Saturday Night.. minds of architecture fresh grads in Jogja

Its a slow, kinda gloomy night in Jogja. Its raining. Even though there's that one month in a year-festival; Sekaten going on at the Palace Square ( Alun- Alun).

FYI : A definition from Wikipedia is Javanese architectural term for the large central open lawn squares common to all villages, towns and cities in Indonesia.Commonly, alun-alun in modern-day Indonesia refers only to the two large open squares of kraton palace compounds.

      Anyway, I was having a chat with my college friend, Pandu in his small café; Cups, just a little west of the big and grand Mandala Krida football stadium, big and grand for my city scale that is. So there we were, architecture freshgraduates with a whole bunch of things we want to do, with ideal imagination and vision of what the world and environment should be. Vitruvius, Gehry, Lynch, Roman to Asian culture, architecture, and wisdom.. and there we were just sitting in a small coffee shop on a rainy Saturday evening, like a couple of lonely, miserable teenagers faling to get laid after a whole year of trying and starting to get an idea that we would probably stay virgin the rest of our lives..

Ive tried working in mainstream you know, hoping to find a place where I could dedicate myself to the higher purpose of mankind, society and environment through my background study of architecture and interest in business. I don’t know if its just me being over imploded with the idea that there is actually such a place to work in, or I havent found that place in Indonesia, or there is, but I don’t know about it yet, or maybe I just havent found the one that suits me best yet.

     I started my life of freedom out of school with working in a contractor firm, on a big poject. I found myself surprised at how unorganized such a huge project could be. It seemed the contractor was just a big business man who catches every opportunity in sight to make money with least care of quality. Only a few staff and a firm “I don’t care how, but get this done!” attitude. It was a good experience though, and quite good pay, but I felt I would have to drop my instinct and idealism I’ve built over tha past few years to carry on working here. Theres so much bribe and business politics going on in the Indonesian contractor industry, I wouldn’t have a chance to think about making greener ways to construct, or developing safety guidelines. I could have done that in bigger companies, but there would still be a lot of moral pressure on the honesty of the business.

     Ive tried working in an architecture firm I felt quite good in trying to maintain their idealism in their work. The best design from Jogja I might say, but the business was a mess. Low pay, often late, a very feodal, conventional hyper control, top-down system.. not good, especially in the creative industry. The top architects were good, but I felt it hard for myself to develop there. So I decided to help make their business better by making a business strategy for the next term. Unpaid. The only way I think I can do some good and be part of the effort to make better architecture and better places.  So that’s when I started developing architecture business to make better architecture, rather than make itmyself. This is still in progress though, coz the BOSS is very perfectionst.thats all I would say for now about the company..

     In Cups Little Café ..  Ideas were just streaming slowly out. We wanted to make the architecture community more vibrant in creativity and a sense of being important for the city, people, and nature. Not just draw,build,get money. We have a place to gather, we have friends at the university, so lets start with a presentation and dsicussion about architecture and the city. It could develop in to soo many more things, and to a scale unimagined. But it has to be started. I wonder why none of those architects and lecturers in Jogja never made it, or have they? We’ve been looking but haven’t found any important discussions. I hate planning. Because I ve done so much of it, and often miss my target. So lets try to just do something simple, easy, and certain. Wednesday, we would meet again to discuss how far weve got in preparation and then get on with the show. The basic idea is to set up one or two short presentation and then have a mild discussion, and see wether we could have another presentation the next week.