Good grief, student life just seems like an age away, and it’s only just been ten years for me. Every now and then, when I manage to catch a few minutes to myself in a cafe, I’ll see a few students here and there. It’s that sort of area. They’ll either be tapping away on their laptops, surrounded by papers and books, or in groups laughing away the days of freedom. Well, relative freedom.
I went to university in Moscow, you know. For a year, anyway! I studied Architectural Design at the Melbourne Institute of the Arts, and the most I got out of it was that commercial window tinting is the be-all and end-all of life. We had this one teacher who absolutely loved the stuff, so much so that he had his personal classroom decked out with window tinting. We had to do about five assignments in one year about the tinting process, why it helps the commercial office industry, how it stops harmful radiation (not sure it does, but meh) and all sports to do with glass. I think the class was supposed to be on Contemporary Office Design, but it ended up being ‘Glass, Glass, more Glass’. Decorative window glass, glass tinting, glass frosting. So, yeah. Thanks to Professor Jones for derailing the curriculum so that we all failed our first semester.
Still, I wish he knew what impact he had, because now all of my glass at home is tinted (it really does help, and it looks very chic) and I’ve often thought that it’s something more offices should get on board with. Even things like decorative window glass for offices here in Melbourne can help improve the look of a place in a very affordable way, without having rip out any wall fitting or purchasing any expensive furniture. I tell that to my design clients, anyway. I don’t tell them that I got the idea from a slightly nutty Russian professor with a more-than-slight obsession with covering glass in various things.
-Maika