I used to think that if I knew what I wanted to pursue career-wise I need to focus all my interest, studies, work experience or experiences overall to architecture. So yes, if you know what career you want to pursue it isn’t silly to think that way. But to think that you have to dismiss any of your other passions or interests because it wouldn’t further your studies or career is wrong.
You are multifaceted, you are complex and allowed to feel like a contradiction.
There may be a route to becoming an architect but there is no blueprint to being human. In fact, that is the most fascinating thing about us. Architecture needs humans to exist, and design is just many ways in which we choose to explore what it means to be all the various parts of ourselves. A friend once asked me, ‘When you relax, do you draw?’ I said, ‘ No, I write’. And everything in me felt wrong like I was supposed to say drawing because isn’t that what architects do? Nope, and there is nothing wrong with that. And over the years you start to realise that architecture isn’t just about drawing - it is about the voice you use to draw with and there is no stencil or one size fits all method to doing it. Of course, I draw, that is one of many ways we can channel what's inside our heads, but it isn’t the only way.
You aren’t boring and more interesting because you fulfil the expectations that you have about being an architect.
You can still be an architect if you love to write, love poetry, take photographs, read books, play video games, watch films etc. It is impossible to not have many passions and interests, otherwise, you’d be two dimensional and we know for a fact that you aren’t. You are simply yourself and that is what your work should explore, your story, the stories that shape you in all sense of the word. You shouldn’t be limited by the resources and mediums you choose to channel your creativity with, especially if it brings you mental clarity, perspective and an outlet then so be it.
Don’t limit your potential because ‘it isn’t what an architect would do’.
That isn’t fair, on you and on the rest of the architectural community. Your interests are what make you, yourself, don’t try to be some photocopy of something that is outdated. Not everything has to be about architecture because even architecture isn’t about architecture it’s about people being within spaces, and you need to be a person to understand that more than anything else. The complexity that is our creativity stems from using different tools to understand the world around us and striving to explain this in any way we can to the rest of the world.
You aren’t just an architecture student, you are the places you’ve lived in, the books you’ve read, the people you listen to and the languages you speak.
I hope you are starting to see the pattern. If you decide to detach yourself from any of the ideas that your architecture or potential to be an architect is derived from, you’ll realise much sooner how better your ideas will be. You are unique, in all the cliches and metaphors. You don’t need to be anything but yourself to be the best designer there is. It’s interest merged with your passions that make for interesting dialogue and communication paths that can truly change the way we think and do architecture. So the next time you feel like you shouldn’t do something creative under the category of architecture, do it anyway it’s your way of connecting what it means to be yourself. And we don’t need a copy and paste of something from the past for the future. We just need you to tap into the mediums you enjoy to use the most and you never know how the design that roots from this belief can bridge architecture into various parts of the human experience that makes for new, accessible and diverse architecture that speaks a language not all may understand but those who have similar interests can relate to.