Why I didn’t become an Architect

By Rusaila Bazlamit
Originally published on Reflect Upon

Yesterday I read an article by Orhan Pamuk titled “Why I didn’t become an Architect” from his book “Other Colors“.
In this article Pamuk starts with a journey he took to one of the underprivileged sites of Istanbul where he walks into buildings that had very different past than their current present. He talks about how people came to live in buildings that were built by outsiders of Istanbul… and he had some interesting insights about who at the end the architecture aims to serve!
From this he take us to a decision he made as a third year student of architecture to drop architecture and change his career to become a writer and a novelist… He describes the difference for him between empty sheets that were waiting for “modernist” architectural designs and between empty sheets that were waiting for “his” words…
He ends his article with more reflections about architecture and the-serving-who dilemma as he walks in the ruins of the aftermath of the earthquake that hit Istanbul in recent years.
Through his personal recollections of his decision… he gave me a better understanding of my own choice to stop practicing architecture…

Later on last night I had an interesting phone call from one of my good friends who happen to be an architect though now she is more of an urban designer.
And I was sharing with her my reading… and I found myself expressing my own reasons of leaving architecture…

Probably the first detachment between me and architecture happened when I was taught history of architecture… through these courses I was somehow taught to appreciate architecture and master pieces through their images. So what was designed to be an experiential space was projected through lenses and prints into a see-and-admire experience. I truly understood the depth of this problem when I had the chance to visit famous buildings while I was at the USA. When I went to see the Guggenheim in NY… I was brought into tears… standing there in the massive lobby gave me an experience which I can’t put into words let alone images… I felt something…

My second detachment happened when I couldn’t relate the big talks and deep concepts that some of my fellow classmates would come up with… and I forcing my self to see the reflections of these concepts in their designs.. but all in vain… I would be standing bewildered and left to think I’m less than the rest of them… because my concepts were not projected as I wanted into my spaces…

This feeling got even worse when I started meeting up with the big names of Architecture at our Amman… and even worse when I did my internship at the company of one of them….

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Being myself the daughter of an architect… my father… is the type of architects that you should make a film about… my father embodies the real architect struggle to be an architect in a society dominated by empty concepts or trendy designs… [coming to think of it... I should make a film about my father... just like Nathaniel Kahn did "My Architect"]
My father supported my decision of leaving architecture behind… though I know that he is much in love with architecture… for him… architecture is creating a place where a person can feel… that is the only concept my father ever followed in any of his designs… His style of architecture has changed according to time, place and his own maturity… maybe one of these days I should blog about his work…
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But now back to me and my reasons of leaving architecture…
I stopped at the big talk of the big names… as I said… after working for one of them… I realized that architecture as it is being used is not in harmony with who we were and who we aim to serve…

After that… I graduated and joined the working force… I began to read for Rem Koolhaas… the more I worked… the more I read… the more a nagging voice inside of me got louder…

Until the day I decided to liberate myself… from “… the obligation to construct…”

I turned all my creative abilities… all the crazy concepts and ideas that were rattling inside of my head into different media which for me made sense…. and felt more natural…

Now, I don’t feel any need to be pretentious… to add any glamor to my products… I express myself… and I don’t do that to serve anyone… yet somehow I’m serving more now than I ever did… or thought I would…

The way I see it… The problem with architecture is that it is used to glorify the architect’s mind and visual abilities… or maybe as Pamuk said to serve his/her imagination…

Architecture as I was taught and seen practiced is creating empty spaces… and for that reason I left architecture….

Tags: interruptions, blog, rusaila, koolhaas, architecture, rem, bazlamit, concept, personal, study, architect orhan, pamuk