Role of an Architect: Lessons from the movies - Part 6
- Amit Jnagal, Senior Technical Architect, Infosys
In my last post, I talked about the movie Swades and the lessons it held for Architects about giving back in the form of teaching budding architects, publishing papers etc.
The 300 Spartans (Year of Release: 1962; Director: Rudolph Mate; Our Architect: King Leonidas, played by Richard Egan; Architect's Character: The Greek king of Sparta who is up against a stronger Persian army)
‘The 300 Spartans’ depicts the invasion of Greece by the Persian army and the role of King Leonidas, the king of Sparta, known for its proud, bold and courageous army. The story deals with a number of issues – the role of the senate, the mammoth scale of problem at hand and the values of a team, in this case of a state.
The legend is that King Leonidas, prohibited to use his army to fight against the Persians by his own Senate members, decides to take on the swarm of Persian army with 300 of his body guards. His force not only holds the Persian army at bay in a long drawn battle but also ignites the values of the rest of the Greeks who decide to launch an all out war against the Persians. This movie was remade in 2006 under the name ‘300’.
The lessons that this movie offers for architects are:
• Doing the right thing – aligned with our own personal and moral values.
• Courage under fire
• Setting an example to ignite other minds.
• Persistence
• Looking for alternatives
• Attitude!
For this movie too, I will skip talking about any specific scenes because it makes its point through the whole storyboard. There are a lot of lessons that we, as architects, can pick up from this movie. The most important one being – develop the right attitude and use it! The second most important thought that this movie provokes is to introspect ourselves to see what are we made of? What are our values and how do we prioritize them.
Values are something that take the form of our signature in all our work. You can tell from the work of an architect that he places higher premium on technology than on business, or if he confronts issues vs. sweeping them under the carpet. Values form the torch light which show us the way when all other light is swept away. They can push us to do the right thing and doing the things right.
