By Ashim Chakrabarty
I had started my
architecture career as in my internship and work from Aishwarya Tipnis
Architects and I still remember back from those days, working at A.T.A has
always been an experience worth sharing. From 2011 I have known M/s Aishwarya
Tipnis ma'am and she has always been more than just my boss but a friend, a
mentor.
When I was called
upon to be a part of Jugadopolis 2 and to play the role of not just a
coordinator but a mentor teaching students of Architecture, new media and
Architecture through the camera lens, I was astonished. As I said earlier
working with A.T.A has always been a memory to cherish and I was more than
excited that not only will I get to teach students of Architecture, along with
Tipnis ma'am but also I would get to learn something new from the upcoming
experience.
I have had
experiences with teaching kids earlier as well but every experience is
different and welcoming. Initially all thee mentors and staff had a meeting at
A.T.A headquarters at Delhi where we planned out and discussed the workshop as
a whole and event and activities were well laid out.
Day one of the
workshop was to be held at Naughara area near Kinari Bazar Chandni Chowk and
its architecture and people have always astonished me. On day 1 I reached the
location a little earlier to experience the walk from the metro station to the
location of meet up.
The students of
Sunderdeep college of Architecture were eagerly waiting and seemed all excited
and packed up with power to kick start the workshop. The workshop started with
an introductory speech to the exercise by our curator, Aishwarya ma'am. The
students definitely got a lot to learn about the seven cities of Delhi and the
old Delhi havelis and the courtyard Architecture.
Aishwarya ma'am's
talk was followed by Shilpa ma'am, a professor at Sunderdeep college. An
amazing approach the workshop had was giving students a thought and idea about
design thinking which is crucial to think about and apply right from the
student life aiming towards thinking sustainability as well. The same was
delivered by Hina ma'am. I gave the students an idea in which one could collate
their ideas and display their final submittals in various ways other than a
slide presentation but through oral history, story telling, short film, stop
motion, character role play etc. A few examples of such videos were shown
to the students after which we all headed towards the different havelis and
their courtyards. Every courtyard was unique and had a different story to tell
the user/viewer.
The students got to
work and I helped them understand a few ways of video capturing through the
smartphone camera. The students seemed eager to learn. I visited each haveli
and was excited myself in visiting these jewels hidden in the heart of Chandni
Chowk. Day two welcomed us with rain and visiting the narrow streets and galis
were like discovering new experiences as we moved along to check out the
different havelis and the progress of work. The third day was about collation
of data and analyse the learning. We all met up at Sunderdeep college Ghaziabad
where I assisted the students by teaching them the basics of using Adobe
premier pro. The students were quick in grasping the software and they had to
come up with final submissions the next day. The D day, the fourth day had a
showcase of all the short films which were all done amazingly well by each and
every student approached their submission in a very innovative way.
I indeed got to
learn a lot from all the students and their questions and doubts which also
gave me an opportunity to look at things differently. Also working under the
guidance in the past were always a scope to learn something new everyday. But
this time being a mentors and working along side with ma'am gave me an experience
of how things seem from the other side of the table, teaching students, taking
in responsibilities of the work and aim to be achieved and guiding others
while equally learning something new every second. The workshop was indeed
amazingly put up and definitely added a page of experiences up on my book of
experiences in this life.