We All Have a Responsibility

Welcome to my newsletter, where you'll find my latest takes on the architecture industry.

Today's read is ~ 4 minutes

So, I’ve just finished my masters, I’m applying to jobs to work as an architectural designer in a practice and during the summer, I was given the opportunity to work with lecturers from my university on some of their research projects. But there’s been something on my mind for a really long time and I feel that now is the time for me to share it and work on it.

You see, after finishing up my three years of full-time undergraduate studies and jumping straight into my masters, I didn’t really have any time to fully commit myself to the one project that I’ve been dreaming about for such a long time. But now that the constraints of uni aren’t there anymore, I have no excuse and it’s time for me to start working on this new venture. The past two years have flown by and to say that I’ve learnt a lot during that small amount of time would be an understatement.

My final year design project, that I’m sure many of you are familiar with, won me an RIBA award and I was also nominated for the AJ Student Prize. But in times like this, I often feel the worse on the inside. Feeling that my work doesn’t actually deserve any awards and that this weird feeling of sadness clouds me and I’ve felt like this during both undergraduate and master’s graduation ceremonies. But just like some close friends and family say to me, I need to have faith in myself… it’s something I’m working on.

So, I guess this leads me to what I’ve been meaning to announce for some time now. And this Monday actually was the day that I launched my own ‘practice'. I’m really excited to announce...

reSTRUCTURE

reSTRUCTURE is a platform that was initially set up to support current and future architecture students through factors such as mentoring, providing internships and offering financial support to selected individuals. And after months of going back and forth with staff members at my university and external important figures within the architecture and design scene, I realized that all of this chat was really not leading me towards the goal that I had of starting this and getting it going. Therefore, after university finished, I spent some time to rethink my approach and how I could go about things. And one of my ambitions has always been to have a studio or a practice of some sort. But, with hopes of working in a practice soon, I wanted to have a project on the side that can continue fueling my passion and interests. Therefore, reSTRUCTURE is set up as a research-based architecture and design initiative that will allow me to pursue my aims of having a platform to put out my work.

However, as a consequence of the work I do, I aim to utilize the space as a foundation to support the current and upcoming generation of architects, designers and creatives. But more on this to come so make sure you follow reSTRUCTURE on Instagram.

Click here to follow the journey:

I think I’ve tested a couple of ways of making videos and earlier on in my YouTube journey, last year, I had great opportunities to record and document my uni work and the projects I had going on. But now that it’s over, I’ve really questioned what way I want to take this channel moving forward. And by starting this new, exciting project, I really hope to bring you guys along the way so you can also experience this with me and see what I’m working on.

I also think this provides me with a standard of keeping myself accountable and to keep pushing forward with it. I think YouTube, well, also things such as LinkedIn and Instagram, but mainly YouTube, have become more of a tool to keep me accountable for the work that I want to do so that I don’t just procrastinate and think ‘what if’. And yes, it’s one thing to create visually pleasing videos and pictures. However, I truly believe that there needs to be some strong form of substance behind the work and that many creators within the field are feeding into this disillusioned culture of reel hypnotism that is causing more harm than good.

We all have a responsibility to push the boundaries and extend beyond the limits of what we think is possible.

So, let’s go for it.