Building things is beautiful

In the book Humanise, Thomas Heatherwick, through the lens of architecture, points out how the art of creation gets destroyed because of a large narrative change, white collarisation of creation, and misaligned incentives.

White collarisation and distance from user feedback

Heatherwick says that architects today don’t play with materials, and they don’t know how to build. He was questioned when he built a small structure in his university. The message, “Architects don’t build” was delivered. What led to this? This goes back 5 centuries when freemasons separated from architects. Centuries of specialisation and the mighty industrial revolution made sure that white collarisation of architecture was complete. Now, architecture was an intellectual profession. Architects were supposed to create blueprints and give orders, not get their hands dirty with cement.

Heatherwick says that many architects assume they know better than the people living in buildings. “They don’t know what they want. I know what they want” becomes the prevailing sentiment which leads them to dismiss any user feedback. It’s the same kind of arrogance that many artists suffer from. Since customers of architecture firms are real estate companies, they are many steps away from getting end-user feedback. This distance keeps the arrogance alive.

If this were a consumer-tech start-up, things would be different. At Urban Company, we used to mock product designers who had a habit of blaming the end-user - “Oh so you think the user is the idiot” (Ok, it was Gurugram, and people used the colourful Hindi word instead).

Of course we need division of labour in society, but when we start looking down on tasks as “beneath us” even though they might make us better builders, our arrogance starts to stifle creativity.

Mechanical engineering should be about building things

Heatherwick said that architects don’t see themselves as builders. While that was very, very surprising, it was believable. It was believable because it felt familiar.

When I say I am a mechanical engineer (that too from a place like IIT-B), people assume that I would be handy with tools and comfortable with repairing things. While I can repair a bicycle puncture, that’s my only résumé point in that area. The unfortunate truth is - modern mechanical engineering does not encourage obsessive tinkering and building, the kind that’s needed to get a feel of creating things. My courses were about fluid and heat-transfer, cutting mild (or high carbon) steel, simulating industrial operations or control systems. We were hardly ever creating anything tangible. Sure, there were a few professors who went out of their way and made us see the beauty in manufacturing plants or control systems. But it was rare. And several of my batch mates were, and are, building great things. But again, it was the exception than the norm.

This needs some thought, but I do think it’s possible to make creation fun again. Students are very incentive driven - be it placements or grades or money. Institutes need to figure out a way to connect these two, and it will be net beneficial to the institute, the country and the economy.