Osman Bari
Dear reader, The following is a selection of academic and personal work, highlighting my skills and sensibilities. Please enjoy. Winter
2019
* ) * * ev o l h t i w t u
b ,koo l (
*pron. [de-kho ma-gur pyaar say] **An Urdu phrase commonly painted on the back of rickshaws, to ward off the evil eye. Read right to left.
Osman Bari
Toronto
osman.bari@gmail.com
Education Sept ‘15 - present Cambridge, Canada Sept ‘18 - present Milan, Italy
University of Waterloo Bachelor of Architectural Studies, Honours
Politecnico di Milano Study Abroad Term
Experience May - Aug ‘18 Ghent, Belgium
Veldwerk Architecten
Sept - Dec ‘17 Amsterdam, NL
Space&Matter
Jan - Aug ‘17 Toronto, Canada Jan - Apr ‘17 Hamilton, Canada
Junior Designer
Architectural Intern
ArchDaily News Intern
Thier + Curran Architects Architectural Assistant
Distinctions 2018
Non-Architecture Competitions Winner
2017
Moriyama RAIC International Scholarship Winner
2017
Ideas Forward 24H Competition Honourable Mention
Skills Digital Adobe Suite, AutoCAD, GIS, Houdini, Rhinoceros, SketchUp, Unreal Engine, Vectorworks, V-Ray
Other Journalism, Model Making, Laser Cutting
Extending An Olive Trail
04
I Think My Parents Are Vi
The Confectional
16
A Madrasa & A Pavilio
The Mughals Haven’t Gone Anywhere
rtual
on
08
12
From Chamber To Chamber
26
22
Extending An Olive Trail
A design pr
historic oli
the coast o
Design & Illustration
of Lugano.
04
through a s
eight axono
illustration
Lugano
roposal for a
ive trail along
of the Swiss city
. Presented
series of
ometric
ns.
05
Fall 2018
1
1
2
Cassarate: a recreational hub
Olive Trail a historic landmark
06
4 3
2
3
4
The Cove a secret swimming spot
Gandria a public square
07
The Mughals Haven’t Gone Anywhere
A poster ca
the restora
artwork at
to be opene
Illustration & Layout
Museum P
08
Commemo
nation’s 60
independa
Toronto
ampaign for
ation of Mughal
t the soon
ed National
Pakistan*.
orating the
0th year of
ance.
*fictional
09
Fall 2017
10
11
I Think My Parents Are Virtual
I think my
virtual. I n voices and
their faces.
crystallised
Editorial
they were i
12
when I was
It’s not tha
Milan
y parents are
never hear their I never see
. They exist
d and timeless as
in the moments
s last with them.
at I’ve lost the 13
Fall 2018
I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL I THINK MY PARENTS ARE VIRTUAL 14
way they pronounce their words or how their eyes roll at my jokes, no, my sensorial memory has luckily not allowed me to forget this just yet. But there’s just no physicality to their existence – no living, breathing, moving, laughing figures in my daily life anymore. It sounds like they’re dead, but they’re not. They’re just virtual. This realisation may have been a recent one, but it’s been years since the virtual parent phenomenon began, because my family doesn’t live together, and we haven’t for over a decade. My dad was the first to go, when a new job relocated him to a city that wasn’t ours. Kids back then, like my sister and I didn’t have phones and anyway, there was no real concept of sustaining a constant over-the-phone relationship with your friends, let alone a parent. Rare video chatting was at the mercy of your dialup internet connection and Facebook was in its infancy. So my dad wasn’t exactly a virtual parent. We saw him at the end of the week, which was a short enough period of time to not warrant daily phone calls or salams1, except for my mom. I didn’t know it then, but he had become a cellular spouse. Relocating to a city that wasn’t ours, while the three of us remained in another city that wasn’t ours either, allowed my dad to support our quality of life. When my sister graduated from high school six years later, we were met with a choice that many families like ours face: to go west. With the condition that somebody remains behind. Which in this case was my dad. So after many promises of daily video calls (the Internet Age had well and truly arrived) and the reassurance that new IM apps provided, we went west. My sister and I got phones with front facing cameras for the first time and I precariously set up the webcam on top of the TV in the living room. We now saw my palm sized dad every day (well, mostly his chin) and the life sized one every six months, which was a long enough period of time to warrant daily video calls and salams.
But distance, for what it lacks virtually, makes up for in reality. Now it becomes a hassle to accommodate a virtual parent into your busy teenage schedule. The phone calls don’t seem to last as long. Their lifeline, the WiFi, dwindles more and more each day. Eventually, biannual visits aren’t enough to jolt the parent-child relationship back to its physical reality, and that’s when I knew that I had a full-time virtual dad. Indefinitely, it seems. *** I received a voice message from my mom today. It was the first time I heard her speak in three months. She greeted me as if I wasn’t four thousand miles away, and we were just continuing a conversation that had been interrupted by the doorbell. I read my mom’s messages every day but we never phone, and so the voice that my brain echoes is one that’s three months old. After listening to her explain her daal2 recipe, my eyes welled up with tears. It was as if the familiarity of hearing her actual voice snapped me out of a trance, one that I hadn’t realised I was even in. I never thought that I would be the one to follow in my dad’s footsteps. Yet as my teenage years drew to a close, I was the one to leave home, to go to school two hours away, to live in different cities that aren’t mine, every four months. And as I sit here, with my mom and sister four thousand miles to the west and my dad four thousand to the east, I realise that maybe I don’t actually have virtual parents. They just have a virtual son.
1 Salam literally translates to “peace” in Arabic, used in this context as an abbreviation for “Assalamu Alaykum” - the Arabic greeting 2 Daal is a thick lentil stewlike dish; a staple in South Asian cuisine
From Chamber To Chamber
A tri-cabin
of student m
RAvB Rott
Exhibition Design & Construction
Aachen &
16
cabinet siz
from OSB p
coated in w stucco.
Aachen
net exhibition
models from
tterdam, RWTH TU Delft. Three
zes constructed
panels and
white textured *images by Marius Grootveld
17
Summer 2018
18
19
20
21
The Confectional
Memory is
potent of in
Winner
Non-Architecture Competitions
Part confes
22
automat, w
of telephon
machine re
meals of ol
the sweet t
Amsterdam
s the most
ngredients.
ssional, part
with a peppering
ne box, this
evives iconic
ld and evokes
taste of nostalgia. 23
Winter 2018
24
25
A Madrasa & A Pavilion
Winner
Moriyama RAIC International Prize Scholarship
Small lips p
26
brows furr
concentrat
a stream of
air through
against a so
was around
in Pakistan
Toronto
parted, with
rowed in
tion, directing
f cool breathy
h pudgy fingers
oft peach wall. I
d the age of five
n, when I 27
Spring 2017
Figure 2: socio-economic hierarchies vanished in exchange for shared breakfast
Figure 1: fragments of a cricketing history dating back to 1863
blew what I liked to term a “time column”. The physical act emulated the motions of smoking an invisible cigarette, while the metaphysical act was the first element in creating an invisible web of places and memories, linking my personal journey through spatial experiences. The web was a constant companion that followed me wherever I went, recording locations and events. I would inevitably forget about the its existence, and at later points in life, recall its origin and consider all that had elapsed between then and now, channelled in a vessel of time; a time column. Born of inexplicable rationale, it was an exercise that anchored and acknowledged my existential state in a given space and moment, and revisited all the settings through which I had come, along with their associated memories. I don’t know where this habit came from, but reminiscing now, it was an early manifestation of a certain infatuation with ideas of narrative, memory, and place.
Born of inexplicable rationale, was an exercise that anchored and acknowledged my existen state in a given space and moment, and revisited all the settings through which I had come, along with their associa memories. While living in Saudi Arabia, I spent a year studying at a local madrasa, a segregated school that specifically teaches the memorization of the Qur’an. It was located in a highly dense district of the city – the underdeveloped urban fabric composed of narrow dirt lanes weaving through a misshapen grid of stone structures.
And so, in hopes of manifesting the postive narratives everyon
, it d ntial
ated
The school was no different; it existed within a (barely) gated compound, upon sand and rocks, surrounded by the homes of its teachers. The building lacked air conditioning and proper doors; its walls were punctured with cracks and gaps that did little to keep the heavy Arabian heat out. Despite its exterior, the place was defined by the happenings on the inside; walls reverberated with the recitation of the Qur’an, masking schoolboy chatter and carpeted footsteps as we cycled through teachers, rooms and chapters. Sadly, the boys were subject to punishment, their mistakes often rewarded with quick flicks of a cane and in some instances, silent tears. I was lucky to be exempt from this, but only because of my socio-economic background. Yet despite this reality, the one space in which we were truly equal was the courtyard. Escaping the clutches of the teachers and finding respite in the heat, we would sit on the hard ground outside just before noon, and tuck into a daily delivery of naan and channa. In that courtyard, at that moment, there were no social differences, barriers or hierarchies; just a community of young boys together in an atmosphere laden with intertwined aspirations and journeys, as we tried to get by. I left the school a year later, but the wafts of hot breakfast and youthful conversation still linger. I recall a particularly incredible moment – when I was just about to go out to bat in my final match as captain, with the team on the cusp of a historic championship win. Facing an extremely precarious match situation, I stood alone in the dressing room, staring out onto the pitch, perfectly framed by a single window, heart racing and palms sweaty. It was the final time I was to experience this moment. I truly felt The Pavilion’s influence, its history and tradition egging me on to fulfil the team’s narrative, born in this very space. I returned to the room hours later, now filled with animated voices of victory, which had been unheard in The Pavilion for almost 10 years.
; just a community of young boys together in an atmosphere laden with intertwined aspirations and journeys Having been conditioned by these two places and their narratives, I realised the significance of places of all kinds in my life. Constantly forming strong, and sometimes irrational, attachments to settings nurtured my underlying state of wistful nostalgia, and I discovered that the ‘place’ and by extension, architecture, is essential to the existence of our individual and collective histories, and vice versa. For architecture is a “time column” in itself; serving not only as shelter, but also as a record and testament to the interconnected realities that define its very soul and rid it of any neutrality. I believe the madrasa and the pavilion led me to architecture; showing me that there exists the possibility to create transformative and emotional spaces for all of our lives to unfold. Yet, I recognise architecture’s potential as a double-edged sword, facilitating a coexistence of positive and negative narratives. For behind the walls of madrasas, dwelled lives of poverty and injustice, and even my beloved pavilion will forever remain in the shadow of a historic institution existing in the aftermath of a decade-long sexual abuse scandal. We are seeing this on global scale too; Donald Trump’s proposal for a border wall is a perfect example of architecture’s politically charged capacity to divide.
ne deserves, I found architecture. Time will tell what it means.
* ) * * ev o l h t i w t u
b ,koo l (
*pron. [de-kho ma-gur pyaar say] **An Urdu phrase commonly painted on the back of rickshaws, to ward off the evil eye. Read right to left.
osman.bari@gmail.com
Winter
2019