We trekked and sketched on the hill

Hello everyone from the architecture+design community. Hope all of you are doing great. I know it's been quite some time since I posted here on hive and that's because as always...college. Okay so let me rant for a little while before I get started on this post. My professors are being very hard on us. They are giving us a lot of workload and hence I have not been able to write nor have I been able to get any free time for myself. Having said all of that let me share with you about my experience on trekking and then sketching the view!

All of this was a part of my study tour for my design studio subject and hence I was with my classmates on this trip. Which was the best part of the trip. I got to go on this trip with my friends. As exciting as this sounds , it was definitely all the very tiring for all of us. But ofcourse i do not want to bore all of you with my rant session in this post.

We started at 8:30 in the morning. We left in our bus to go visit the Patadakkal temple complex. I will be sharing posts on that location very soon in this community. After we visited the temple complex we were asked to reach this location which was called Megutti Hill. The hill was about ten minutes away from the Patadakkal temple complex. We trekked for about twenty minutes after which we were brought to this beautiful view that you all can see by yourself in the first photographs and a few photos after that.

Having finished almost three semesters in architecture school I have realised it's a roller coaster ride. There's days when you feel so pumped to work , then there are days when you just procrastinate or just don't want to work. Some days you're cheerful and on somedays you just want a good cup of coffee.

We were really hungry when we started this trek. Although it wasn't a very long trek we still were very tired. I had to pause every five minutes because my wheezing was flaring up. But nonetheless it was fun. We sang , we paused and took photos , we saw animals and caressed their heads and made it to the top of the hill. It was all fun until we had to sketch for two hours under the hot sun and it was past lunch time. Ofcourse we didn't continously sketch for two hours. We went around the hill, took few photographs and then sat to sketch.

The whole walk towards the top of the hill felt so much worth because of how beautiful the view was. I was mesmerized by the view. It just got too overwhelming to see such a huge scale in such a short amount of time. I definitely needed more time but certainly not past my lunch time.

The experiences we had during that walk towards the top of the hill was so happy. From strangers offering guavas from their farm because we all looked so tired to singing on the way. I realised when one traverses there's always so much happening, with us and around us.
The sounds we hear ,the ground texture that we experience , the weather of that place , the people we meet all of this together creates an experience that remains with us forever. I want to be able to do this in my architectural practice. To create experiences. To let one have a journey and not just experience a structure as a non-living entity but as something more dynamic. Something that let's one interact wholly and solely with the architecture.
Ofcourse it's going to be difficult to achieve , but it's all a process isn't it ? We live and learn.

I will be sharing with all of you my process throughout this semester in architecture school. Where we are designing a museum of vernacular art and knowledge. The design studi for the semester was based on Badami , Pattadakal and Aihole. I would like to share it with all of you and maybe get good inputs so I can learn and do better in my coming semesters !

What I sketched:

Excuse my poor attempt at sketching. These are ten minutes sketches.

The key plan:

It's ofcourse very difficult to explain the key plan through photos. But what we basically tried to do was understand how the natural features are in that particular region. We didn't have to follow a particular scale , but it was definitely very huge. This was a very fun exercise since we had to think so much. The brain had to do its job this time. I enjoyed this particular exercise because it's so much about visualisation, imagination and understanding the scale. Ofcourse none of us got it right in the first go. But as we went on and discussed with each other and our professors we understood the scale more each time.

I hope you all enjoyed reading this post as much as I enjoyed writing it. I took this two month break from peakD only because I wanted to focus on my academics. I struggle with multitasking, but ofcourse I love writing and I love sharing so I want to do it more often. I hope all of you are doing great! I will see you all in my next post !