Who am I ?

If you don't know me , my name is Ata Yuksel. I am a 21 year old architecture student from Istanbul and this is my blog (hopefully). I am in my 3rd year of college and for this year I am studying in Madrid with the Erasmus program. As the title of my blog refers I am a little lost in my journey. This year was very important for me in that I believed living away from my parents , my country and my friends for the first time would put me on a path to find myself to find what I wanted to do in life. This was not an issue for me in the past years as architecture took up all the “time” I had and whats left of it I used for me and my social life however in Madrid that would not the case as I found out soon enough.

I got up to a rough start here as I countered numerous problems with the school and considered turning back at some point , at this time all that was in my mind was “time”. The idea that I was going to waste a semester here was eating me up inside. Now this was not the first time I had this tought cross my mind. I guess this idea of what am I doing with my life has crossed everyones minds at some point in time. Despite most of my worries being gone in a few weeks’ time I still had too much time to spare and time from my experience of being an architecture student wasn’t something you had much of to begin with.

Drawing and painting was always somehow a part of my life maybe it was my first art teacher , this lady that always pushed me to do more with my work and help me to improve or my parents that bought me my first nice pair of colored pencils in Florence , that motivated me to sketch my first architectural drawings of some sorts. Drawing was my way to express myself for many years and still is however as I grew older I started to look into other ways of expression. Youtube , I always believed was a major part of my life. It played a major role in me improving my English speaking skills through watching people speak in their regular lives , it helped me open my eyes to new ways of thinking but most importantly it helped me find myself creatively. Around my high school years I discovered two daily vloggers called Funforlouis and Mrbenbrown. These guys went around the world taking photos and filming themselves wherever they went , I quickly got addicted to these guyses channels and got interested in doing the things day did specifically photography. I started taking photos everywhere I went editing them and posting them on Instagram , this made me feel like one of those guys , this made feel like I was creating something for the first time in my life. Shortly after finishing high school I got myself a DSLR Camera and started taking Photography seriously. I want to talk about one more youtuber however , someone you might know by the name of Casey Neistat. I don’t want to be too much of a hipster about this but before he got famous as hell I got into his videos where he was making things in his toolshop. This idea of making my own things was something I never considered before this however I got in to it very quickly started painting my bags making props for our graduation party. This newfound energy of creation in was very poorly timed as this was my last year of high school when everyone studies all day and have no time or motivation to do anything else. I had an idea of what architecture was from my parents who are architects themselves so I decided to study architecture never knowing this was the exact place where I could use all these skills I acquired through my life. I quickly excelled at school and was happy and passionate about what I did I was proud of myself for every project , every drawing and every render I did. I never considered myself to be very talented at anything ; I was ok at drawing , I was a decent photographer but nothing special ; I however was good at architecture I was interested in everything that we did and was willing to work my ass off to be better and create something that I considered to be good. With this newfound success came doubt ; was I actually good , was I doing enough , I had to win at some competition to be recognized , how can I convert this success in to my job. These feeling never went away and when I came to Madrid to improve myself to get better but found that it could be for nothing , it could be a waste of time they skyrocketed. I started asking myself everyday what am I doing here what is my way out , how can I use this time to my advantage.

Cooking was my first endeavor in my effort to fix this matter. Food was always a giant part of my life ; it was something past on to me from my parents I guess , they always made sure I tasted new things , experienced new cultures. It was great at first I loved exploring new meals and making myself good food everyday , something I was unable to do back home where food was prepared for me but I could only cook so much on a day-to-day basis. My hunger for creating wasn’t fulfilled. Publishing my work both in photography and architecture was always something I was passionate about, I wanted to exhibit my work that I put hours into and get people's reaction. Instagram was my first stride in this journey however I felt It was not enough , I wanted to talk about much more.

So this is how I got here. The idea for this blog came up whilst I was having a chat with my friend Anil about our future here in Madrid. I figured this free time I had with my longing to understand my future was the perfect storm to start something , a website where I would share my work , write about things I was passionate about and hopefully build an audience. This was a way for me to do what I aspire to do, to improve at my craft, to force myself creatively and to force myself to make something every day. This however is scary as hell , to put myself and my work out there knowing that I am not a professional at any of these things that I will be talking about that I am doing but in the end I have to force myself to do this to take a step forward.

In this blog I will be talking about architecture , design , photography and much more , I hope you will be interested in my opinions about these topics as I am interested in learning yours. I will be posting weekly content so be sure to check back on the blog or be a part of the email list to get notified whenever I have a new post and if you liked it be sure to share it with your friends or loved ones. My name is Ata Yuksel and this was my story and this is my blog The Lost Architect.