S7: 4 months of "ithentha ipo sambhavikkane"

When a semester pushes one half of the students to almost quit and run away, and the other half to question their mental state, you know it was one hell of a '4 month' journey. While the whole thing sounds depressing, we are more than proud to say this was one of the most informative, different and daring semester yet.

 The first few weeks were fun, revisiting the past horrors of services and structure, and throwing us into the digital world, where the whole "working on a computer's gonna be much easier than on paper" debacle got a bit too hard to follow. Confused and frustrated with the 'Ctrl's of Autocad and the 'Shift's of Illustrator, we caught up with it towards the end. kinda.

The second phase was around what we knew best - literature study. This too, was handled differently, as we looked over the built and learnt more about the minds behind them and the process which made them. The high point of the semester.

The third phase was a flurry of trips to nummada Kochi. Panampilly Nagar, Thrippunithura, Lulu Mall.. weekends were spent on foot studying the soon-to-be global city.

Then came The Case Study aka The Delhi/Mumbai Trip. 10 days. 2 cities. A bunch of case studies. and some GOOOOD VIBES. Even the 60+ hour train journey felt better than the past few years in college. The days were tiring and the nights were lit. 'Case study'in', shoppin' and chillin'. 10 days flew by.
Well, I take back what i said earlier. THIS was the high point of the semester.

The trip, a rad onam, and a lazy onam break all together kicked in the nuts of our design schedule, kickstarting of the short, dreadful design period.

At first, we had to unlearn whatever we've learned in the past years.. or atleast we had to deliberately forget them for a while. The new process was different. useful. hard. weird. different. we all sorta lost our mind in the middle. To sum it up, it was overwhelming as hell. But boy, did we learn a lot. We screw up, we learn something new. And the screwing up part was consistent.


A big shout out to the wonderful crew of this semester. Our very own studio faculty. At some point, it seemed even they were lost on the way. Some Mondays were disappointments, while the rest mild disappointments. But they kept pushing with " next Monday verumbo korchkudi expect cheyyunnu" " ninghal evdeya stuck aayenn vecha ath para" and "ith kozhappilla next verumbo korch kudi nannaakkan patto nokk"..  as i said, a wonderful bunch of teachers.
The final week had us sleep-deprived and beaten down, keyboard clicks and printing sounds, topped by a super-sonic, yet sweet jury session. And the 'edaaaaaa ellaarumm pass aayedaaaaa' moment of happiness.

Urban Mixed Use Development - Hyped-up teachers, Clueless piller and a proud studio.

In the end, i guess it all worked out for the best.

Fin.


_Jamshad_