Design happened to me when I was not conscious of its presence. The composition of the every day was all invisible to me. I always loved to doodle random compositions the moment I had my hands on a pencil and paper. When I was eleven I designed a thumbnail sketch of how my study desk should look. I wanted that desk to be my comfort zone, something that calls out to me every time I look at it, motivating me to create, innovate and obsess over clean color schemes and straight cut geometry. To placate my obsession, my dad made efforts to call a local carpenter and helped me configure my thoughts to reality. From that moment on, my parents decided to nudge me towards architecture.

Although my time as an architect has influenced a huge chunk of my personal and professional development, I did realize that architecture too had some limitations, but the design of every day never did. Each line, dot and curve; every form, space and creation has a camouflaged image to it; an image of such profound magnitude that it inspired me to embark on what can be called my ‘Life’s Work’.

I graduated with a Bachelors of architecture from the University of Mumbai in India. I learned to subsume design as a way of life, rather than simply a profession. During my five year curriculum, the various challenges of architectural design molded my thought process to deliver responsible designs. It is comprised of a vast gamut of areas and disciplines and thus I have been fortunate to acquire an understanding of such miscellaneous aspects, concepts, and areas of design thoroughly. I started believing that ‘Architects are Universal Designers’.

I graduated with summa cum laude throughout my high school, and Undergraduate degree. During the final semester of the course, I was awarded the best performer in my design dissertation titled -‘Redefining lifestyle experiences in the city’. This project taught me how to address a social problem and transform it to consign a fresh face to the urban fabric of a city. My active engagement in National Association of Students of Architecture refined my leadership qualities and showed me the significance of ‘thought sharing’ and ‘collective thinking’. Perhaps one of the most valuable aspects of this course was the opportunity to develop these skills and learn to share and mutually develop ideas with like-minded creative peers. The exposure that the course offered strengthened my mind to decipher the complexity of data by simple forms of visual expression taking into consideration the ethical responsibilities of a given subject. I strive to apply every facet of my previous education to my time at Pratt Institute and in my future work.

“The most inspirational things are often right in front of us.”
When I was looking at prospective schools, I knew Pratt was my best shot. I had to make the best of this opportunity. Although I expected to learn and grow a lot at the school, I did not imagine how life-changing the entire experience was going to be. From a plethora of explorations in design, my innate passion for communicating by means of informational graphics has been persistently highlighted in my course-work at Pratt.
In the last 9 months, Pratt taught me how to think ‘design’ not just as a visual medium but something that empathizes with the one experiencing it. Time management was not one of my biggest strengths, But through intense effort and thought I learned to manage my schedule based on my priorities, interests and various other commitments. My work has been extremely important in giving a boost to my confidence and for broadening my outlook towards all forms of design.
Although I worked as an architect for nine months in Mumbai, my true zeal lied in evolving my expression of design. I wanted to reinvigorate my passion for design by not just pursuing ‘architectural’ design but everything that goes into making this world an easier environment for us to live in, the design of everyday things. I have been exposed to cutting edge graduate education, working on self-challenging studio projects and gaining eclectic, enriching and holistic experiences throughout the course of my semester. The panoramic global exposure that I have received is undoubtedly helping me contour my silhouette on the universal designer’s chart.

With opportunities to interact with various facets of design, I am constantly eager to cross borders and create impactful designs through thought and expression. I aspire to use my creative flair and originality to reach my potential as an exceptional and impactful designer.

Lovers Under the Arch

Long before time, there were hundreds of trails or thousands of people hiking them, the grand mountains of Utah. Much before the existence of homo-sapiens on this mountain, we used to roam as kings in the dense jungles of Utah.

I was what people now call a Plateosaurus, but to my family I was just Pat. We were our only kind here. My mom told me we were from central Europe and we left when I was very young, but I had no memory of the trip and was not into believing in mythology at all. Everyone, I often hear, wants to be European, only because they sound classic and refined, maybe, maybe not. My mom was the sweetest and most loving mother on the mountain. My father, on the contrary, was tough and strong headed. They called him the jawbreaker since he had saved a cub from a Trex and broken Rex’s jaw in the process. And I was the naughtiest kid in town, always traveling from edge to edge of the Great Mountain.

That is when I saw Pelta (or as homo sapiens now call here “DragoPelta”). I just stood there and looked at her spiky armor and smooth skin. With the prettiest eyes, I had ever seen. I gazed into her eyes for a long long time, before realizing she was staring right back at me. I freaked out, and tried to run away, fell off the rough terrain. And then she fell down laughing. Ahh the rush of seeing her smile for the first time, no feeling can ever come close to that magical moment.

I had a lot of friends, but this friendship felt special. We roamed the landscape together, running around together, and for a moment the light of the sun, felt a little brighter, a little warmer. Both of us loved to see the sunset from this little bulging rock, that always seemed like it was about to fall, but it never did. We used to watch the sunset and just sit there talking. But my happiness wasn’t long-lived, because soon after I found the love of my life, the bright light found us.

We didn’t know what an asteroid was, or how much destruction would be caused by a fireball streaking across the sky. I and Pelta were on our favorite rock, admiring a tiny little plant growing through the smallest crack in the rock, with the tiniest flower that was still deciding whether it wanted to be red, white or somewhere in between. That is when I felt the ground shake, a loud thunder across the skies and the sound of thousands of my kind panicking and screaming. Looked at the skies and it was all gray, looked behind it was all dismay. I looked to my right and saw Pelta frozen in horror, I screamed at her to run inland to my family, but she wouldn’t listen, she couldn’t listen, she was frozen with the horror of what was happening around her.

I couldn’t leave her behind, so I ran towards her as fast as I could , and as soon as I reached her , a part of the rock fell on her head. She stopped crying , she stopped moving, she stopped breathing. I screamed to wake her up, I moved her neck , I hit the woman that I loved, just hoping she would come back from the last sleep, but she wouldn't move. I wanted to sit there and weep, but I had to reach my family, and my home.
I started to run, and felt my legs being crushed. Another part of the rock fell on my leg and I couldn't move. I screamed for my mom and dad, I screamed for anyone to come help. But my screams were drowned by the thousands of screams begging for help. That is when I knew that I wouldn't be on this rock for long, the last sleep was coming for me, like it had for everyone before me, and will come for everyone after. I smiled, with the resignation of someone who had accepted his fate. I used all my strength to turn around. The rock that I and Pelta sat on, had turned into an arc, and through it, I saw the most beautiful sunset, and my most beautiful Pelta lying across for me, and I went into the sleep with a faint little smile.

Time passed and I got buried, deeper and deeper into the ground, the grey crowds melted away and new animals came into being, jungles became deserts and deserts became oceans, and I am sitting thousands of feet underground observing.
My favorite rock is an arc that is admired by thousands now. They are here to look at it and admire how it always seems like it’s about to fall but never does, the delicate rock, is now called the delicate arch. They often collect small rocks that are lying around from times old. But, I doubt anyone really thinks about the stories a small brittle rock can hold.

The stories below explain how I will be presenting the premise of my thesis comprehensively to varying audiences?

5- year old kid

A best friend is vital to your mental health and is responsible for enhancing the overall user experience of life. To live and to love are inseparable from each other. Friendship is an opportunity to love, to learn about yourself, to mature as a human being, and to open up to the full experience of life. To seek true friendship, you must have the courage to risk all that you are, all that you feel and all that you want to share. Imagine having a best friend, who lives with you in your own house, well within your comfort zone. That best friend helps you when you need her/him and watches you go through all the good and bad days of life. She does a lot of work for you when you ask and listens to every little rant, every miniscule concern you have associated with your life. She gains your trust in every single way by guiding you which makes your life much easier. But suddenly, one fine day, you find out that she is just “pretending” to be your best friend. You find out about a clan, who knows every minute detail that you have shared with your best friend. She tells them where you go, what pictures you click, what your passwords are, who you call and what your daily schedule looks like. Would you be happy to have a friend like her around you all the time? Would you be comfortable trusting her with your secrets?

Graduate Student

We spend a lot of time with our “smart” devices these days and everything we need to get done is finger-tip easy. With the evolution of smart home systems, the entire information architecture of human life is literally just a voice command away. However, these systems are contagiously influencing the human fabric to transform and surrender themselves to weave an artificially intelligent ecosystem, which is becoming the strongest thread of interaction between the physical and virtual realities. They have intruded into our domicile environments, thus making the overall user experience of life seem extremely convenient and efficient. This gaze from within, that we have developed is a fragmentary one. We know we are inside a certain space, but we cannot visualize this knowledge in its entirety. The existence of these virtual assistants in our personal space is constantly weaving a dangerous web of reliance and novelty for human beings. We are placing our trust in these artificially woven micro-ecosystems but the gaze around this system misleading in many ways. There is a possibility that we may lose track of our position within a system-oriented ecosystem, thus becoming slaves of the system as a result of the unconditional support that we are currently seeking from such “smart” environments. The internet of things automating your “homes” and upgrading you to a “smarter” way of living is convincing but, at the same time, its invasion of your personal space is a dangerously contagious idea.


Technocrat

The effects of the “connected age” have led to the dematerialization of “things” into live streams, downloads, e-books, applications, and the so-called “smart systems.” The democratic reliance on the era of the “smart” has increasingly begun to raise questions of varying standards. The “cohort of the smart” is an epic power grab by the lords of the network. We are witnessing the primacy of software over hardware. My thesis examines the Invasion of personal spaces by smart home systems. It is using design methodologies to visually convey the seamlessness, novelty and proclaimed “privacy” associated with “smart homes” thus leading to an unconditional reliance on these technologies. Bruce Sterling, in his book “The Epic Struggle of the Internet of Things,” argues that the internet of things has nothing to do with the consumer and everything to do with the business interests of the service providers. My target audience will consist of two categories - the users of the system and the designers who are involved in the “making” of these systems, who also, are a part of the clique who rely on “smart” home systems. Although smart home systems are inscribing convenience in physical forms, this thesis is an effort to deeply investigate the challenges of virtual connectivity at homes and its impact on the architectural connectivity of spaces. It will compare the existence of two micro-ecosystems within an extra intelligent macro techno-ecosystem.