Even after 15 years of practice, I still encounter the initial barriers in taking technical instructions from me by the supervisors and people working on sites. It takes a little while for them to gain confidence on my skills and experience. I guess women on the field have to work a little bit harder to get to that same point as our male peers, but we all knew that it was not going to be easy. As Zaha Hadid famously quoted: “If you want an easy life, don’t be an architect.”
One of the projects that gave me a sense of achievement was the Pool House - a very singular / bold expression, yet designed and detailed to an unreal level to incorporate the complexities of function, utility, structural challenges, and, above all, the designed context so as to achieve its minimalistic stance. It’s my very personal interpretation of a good architectural attempt.
Another most creatively satisfying project was the concept proposal that we worked on for an open design competition held by SPA for their new campus. Our design objective here, along with fulfilling the programmatic requirements, was to make a positive environmental intervention – a design scheme that gives and regenerates the existing environment rather than exploiting it. A morphological operation was done on the proposed build blocks, which responded to the contours of the site situated at Delhi Ridge.
Architecture is a profession which is sustained not just by design skills; it takes a huge group of people to make every space come together, which requires project management, and a lot of teamwork and coordination
My advice to young professional women is not to be reserved; rather be experimental, be bold in your choice of work. Moreover, they should invest their formative years in gathering knowledge such as technical details, execution and management strategies. They must work tirelessly to create a strong groundwork for their professional journey ahead.
