It’s amazing how a small thing can set a tone for the whole of your day. My day started off pretty normally in the morning today. On my drive to office, my iPod shuffled up a very old song hidden somewhere in its complicatedly structured albums. I did not realize that I had this song in my iPod somewhere. The song brought with it a few old, happy memories. Before I knew it, I had replayed the song thrice before I reached office and was, in general, feeling good about the world at large.
That’s when I decided I should make time to do something nice today… like writing. I haven’t blogged for quite some time and the good mood brought the itch back today. So, here I am, reflecting upon an interesting experience from not long ago. Somewhere near the end of 2008, my wife and I went to a practically unknown restaurant along with a few family friends. A friend of a friend had recommended this restaurant to us, so we thought of giving it a shot. We arrived at around 8 PM and took four level of stairs to the roof of the last building on a small, hidden dirt road off one of the main streets
The first thing that struck us about this restaurant was the wide, open seating and a sense of character. You could take the low seating close to the floor, sit up in few sofas or stick to one of the few dining tables. There weren’t any permanent separations between the seating areas. Plants, flower pots and some statues were used to separate out different groups. Something inside me tried to whisper, “This is going to be different... one way, or the other”. Soon after we settled down and ordered drinks, the proprietor of the restaurant joined us for a small talk. The guy happened to be an architect, not a technology architect, but the conventional one. An architect, nonetheless. After exchanging pleasantries and brief introductions, he asked us about our opinion of the place. I do not recall the exact words that were exchanged but I think ended up communicating, in consensus, that it was ‘different’.
He drew our attention to the ceiling of the restaurant and told us an interesting bit of story about it. Apparently, the roof covered a warehouse somewhere in Kerala about 100 years ago. He got the roof to Bangalore, piece by piece, tile by tile and resurrected it atop his restaurant. The wooden beams holding the tiles were original too. The only thing that he had changed was the bolts that held everything together and a few broken tiles which were replaced by the new ones, but were fabricated exactly like the original ones. After he left us for his next small talk with people sitting across from our group, we kept staring at the roof for quite some time. Some of us tried to point out new tiles from the old one.
While ordering food, we realized that we had two different menus. Although they carried the same dishes, some were designed like envelopes, some were wooden. “Probably could not make up his mind about which design was better, so ended up keeping both” – justified one of our friends. “Or… he didn’t see the point in keeping the uniformity, you know how these architects are…” said one of my friend’s wife. After we ordered the food, we learnt from one of the waiters that they did not serve liquor there. Everyone was free to get their own bottle but the deal was that you had finish whatever you got. The owner gets to keep the empty bottle! “That’s queer!” – one of us said, “Or in a far-fetched, weird, convoluted sort of way, that’s architectural thinking for you!” – I said.
Just before we finished the dinner, one of our friend excused himself to go to the rest room. And returned five minutes later with a funny expression on his face. “You have got to see this, man!”- He said. He lead our party of six towards the rest room where we saw an extremely tall wall decorated with empty liquor bottles. He had all the brands from all across the world! And each and every one of this bottle came from a patron. “ I didn’t buy a single one of them!” – the proprietor said. “We still have a few brands missing, but you are probably looking at the most diverse collection of liquor bottles in Bangalore. The middle one of the top row was the first one that I collected. The one over there is a very rare brand that a group got from their trip from Mexico. You will also spot a lot of what I call ‘international local brands’. They are international in the sense that they are from different countries, but local because each of them is a local brand in its own country. Do you see the irony here?” – he said like a proud father holding out an exceptional mark sheet of his first born.
The restaurant wasn’t crowded. We had about four hours long dinner. Just when we were about to leave, the architect stopped by to bid us good bye. “I hope you had a good time”, he said, ”Do pass the word around if you liked our place. You see, we do not believe in advertising or marketing. Everyone you saw here today landed up here because of a recommendation that he heard from a friend.” We hadn’t noticed so far, but the restaurant actually did not even have a sign board. “Yes, we will let our gang know. I am sure this place will pick up pretty fast” – one of my friends commented. “Yes, we have picked up quite well since we opened four years ago.”, said the owner. “Did you say four years? I just live within a kilometer from here and I had never heard of this place.”, exclaimed my friend. “Yes, the word of mouth does take its own time. Have a good night and I hope to see you here again.”, said the owner. At that point, we were all ready to head home and get ready for the Monday ahead.
Architects, and I mean all forms of Architects, leave their mark on their designs and implementations. I am quite close to a lot of architects and given an architecture, I can point out whose product it is, from my group. One of my fellow architects likes to flirt with technical boundaries and it reflects in his work. He is one of the first to experiment with new ways of wiring products ,using search technologies for non-search problems. Another one always sticks to the fundamentals. His designs reflect tried and tested methods and can come really handy if you want a low risk implementation. Some of the architects are very particular about their architecture looking pleasing to the eye, others do not care as long as it serves the purpose. Some can build cost effective architectures; some really complex ones.
The architecture profession gives you an eye for looking for the not-so-obvious, questioning the obvious and building a product that’s beautiful. It does not matter if it is the Al-Burj, Google or a restaurant. An architect’s touch is visible from afar.
