to question the need for rooms and spaces. As architects - we're starting to see this trend - computers, technology and modern materials and techniques have allowed us to break down the previous cartesian limitations of form making - our more progressive colleagues have explored a multitude of tectonic possibilites - sexy indeed - but I find that the most relevant and interesting work comes from the designers who are able to question and disassemble the premises for doing the work and doing it a specific way.

The frontiers of design no longer lie in the notion of form - but in our ability to break and reassemble the program - the uses - the rules that govern how we work and the reasons for the doing the work.

Now... back to work.

GODSPEED TO PATRING AND ALL THE BARRISTERS! 2 weeks nalang! Todo na to! :D \m/ RAK!



 
  
 

From SG to MNL

3-plus months after making the jump from SG to Manila... I finally get the chance to sit down and write about the change... It feels like a past life - the 2 years I spent in Singapore have (on several instances) flashed before my eyes... the people I've met, lived with and worked alongside in grad school and P&T/Surbana... the life lessons... the fun and hard slogging that went hand-in-hand.

While the decision to move back was easy to make - the lead up to the leap back was fraught with worry and distress - although I had an idea of what I'll be jumping into, one never fully knows until you're in the thick of it. Emotional eating and weight gain aside - I don't regret the process and I've fully embraced the challenges of making my life in Manila work.

The truth is... we all wish for the best of everything - what we end up with is somewhere in between our best hopes and our worst fears...

I've exchanged my independence and stress-free environment for the warmth and love of my family - and the pressure / expectations of the family business and the responsibilities of being the proverbial glue in my family's dealings.

I've traded a long distance relationship - for a real-time, face-time relationship and have learned what it really means to be in one... the realization is that... long distance relationships become problematic not because of the distance - but because they make you comfortable with the idea of half-assing your efforts - token, stop-gap webcam time, emails and text messages can only take you so far... so much of relationships take place on real-time and it  takes a certain degree of self-deception to be "ok" with it.

I've temporarily let go of the idealism and prescriptive structure of Singapore and the practice of urban design - for the crazy free-for-all, free-market chaos of the Philippines - a part of me is at a loss trying to figure everything out - but another part of me (probably the Pinoy part) is happily taking everything in-stride as part of life "back home." Our time to make a change will come - in the mean time I shall partake in the spectacle that is our beloved country.

I've quit on the idea of being a small guy doing someone else's big work, and have taken on the challenge of helping build something I can say I am truly part of. I've taken the challenge to build the dream - no matter how small the steps are, how arduous the climb and how frustrating it is to build and grow an architectural practice in the Philippines.

Mahirap. Matindi ang kompetisyon. Hindi man napakaganda ng mga nakukuhang proyekto - pupuwede na rin dahil at least sa amin ito - kelangan lang pagbutihan - kokonti man ang bala - basta magaling at masipag - makakatama din kami.

Mahirap din kasi minsan - nakakakalimot ako na in a way, I've rescinded on my independence to take up this challenge - from a no-stress free-agent in Singapore - all of a sudden I'm back in College - being mentored by my Dad - ano nangyari? parang tumanda akong paurong - it takes a lot of prayer and introspection to remind myself na I'm in an old man's profession - and that I still need to learn from my old man - until I myself am an old man.

I've let go of the open-endedness for the chance to build. To build what - I'm not quite sure yet - its under construction.

Now enough of the talk - its back to the walk.

\m/