Meena Murthy Kakkar is the Design Head at Envisage, an Interior and Architecture firm specializing in Design and Build projects. Meena pursued a Bachelor of Architecture from the School of Planning and Architecture, Delhi, after which she started her design quest as a Partner at Envisage, along with Vishal Kakkar. With her 19 years of design experience, Meena has paved a glorious path for a practice that is embedded with robust design principles and provides comprehensive solutions for all requirements. Her oeuvre is predicated on a strategical and conceptual design vocabulary. As a designer, she believes that a successful design is one that gets envisaged with sensitivity and empathy to the user’s requirements. Being adept in residential, institutional, and corporate architecture and interiors, Meena can articulate multiple solutions to every given testing situation.
Studying architecture is not limited to understanding the fundamentals of creating buildings— rather, it enables one to think out of the box, acquire problem-solving skills, and become a storyteller. Design is the rudiment of architecture school and can be applied to numerous sectors. An architect has the option to venture into various fields – from designing a movie set to creating animated video games. Moreover, architecture graduates can also explore domains independent of design thinking like writing and photography. Graduation in architecture can be the gateway to endless possibilities. After obtaining the soft skills in architecture school, one has the choice to either study further, gain practical experience or go the entrepreneurial route.
A master’s degree in design-based disciplines such as architecture, interiors, product, industrial, urban, etc., provides excellent options to pivot one’s portfolio to a specific field. Architects today can specialise in emerging areas like lighting and healthcare design. Besides design-based degrees, an architecture graduate can even pursue higher studies in management-based fields like MBA in real estate, project management or building engineering. Architects interested in academia and research have the option to pursue a PhD after their master’s or graduation degree. Higher education enables one to expand and broaden their expertise and share this knowledge with students and young professionals.
Architects are currently venturing into allied and interesting fields like architectural writing, visualisation and photography. Architecture is ever-evolving and no longer restricted to merely building structures. Rather, it entails a complete package of drawings, renders, writeups and images. Architects can find a niche amongst the plethora of options and turn it into a distinctive career path.
Many architects are also moving onto unique fields that do not involve making buildings. With a good sense of design and visualisation, architects can also pursue UI UX design, set design, automobile design and filmmaking. Students are exposed to creating unique concepts, critical thinking, and visualisation throughout architecture school, which makes them well-equipped to venture into these varied domains.
Taking a business or entrepreneurial route may be a beneficial direction for young architects. However, setting up an individual practice involves taking authority over every step of creation — from concept to execution.
Architecture is one of the few courses that shape a person’s personality. Architects are creators who can create anything from a furniture piece to the tallest building in the world. Finding one’s niche and interest is the first step toward understanding the appropriate direction for an architect post-graduation.