Perspective: A journey through Architecture

‘People who look through keyholes are apt to get the idea that most things are keyhole shaped’

I have always enjoyed taking walks. They rejuvenate me and fill me up with a sense of tranquillity and calm. What we see incites us to think about how everything seems so chaotic yet so beautiful at the same time. An iron bench next to a tree and the sound of the birds, come together to render a scene that is majestic and brilliantly natural. What I have realised now is that somehow I tend to absorb more than I ever did. I suddenly have, as I can safely say, ‘a vocabulary’ to understand and express things in a better way.

Scattered pebbles, were once ‘scattered pebbles’, but today are a composition. Colours never ‘collated’ or ‘blended’ with so much ease as they do now. Balance, rhythm, hierarchy never did jump at us with so much power that makes us stand still and let the scene sink in. Our cameras have now found, for themselves, better angles and lighting. Birthday collages somehow come out to be better and more ‘amiable’. Architecture has put in all of us, a sense to see, decipher and acknowledge everything with a mind that is focused and enlightened.

Are we poets? I wouldn’t disagree. Our emotions are linked with the tiniest of things. We do express our wonder when light from a lamp falls beautifully on a crystal glass, yet we do not hold back our contempt when a priceless antique is lit up by a piercing halogen. Ah lamp posts - a classic example of rhythm. What would we have called it had we not known our ‘words’? One does tend to ponder.

Are we artists? We do know that pink and blue are not the best of friends. Who doesn’t, right? Somehow we now have options of how pink and blue split into shades and tones and we are almost always able to reach for ourselves, a visual compromise. We are far past the image of Barbie’s and Hot Wheels!

Are we musicians? In a street that speaks of concrete, tiles don’t seem to fit. The thought itself makes us flinch. Yes, we are thinking about notes. Sketching seems to take control after a while and we generate forms that fit into each other. Music isn’t music if a note goes wrong. So is architecture. As put by Friedrich von Schelling, ‘Architecture, in general, is frozen music‘.

What are we then? Are we everything or nothing at all? I think our question was long before answered by the iron bench next to the tree.

‘What we see depends mainly on what we look for. ‘ - John Lubbock