Whats on your mind? asks Facebook every day. And I try my level best to sincerely answer it daily but like some inquisitive child it continues to ask me, and I again try to answer the same quite dutifully. For some reason, its curiosity is never satiated. I find the boundary between what is on ones mind, and what is out there in the real world -- or even the possibility of doing something there creating a lot of confusion. I am all for transgressing boundaries. The story of Narasimha is one of my favourites. It very clearly explains how it is critical to cut across boundaries and search for serendipitous connections from one field into others. My lectures, notes are full of analogies of such synapses However, there is more to this than what meets the eye. The boundary that I see people sometimes straddling -- between ones own mind and one out in the real world -- that boundary is one that I do not accept. Because such a boundary is actually not really a correct one to begin with. Let me explain. The mind is, well, just minding its own business. It is supposed to get into wild ways of imagination. And those ways can go in various directions. Our mind can even have imagined fears. Imagined hopes, too, surely. But even imagined evils. There is no end to what the mind can conjure up. That is its business. That is what it is supposed to do. The mind lives in its own universe The physical reality out there is experienced by our physical senses at every instance. There is something happening there all the time. What makes each instance in the physical world tick? It is the culmination of many factors -- we humans think we know a fair amount of the reasons. But do we? As an architect, I can see a building come up and possibly walk through a checklist of people and their decisions that made that building come up. But even then, the list can never be complete. The actions of nature on that building, for example, can never be known. And the myriad of actions carried out by humans on the building can never be fully explained. There is a narrow, holy path which a designer has to excruciatingly walk from one universe -- that of his/her mind -- all the way to the physical universe. The path is treacherous. We designers need to make our mind to open our mouths to spew out decisions, move our hands about and do all sorts of contortions, metaphorically sometimes, and sometimes truly so, till people around realize that the designer in us is pregnant with a design which is now emerging into the real world. Of course, similar actions and walking of similar paths from other collaborators minds to the real world would also be happening. Sometimes, those holy paths does get navigated by many collaborators and every once a while, something does get deposited into the real world. For a sensible design to emerge in the physical universe, the designer has to smartly transgress various fields of knowledge as the design is being worked out in his/her mind And once the design is out there in the real world, it has to make real connections to many different aspects of the physical universe. So a building cannot just look good. It has to sensitively respond to climate and protect the occupants accordingly. It has to demurely step-back and let the occupants do whatever they need to do there, as per their privacy and other behavioural requirements. It has to ensure that the materials used in there degrades gracefully so that the left-overs do not harm anyone. And so on. In short, a good design also need to transgress and satisfy requirements of many different fields. Just like a human, who have multiple facets -- each facet contributing real value to the world, a good design which is responding to the world in multiple ways would surely be appreciated. And just as in humans, a design also would be measured on a spectrum based on the number of facets that were satisfactory. On one end of the spectrum -- the mediocre end -- would be those designs which has got its connection with one aspect right, but not so in other aspects. And on the other end of the spectrum, where the design has managed to cater to a lot of different areas of concerns. So to summarize: We deal with two universes. One in the mind. One out in the real world. The transgression that I always balk at is when people think they can walk from one universe to the other universe and compare between the two, sometimes with impunity. The imagined fears and hopes one works with in the mind, is used to assess the one that is out in the real world. Is that a correct transgression? For example; here is a desgn that someone has expressed in form of a model or even an actual building. All that is in front of us. As a set of drawings or computer model or whatever. Or the building itself. It is out there in some state of getting into the reality. The pregnancy is not yet over. I believe the only comparisons one can do -- or rather, one ought to do -- is to compare with equivalent realities So the elevation of a design that an architect makes can only be compared with another elevation for the same design out there. But time and again, I find many comparing with whatever that is happening in ones own mind with what is out there. For example: here is a designer mulling over someone elses elevation drawings of a building, muttering: Something is not right in that elevation. I am not sure that I like it or something equivalent. At that point in time, such a designer is giving credence to the role-play that he is grappling with in his mind. He is imagining his people (that actually exist in his imagination) coming up to the building and not liking it. To me, such a comparison is not fair. The only fair way is to put another elevation next to the previous one, and then compare between the two elevations. If you want to do role play on one, then do the role play on the other too and let the two out there fight it out among themselves. Unfortunately, such unfair comparisons seem to be undertaken at any stage of the realization of a design. Even at the beginning. And in all kinds of designs that shape the real world. Be it buildings, software ... whatever Inventions face this unfairness all the time. In fact, they become inventions because they were able to prise themselves out of the grip of such unwanted comparisons and then come and stand out in the world, tackling some aspects that were never tackled before. Inventions are the ultimate form of design. And I can make a parody of such unfair comparisons between the two universes which may have happened: Are you saying that you can create light and that works because of the absence of oxygen? Are you nuts? Have you seen even one example of something that give off light because of LACK of fuel? Dont we have to light a candle in the presence of air? If we deplete the air, would the candle even light? And now you are telling me that this light-bulb you are supposedly working on works without air? huh? (That is my imagined version of an argument just before the light bulb was invented) Are you claiming that a fixed wing contraption -- which is heavier than air -- would actually fly? Are you nuts? Have you seen one bird or insect which flies like that? Hello? Havent you seen some wings flapping around? ALWAYS? (That is an imagined conversation of a critic before the Wright brothers took off in their contraption) Such examples can be seen all the way back in time -- even to the first proverbial invention, the wheel (Oh, here you are with smart thing called the wheel. What makes you think it would be useful? How come Nature does not put a single wheel on any of her creations? huh? why?) Such comparisons can be seen even in these times. Here is one for Google (Oh, you mean to say, you can really give relevant search results from all over the world? Really? What makes you so clever? Do you have any clue on the mountain of data out there?) Many inventions require multiple people to totally buy-into the need for the invention. Because some inventions are complex and would require a full team to work on them. But before we get such people, there would be many who would do such incorrect transgressions as explained before. Complex inventions, such as a new software which can change the way the world works are also subject to such unfair comparisons. There is a lot of role-play people do when they asses such projects. I have always asked people to join us at Syncspace, where we are coming up with a fresh approach to design and realize architecture. And we too get people doing unfair role-plays and imagined fears from one universe (the mind) being used to assess what we have done out there in the real world, the physical universe People are so caught up in their role-plays they do not realize they are conjuring up imaginary people doing things which to them are real. They do not realize that such imaginary people, even if they do exist, may actually be only a small percentage -- and possibly there are many other facets that the invention is catering to, which may make the point moot. I have seen a few people coming into Syncspace, and then doing such role-plays; and then walking off. To them, the role-play they conducted in their mind is so very real; they are stupefied that I do not see it that way. They go away. If they go away without joining, I have no issues. However, when they do work for sometime and then decide the grass is greener somewhere else, I just tell them that whatever dream they are now going to pursue should be of comparable value to the one they have now left behind at Syncspace. Of course, many of my ex-employees have heeded this farewell message of mine. I am rather pleased that many of those who came and participated in my work, and then left, are now sowing good value into the world. I am rather proud of that farewell message as they seem to have heeded that Syncspace is growing fast. We are meeting milestones. Our team is growing. And we now have vacancies for even more to join us. We are putting our work out there for comparison. The only part we are objecting to is do no bring in your imaginary friends from the universe inside your mind, and do role-play comparisons with our work. Like I told before, I am all for comparisons and also transgressing boundaries from one field to another. But I will never transgress universes themselves So when Facebook asks What is on your mind? I think I need to tell that what is on my mind needs to be discussed and compared with what else is on my mind. And what is out in the real world is to be discussed out there with other things out there
Posted on: Wed, 01 Oct 2014 02:35:39 +0000
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