Built to Explore

Filed under things that never made it to publishing;

Right from the beginning, the thing that got on my nerves were the white papers. The clean walls, minimalist presentation sheets, empty sketchbooks. The utter typical ‘architectural aesthetics’  of it all. If I were an animal, my hackles would’ve been raised every time I encountered a vast white board on a critique panel pinup, with all the technical drawings drafted in some monochromatic hue. The design desires that existed in my head could not be pinned onto a 2D show-and-tell. My passions were not drawn to an interior existence, clicking away at an AutoCAD file of a pipe detailing for a suburban home. 

Somewhere halfway through my Masters I found a connection between the built environment, culture, photography, and being transplanted to foreign lands. I reveled in documenting spaces and structures, in translating that experience through visual mediums. Social media became a bridge, my cameras were the tools, and the world became a trove of ideas. I pursued that yellow brick road of interest until I found my very own version of Oz. I enjoyed capturing images that depicted the architecture of humanity. My photography became a way for me to connect and communicate with the world. 

This isn’t to say that my academic background had no relevance. The truth was that architecture became the foundation of my work. The language of designers and mathematicians were what I utilized to portray people and places around the globe, in a way that I never could through traditional avenues of the profession. I’d always felt that a designer’s mind exists beyond the realm of paper and screen. Artistry occurs in that liminal space between two nouns, where verbs happen and only adjectives seem to exist. It’s an unknowable space, open to experimentation. Maybe in the end what architecture taught me was that I wasn’t built to exist within four walls. I was built to explore. 

Acacia Diana is a Canon EOS Master and travel photographer now based in London. She completed her Masters of Architecture in 2017.