"Where do you see yourself in five years time?" I'd imagine her asking me.
"I don't know," I'd respond honestly. "Probably with someone, graduated, working..." - How I'd imagine a conversation with my younger self would be like.
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Wake up.
Eat.
Draw.
Design.
Draw.
Design.
Eat.
Draw.
Design.
Sleep.
Repeat.
When I first held the phone to my ear at my uncle's apartment in Hong Kong - my faceless interviewers were giving me a steady stream of questions all shaped from the design proposal that I have submitted earlier in the year. Thankfully my response was able to steer the interviewers to the direction of my two sentences (that were probably inaccurate) and it didn't take long for me to quickly respond to my interest in architecture:
To look after people indirectly.
"Do you think, then, just by completing the clients' brief would deem you as a good architect?"
After fours years of studying architecture, it was the first time a tutor challenged my architectural beliefs. At that point I never really thought of the implications honestly, I used to believe that as an architecture student, so long as we have good contextual and background knowledge and attention to detail, we should be able to produce an infrastructure that would serve a good purpose.
With this year being my final year of masters (hopefully), I have the opportunity to rest and analyse the work that I have produced over the course of five years. A lot of my projects were indeed people orientated, but at the same time, I concluded parts of myself was lost within focus on others. Sometimes this is the effect of wanting to please the tutor otherwise the project has taken an emotional toll that I have forgotten what it is like to find joy in the designs I pulled out of my head from the very beginning.
It is quite frightening to think, that because we have been on a treadmill, that there is that very possibility that we may not like our own work. Sometimes when I am sitting down facing my laptop or my drawings - countless moments placing lines precisely and correctly I am questioning my purpose and ambitions as an architecture student. I do have to admit sometimes - it is not easy to always enjoy what I do when I am at a loss with my design. The sensitivity of the subject matter to the amount of research required to form a coherent concept is rather challenging and therefore I can't comprehend whether my pride for my work is lost in the papers. Finding enthusiasm is another challenge as well - it is only when we hit a eureka moment that we are diving into our project and forget the world around us.