Mastering a Language

The struggle of learning a new language is the same in any discipline. Much of my adult life has revolved around my need, obsession with getting in touch with cultural roots that I have been chasing out of thirst and an unexplainable emptiness. Language is the largest factor disconnecting me from a culture I thought I was apart of, I thought had ownership over me. I have made failed attempts of planning three month trips to Pakistan during which I would ideally submerge myself so deeply into a world I had previously only known from two week –long trips. In these dreams I would become an expert in speaking advanced Urdu and writing novels and letters with words that I had previously only known in English. In these dreams I would have long conversations with the cousins that I stutter with and failingly insert English when I try to speak Urdu today. In that dream, I no longer stand in the in between space. I still chase that dream.

Learning the language of architecture has been similar, but the chase exists in different terms. Like a newborn learning how to swim, the transition between air and water is brief and goes unnoticeable, as the newborn is instinctively forced to learn the ways of the new medium in which it exists. Learning to live and function in the world of academic architecture has been the same. As we were thrown into the water first semester, the challenges that we were faced with allowed me to have the same yearning of finding a fitting culture, experience the same discomforts of feeling in an in between place, and eventually realizing a place of comfort should not exist unless I want to stop learning.

The spatial complexity of ideas, physical and nonphysical spaces that exist in our world, in our cultures, will continue to require redesign in our eyes as long as we want it. Cultures of every medium will continue to cross pollinate ideas as long as we find passion in methods of exploration, betterment, social responsibility. As long as we obsess over learning new languages and are put in the circumstances where we can thrive the most, our words will always be our work.

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