This blog is written especially for students and young architects.
Over the years, I have come to realise how much life experience shapes the way we understand space, relationships, and design itself. These thoughts come from my own journey, from what I did not know as a student to what I see differently today.
I am not writing this to preach or correct. I only wish to share, with the hope that some of these reflections will stay with you as your practice grows and evolves.
Looking Back, Looking Inward
When I was in college, I wasn’t thinking about family relationships or responsibilities. Not in the way I do now. Friendships were everything then. But I wasn’t imagining what it means to care for aging parents, raise children, or hold a family together through life’s phases.
Now, at 56, life feels very different. My children are grown up, and my mother is growing older. Naturally, the way I think about space, care, and relationships has evolved.
Maybe that shift is just the effect of age.
But maybe it’s also a form of wisdom that comes only from having lived through it.
What Young Architects Can’t Yet Know
Recently, I was trying to explain something to my daughter about how her mother feels in certain situations. I told her, “You may not fully understand her… until you become a mother yourself.”
That made me pause.
Can we truly expect young architects, or anyone in their 20s, to design for stages of life they haven’t experienced?
No. And we shouldn’t blame them either.
But here’s the reality:
The buildings they design will outlive their current understanding. The spaces they create will witness lives they haven't lived yet.
Experience is Not Measured in Projects
I used to believe that an experienced architect was someone who had built many buildings.
Now I believe something else:
An experienced architect is someone who has witnessed many lives, and carries that understanding gently into the spaces they design.
You don’t have to design a hundred buildings to be wise.
But you must have seen life, listened to it, lived through its highs and lows—and allowed that to shape your design lens.
Designing With, Not Just For, People
When it comes to large housing projects, I strongly believe:
Architects must include people of all age groups in the design process.
Not as case studies. Not as footnotes.
But as collaborators who are included in the design team..
They don’t need to be architects.
They need to be children, teenagers, parents, caregivers, and the elderly.
Because they will inhabit what we only imagine.
At the Very Least—Learn From the Lives That Follow
If such collaboration isn’t possible from the beginning,
Then at least, post-occupancy studies must become non-negotiable.
Real learning doesn't end at project handover. It begins when people move in.
Do kids play where we thought they would?
Do elders feel isolated?
Is the community coming together, or slowly drifting apart?
These are questions only real life can answer.
When Buildings Outlive Our Understanding
Maybe what I’m saying sounds idealistic.
Maybe I’m thinking like this because I’m 56.
But if that’s the case, then let’s ask ourselves:
Why don’t we build systems that learn from age, instead of dismissing it?
Why don’t we invite future understanding into today’s practice?
After all, architecture lasts much longer than our phases of life.
Shouldn’t our thinking try to reach just as far?
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