Tell us about your journey, and about finding your niche in the world of Architecture.
I am always looking for the connections that architecture has beyond the field, and my career path reflects that. I studied German and Asian Studies in my undergraduate, with minors in Art History and Pre-Architecture. I then went on to complete simultaneous Master of Architecture and Master of City & Regional Planning degrees from the University of California, Berkeley. I was a John K. Branner Fellow in 2010, and investigated the incremental, unplanned transformation of aging modernist planned cities in a project that included Chandigarh, Brasilia and New Belgrade, as well as several other mid-twentieth century cities around Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America.
My research interests are interdisciplinary, and generally follow how inhabitants tend to restructure their built environments over time. This has led me to explore associated fields in architecture and planning, and I have written about research in building science, craft and construction, and incremental and cyclical processes of settlement formation. I currently work to examine these process both through writing and research, and through project development and experimentation in the built projects of BandukSmith Studio.
What does Conscious Design mean to you and how do you implement it in your work?
I think good design is conscious design. The point of the profession is to develop an expertise on the physical things that support us and the events of our lives, so good design be definition must account for, support, and even empower the people who participate with it.
Has sustainability always been at the forefront of design for you? How do you balance aesthetics and functionality with it?
Yes. For me, sustainability is like structure – all our buildings need it, and it should be integral to the way that we think. That doesn’t mean it needs to scream and shout as the aesthetic of the design every time – rather it needs to work, so that our buildings can be resilient in their own immediate context, but also better use the resources of the larger world which are put to work in built projects.
What do you think will be a leading trend in architecture, in a post-pandemic world?
Will we ever be post pandemic? I think we are now learning to live with it! But I do think that resilience is going to ever more critical as we move into the future. Our next great challenges are climate change and the increased severity of temperature and weather, and how we make our buildings and organise our cities will be absolutely critical in responding to this change, in surmounting the crises it will surely create.
What would your dream design project be? How has it changed over your career?
A public space adaptive reuse of a ruined building or district. I have always been interested in creating something in the place one least expects it might happen, and as my career has progressed I have become more interested in the varied ways we as architects can impact the public sphere. Our education focuses a lot on design, but the strategy required to work in public, we often learn on the ground. I would love the opportunity to bring together these strategic frameworks for the public realm with an intensive detail design process.
What do you think is an indispensable skill for architects right now?
The art of negotiation! Now and always – architects must be able to negotiate varied sets of information and varied concerns in their designs (for example, how wood ages, expands in heat and moisture, maintenance, touch feel, cost, psychological impact, “feeling”, and that is just the material choice). Structural systems, life of the building, using new things versus old…an architect has to be able to all these criteria in their head and balance their needs in each design decision. This she also needs to convey to and convince not only client but agency and consultant. Rather than an expert in a particular thing, an architect’s expertise is in negotiating among the many diverse factors that go into making a building.
Any advice you would want to give students approaching their design practices?
Find someone you admire and try to work for them first. You learn so much by learning someone else’s process, even about what your own is. It is invaluable, and it will also teach you how to set up a practice.
About the architect:
Melissa Smith is an architect and urban planner based in Ahmedabad, where she leads BandukSmith Studio, an urban architecture and research practice she co-founded with Sachin Bandukwala. She is also Program Chair of the Bachelor of Urban Design at CEPT University and will be a jury member of the inaugural edition, GeeVees Awards. Her research interests follow the ways people tend to restructure their built environments over time, with an eye toward how these unplanned, recurring interventions could inform design processes for the public realm.
