Violent Cities. Empty Minds.

A phd student diving further into the abyss we call architecture. I indulge myself in everything aesthetical.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

post 2521 syndrome

What a rollercoaster of an emotional journey it was...

I slept and woke up to find myself dreaming and thinking about the ending of 2521. I don’t hate it, but I don’t love it either. An elephant was sitting on my chest and somebody was strangling me all throughout the episodes 15 and 16. I knew that was going to happen ever since the beach trip episode but still, I was not ready (it didn’t help that I was having my period). 

I am sad. I still want to cry. I haven’t been this affected from a drama ever since CLOY which ended on a happier note. I understand where NHD was coming from. Putting myself in her shoes, I would be breaking up with BYJ if I saw that there was no effort from him. His career is a very stressful and busy one. Some careers are not easy to handle when in a relationship. Especially if your SO is also in a very busy and stressful field. Both parts need to be understanding and patient. Both has to bend in order to make it work. Here we see that at that stage of their lives, both NHD and BYJ don’t know how to navigate this kind of relationship. NHD sees that she’s dating her mother, BYJ is afraid that the more burden he puts on her, the less of the NHD he knows and loves will remain (which I think not really would turn out as he was worried about but, well). We need to remember that these people are young. NHD only 22 and BYJ 26. I am slightly older than BYJ and I’m still not ready for a serious relationship with the direction I am taking in my career. Loving someone is not the same as being in a relationship. A full clear communication and a common goal are needed. I think that’s why it didn’t work out for them. 

But the thing hurts the most is that they lost someone so dear to them, they lost their best friend. Because above everything, they were best friends. I lost a best friend when I was a teenager (not dead, just drifted apart as we grew up and found that we hurt more than we supported each other) and this was the most painful breakup of my life. It took me so long to get over because I loved and trusted my best friend so much, and when we changed for the worse, I felt like I lost a vital limb. It took me years to feel like I could let people in, and I still have problems with trusting people with my heart. In 2521, adult NHD seems bitter, fed up. Adult BYJ doesn’t seem happy either. Because they lost the purest form of friendship and love. They know it is not coming back and there won’t be anything as pure as that. I just wish that life brings them together again as best friends, friends who can just be there. 

About the memories of youth... I can agree that all the memories that seemed so grand and perfect in youth can decay and become fragments of past when you get older. I am not as old as the adult NHD, but I forgot all my happy moments. Because as you grow up, new memories and life erase and replace all of them. Only when I think too hard about a moment of past that I can remember, yes I was happy. I remember it fondly, but it doesn’t bring me immense joy or pain that time flew away. Life goes on, we grow, dwelling on past memories only keeps us from going forward.

Let’s talk about our new favourite couple, KYR and MJW. They worked because MJW could up and design his life according to KYR. It worked really well for him in the end, but theirs is a relationship where one side sacrifices a lot more for the other, and he is happy about it. So, happy ending on their side, I don’t think I could deal with more breakups.

JSW, my girl. She was the character I resonated with the most. She is me at times, and she is someone I want to be. Especially when she never bends for anything when it comes to her principles and beliefs. Hers was the most realistic story of all. She studied hard, had setbacks because of people and life, but persevered. Now she works and takes life one day at a time. She is bored, but she finds happiness in small moments too, like BYJ’s brother :) 

One thing to remember all the time is happiness is not a direction, not a goal. Happiness is fleeting. You will feel sad, angry, devastated, proud, accomplished... Like how these feelings don’t last forever, happiness is like that too. We wanted NHD and BYJ to be together and happy forever, but life isn’t like that. If they didn’t break up then, they would have hurt each other more and their time together would become tainted. I am at least happy that they could end it on an amicable note and remember each other fondly. I wish I had that with my best friend too, but I was not that lucky. So NHD, BYJ, KYR, MJW, JSW. You became my friends for 8 weeks and I’ve learned a lot from you. Thank you for the memories :)

[theintrovertedarchitect]

a rant

I forgot this blog for a long while. I know nobody reads anything I write, hence the reason I use this platform as a place to dump my mildly ugly thoughts. This is one of those posts. I am full of weariness and despair. Nothing seems to be getting better. This pandemic has already made us feel defeated, yet it continues to evolve stronger than before. The counter measures in where I live are not applied properly. People are rebelling without any consciousness. Nobody cares about others. There is no solidarity. Policies are deficient and misguided. The only important thing is economy. Yet it is in shambles. I feel no joy even though I have it better than many people. What does it mean to have it better? Isn't it a problematic viewpoint? I only work, study, sleep, spend time doing nothing productive or creative. I mostly sleep when I am not working or studying. Work is often a disaster. There is injustice in the way we are treated, and just because we are paid, doesn't mean we are robots with no risk of getting sick. I am fed up with doing the work of others. I am able to force myself to work because I need money. Money is a good driver which means nothing in a world with no hope. I can at least eat and pay the bills. Studying is more difficult because it is something I do for myself. My brain is at the edge of shutting it all out. It is so difficult to come up with ideas, theorizing and testing them. I just want to give it all up, yet I seem to still have a sliver of strength to finish things. But is it worth to finish things? Why do I force myself to do things that no longer have meaning? I am already disappointed in myself, why am I afraid of disappointing others? My mental wellbeing is neglected and I am worried of its implications. I have no patience, I am no longer kind, I feel like a bad human being with no sense of direction.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

I sometimes wonder if I am making wrong choices: The hobbies I have had, the education I have chosen, the friends I have kept and the friends I have let go. It is during this waiting game I am playing to start the next best thing of my life I start to question everything and anything I am, I was. There is no dive first think later for me. I think way too much to take action. When I take the action, I have to wait. And this cycle gets longer. Every new step is more waiting and self-questioning. 

[theintrovertedarchitect]

just a thought on architectural design (education)

We are past the age where we keep being awed by the means technology graces us and thus, we try to use these wonders to produce the most awe-inspiring piece of work. So why do we keep seeing architecture students using the same means in the same way they were used 20 - 50 - 100 years ago? This is an issue of not just form and function, but the state of mind. There are of course schools which encourage critical thinking in the use of digital tools, and making sense of what is available. However, when we look at the examples circulating the web, or visit the project exhibitions and reviews, we see that the students lack theoretical background, the understanding of why and how. What should be done about that? How should we proceed in “teaching” architectural design? How must we assist the prospective architects so that they can actually design for today and the future? Form should stop chasing after designer’s ambitions of creating wow effect and design must be re-evaluated to answer current issues, be it climate change, migration, reconstruction of destructed cities, spatial justice, and so on.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

Wow. Ok. I have just heard and read all about tumblr banning nsfw content. I don’t know what I feel about it. Yes, the sex bots and all the stuff on cp I have kept reporting whenever I came across need to be stopped, but is this really going to stop all of them? When I checked my truly innocent and prude blog posts/reposts, I saw some that were flagged inappropriate and those were artistic photos of hands, or women (fully) clothed in poetic poses and such. I have kept my blog and even started a secondary one for my photography on tumblr because I thought the context was great for artistic expression. I don’t really care if people usually use this platform for nsfw stuff. But I care if the beautiful blogs I follow and the posts I make are going to be deemed inappropriate and my experience on this platform gets ruined. I have been here for the art, and the inspiration. I wasn’t really aware of all the harmful stuff that tumblr failed to fight off, and now they are enforcing full censorship on any content containing a little bit of skin tone. I believe in freedom of expression, and freedom of will. I don’t believe in top-down reforms, or whatever you want to call them, have the desired effects. If anything, they are usually not welcomed, and provoke reactions of anger, hate, and marginalization. Even though the effects of tumblr’s decision has already hinted at a broken community, I am going to give tumblr the benefit of doubt and stay until I see this act causes devastating results for the platform.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

New Blog Purely For Photos

So I have started a secondary blog purely dedicated to my own photographic journey. It won’t have any ramblings, there will only be visuals. If interested, just click here, or “The Introverted Viewfinder” on the menu bar. Yes, even my viewfinder is an introvert.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

The Trouble With Moving Into A New House

You only understand how much your home means to you when you are about to move into a new house, and as you put away the little pieces of your life in boxes, your home becomes foreign, yet you still remember all the memories associated with each and every empty corner. The home I am leaving behind witnessed my turbulent years of adolescence, and the hardships I went through as I tried to get accustomed to adulthood. Now there is this bittersweet feeling lodged in my throat. I feel like with the move, my younger self will be left behind, forgotten, and I will be a lost adult, neck-deep in problems of real life. Only consolation I can find is that I will have my dog and my bird with me, still, I will be leaving all the stray cats I have been taking care of behind. And this is probably the biggest reason for my sadness. 

[theintrovertedarchitect]

As the years go by and my age grows in numbers, I find the distance between my mind and my heart gets bigger, thus art becomes a faded memory.

I remember being 16, which is not even ten years ago, alone in my room, window open wide with sweet summer breeze coming in, and soft music playing from my speakers, and I was viewing some beautiful artworks in the new art books I acquired. I, being inspired by all these great artworks, edited the photos I took according to my senses, to what I felt and knew was right. Those pictures were not the greatest in the world, but I loved them because they reflected the substance of my emotions.

Now, whenever I see an art piece that moves me viscerally, I reminisce those times when my mind was in tune with my heart, and I lived in art. As modern life and liabilities bind my time, art is just a sweet, old friend I talk rarely to.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

Whenever I see children carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders, I feel ashamed of myself. Ashamed of my problems and worries when all those beautiful children work to bring food to their families without any single complain. We are the privileged, used to living only thinking about ourselves, but there is a whole different world out there with innocent suffering, kids having to be adults when they are not supposed to, and we only watch without giving a helping hand.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

This is a moment from the last summer, when I was away from home in a place I visited for the first time with my good friend. We were strolling along the coast when I came across this street musician, strumming a pleasant tune, creating a beautiful atmosphere under the street lights. Chattering people, flickering lights, a warm breeze, and mellow music came together under the night sky. And I felt elevated. 

Photo: Datca, 25.07.2017, Nur S.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

I start chasing my passion

It took me merely three months to realize my true passion is architecture. 

I was under the illusion that passion is something comes to you easily, with as little pain as possible and with no compromises. That’s why I blamed everything on the architecture school, the building industry, and my ego. But the mistake was all on the misconception of my life goals and wants. When I was younger, life was simpler, my goal was to finish school with good grades, produce and create different stuff and learn as much as I could. When I graduated, I was met with this responsibility in capital letters: ADULTHOOD. Life is not an academic calendar given to you before the semester starts. When my plans failed, or didn’t happen when I wanted them to happen, it demotivated me. Days turned black, my mind darker. I always thought back to things I accomplished in the past and stopped looking forward. I was spiralling down. Not by any external factors, but by the ugly voice inside my head. It kept telling me I was not enough, everyone was better than me, I could never do things I would like to do. Just when I was about to crash, my family held me. That’s the beauty of family. They keep you sane in your times of darkness. So I started to think forward, to try to make peace with my mind. I am still working through all these stuff, but I am better, I believe I will be great.

What I realized is that passion is never easy, that’s why it is called passion. It is to be pursued, so it will never be taken for granted. Architecture is IT for me. There are hundreds of better architects than me. So what if there are? They are there to learn from for aspiring architects like me. This doesn’t mean I am the worst. I am good at things too. Those things are the means for me to be my own person, original in what I do. Every obstacle in my way makes the end game much more important. I just have to stay strong and don’t let them bring me down.

I am an amateur, at the beginning of my journey, and that’s what fuels my fire to become better. School is over, but life has just started. Now is my time to build my future. A future doing what I like the most. Creating, making, being an architect.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

How is it that I can say no to everyone, or refuse to do whatever is expected from me, but I can’t even stay angry at my dog for 2 seconds and cave in for the impressive puppy face he makes at me? The total achilles heel of my being.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

I don’t want to be an architect anymore.

I graduated and I found myself thinking “I don’t want to be an architect.”

It started as something adventurous. I was excited to take on the challenges of design studio. I loved learning about the old buildings and ancient cities. I liked sketching my ideas, better than most of my classmates to be honest. I actually interned at an amazing construction site where every day was a new adventure itself with many problems to solve with all kinds of people butting in their opinions.-I live in Turkey and construction workers are real caricatures.

So what happened then? What made me start to hate my profession?

One word. Ego.

I came across these amazing designers who were using great algorithmic softwares and mesh based big programs. I got to experiment with all these softwares and I became good at some of them. The half artist-half architecture student in me got arrogant. I wanted to become magnificient. I wanted to design buildings out of utopian and distopian novels. I wanted to defy all the rules and be interesting. I really wanted to design interesting buildings.

And I did design interesting buildings. Last 2 years of my education was dedicated to becoming better at algorithmic design methods and push my boundaries. I used my photoshop skills to the extreme for my presentations. And people started to compliment me on my different and ambitious thinking.

My instructors became ambitious for me, as well.

They now wanted bigger things from me. Amazing things. They wanted me to push it hard and work hard and basically become a little starchitect student. Things were going good for me until they weren’t.

I was tired.

I was really tired of learning new ways to design beautiful looking buildings. So I started getting worse.

In my last semester I slacked hard. I had another ambitious project but I had no joy of working on it. That’s why I barely finished it and received my 2nd lowest score ever since the first grade. My graduation project sucked big time. I still received good comments because I am not that bad and I really care about the philosophy behind the concept of any project I design. But this project was not up to the standards I set for myself. Basically put, it had many loose ends and poorly designed parts. The graduation exhibition I was waiting for ever since the first day of school was a bore. I spent the day looking at my friends’ better projects thinking why I hadn’t thought about it.

Now it is almost 3 months since the graduation and I have been a registered architect for the half of it. But I keep postponing finishing my portfolio and looking for a job because the idea just terrifies me and I simply don’t want to work from 9 to 6. I try to think of ways to get out of a dead end job before I even begin. I read posts on topics like “I don’t like architecture anymore”. Nothing concerning architecture exites me at all. I hate it. I hate how once I start working my ideas will stop being mine and I will be stuck in it until I retire and I won’t ever have a chance to improve my skills and I won’t travel anymore and I will not have a life and I have to communicate with clients I hate and I will have ungrateful bosses and I...

The list is endless.

What did I love about architecture before I got in the school anyway?

I loved the idea of creating. I loved sketching. I loved taking photos of buildings. I loved learning about art history and old settlements. I loved the notion of changing something bad and making it better.

Despite hating architecture, what do I love still?

I love hugging old greek columns. I love visiting old settlements. I still love photography even though I hated it during one of my phases. I still love sketching despite not doing it anymore. I still want to change the world. 

...

I think I still love architecture but I swayed from the path that would make me the happiest. I lost my way. I am unhappy.

I want to find my path again.

I want to change the world.

I want to be a happy architect.

Or an artist. Phtographer. Designer. Illustrator. Writer.

That’s why I studied architecture. It gave me the means to become whatever I wanted to become even though I don’t know what I want to become now.

I just don’t want to become a bored office staff.

I want beauty and happiness and achievement and usefulness and sustainability in my job.

I just have to find that job.

Then I can write about how I love being an architect/something.

[furrylittlepeach]

Dear old people,

I’m incredibly tired of seeing Facebook posts from you about millennials/young people being lazy, complacent, entitled etc - we live in a shitty and expensive time, where people are both underpaid and overworked. I’d also like to add that most of the people who I’m friends with who are my age or around it are the most passionate, hardworking, creative AND business savvy bunch of individuals I’ve ever come across.

These ridiculous blanket posts and articles are exhausting to see and make me really angry, especially because some of the biggest hardships that young people need to deal with (unique to this century) can be traced to the same generation of people who criticise us. Here’s just one local example which I’ve had to deal with first hand; the nightmare of being a young renter. The same generation that are splitting run-down terrace houses on the outskirts of Sydney into 6 “studio apartments”, renting each room for hundreds of dollars per week regardless of how run down, mouldy and unliveable they are, are the ones complaining that our frivolous spending is the thing preventing us from buying homes.

For those who call us lazy: I can’t speak for everyone of course, but I’ve been working non-stop since I was 14 and 9 months (that’s the earliest you are allowed to work in Australia) what more can I do? While doing so and since then, I’ve completed a university education, volunteered my time and services to not-for-profit organisations, interned for free in an industry I love and began building my own business. And be aware this comes from the privilege of having the means to do so and not having to work solely to survive - I am fortunate to have a family that can afford for me to make mistakes and who encouraged me to follow my dreams and career aspirations.

For those who criticise our generation for living on our phones: my whole business is based online. I’ve been able to live off what I love, to network, to create, to maintain my business and to communicate with my audience BECAUSE of devices like my phone.

I of course realise this is in itself a generational blanket post - you can decide whether or not it applies to you. Don’t be so quick to judge us when you may be out of touch with how difficult or hopeless navigating life can be as a young person.

I work hard. I pay my taxes. I give to charity. Leave us alone.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

Sometimes I feel like people who judge the young generation so quickly are those who are not satisfied with the life they have. I hate it when they do this. I hate it everytime someone older says that we never had any hardships or we are the generation which didn’t see the consequences of the world wars. If they are trying to apply reverse psychology in order to make us work harder, it doesn’t have the desired effect. I am also very angry to see that these are the people who demotivate us when we have an idea we are passionate about, and almost always try to steer us around these new ideas and make us stick to the old ways. I am not someone who will be happy working a dead end 8 to 5 job. I need continuous growth in what I do, and it is damn difficult to find a work environment that supplies you with the means to individual and team development. In the shortest of words, no. I am not going to do the exact same thing until I die. I am not going to marry as soon as possible to pop out many kids to be thrown into the systems as human machines. I am going to be useful. I am going to care about nature. I am going to influence the next generations to become the kindest and best human being they can. I may not have a solid plan, but I know what I value in life, and it is something I can work with.

[theintrovertedarchitect]

I occasionally get the feeling of being drawn to an unknown place. Sometimes it is so intense that desperation of not being able to be there in that instance hits me too hard. The place calls for me and I long for undiscovered possibilities of what could have been. 

[quotemadness]

If one man can destroy everything, why can’t one girl change it?

Malala Yousafzai (via quotemadness)

[featureshoot]

http://ift.tt/2qEEsyV“This treehouse was the most beautiful place I have ever slept in, built in a baobab in the river delta in the south of Senegal” - Myrthe Mosterman