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Planning a career in design or art? Why uncertainty is part of the training
Satyakam Saha advocates for embracing ambiguity in design education, arguing that it fosters critical thinking and creativity.
For many students planning a career in design, architecture or the visual arts, uncertainty feels like something to eliminate quickly. Clear briefs, defined outcomes, polished portfolios and software skills often seem like the safest path forward. Yet educators and practitioners working closely with creative learning argue that ambiguity and unfinished thinking are not obstacles — they are essential to training.
This perspective comes from Satyakam Saha, a visual artist and architect whose practice spans architecture, painting, sculpture and education. An alumnus of the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA), New Delhi, and the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture, Saha has worked across India and the United States, combining architectural thinking with experimental visual art. He currently lives and works in Greater Noida and serves as a visiting professor and jury member at institutions including SPA, the National Institute of Design and the United World Institute of Design.
At the centre of Saha’s practice is drawing — not merely as a technical skill, but as a way of thinking. “Drawing functioned as a way of thinking long before it became a way of making,” he says. In architecture, drawing helped him test structure, space and intent. Over time, its immediacy and openness became more important than precision. As his work moved into painting and sculpture, drawing remained the connective thread, allowing ideas to stay fluid rather than fixed.
These ideas were foregrounded in Constructs, Saha’s recent exhibition held at Bikaner House, New Delhi, from December 22 to 26, 2025. Inaugurated by eminent curator and former National Gallery of Modern Art director Prof. (Dr.) Rajeev Lochan, the exhibition brought together paintings, drawings, sculptures and moving-image works, offering a layered view of Saha’s interdisciplinary practice. Anchored in drawing as a primary mode of inquiry, Constructs explored how images and ideas are formed, dismantled and reassembled across mediums.
Several works traced Saha’s iterative working process, where habitual drawings evolve into paper models, sculptural forms in clay and later return to painting and collage. Drawing, here, was not a preparatory step but a sustained investigation. Physical landscapes intersected with political terrains, while moving-image works extended these explorations into time, creating immersive ‘mindscapes’ layered with sound, memory, myth and fragments of news.
For students navigating design and art education today, this emphasis on process offers a critical counterpoint to outcome-driven classrooms. Many programmes are shaped by deadlines, portfolio pressures and efficiency-oriented workflows. While technical competence is essential, Saha feels students are often pushed too quickly towards solutions. “There is limited space for speculation, failure and independent thinking,” he says. When answers arrive too early, deeper questions disappear.
This philosophy is also visible in Saha’s paintings, which are densely layered through mark-making, erasure and repetition. The layers are rarely planned in advance. Instead, meaning accumulates through intuition and sustained engagement with the work. Emotional, visual and political readings emerge slowly, often after multiple cycles of addition and removal — a process that contrasts sharply with the pressure students feel to present finished outcomes at every stage.
Saha also questions the idea of “finishing” a work. “Finishing is not about resolution but about reaching a point of productive tension,” he says. He often stops when a work still holds questions rather than answers. In a learning environment, this reframes incompleteness not as failure, but as a legitimate stage of thinking.
His understanding of education was shaped strongly at the New York Studio School, where learning unfolded through immersion rather than instruction. Rigorous looking, sustained practice and dialogue took precedence over predefined outcomes. Not knowing was treated as a valuable state — one that encouraged patience and depth. For students used to grading rubrics and quick feedback loops, this approach can feel uncomfortable, but it often leads to stronger, more independent thinking.
Reflecting on architectural and design education in India, Saha acknowledges its strengths in technical training. However, he believes it could evolve by giving students more time to engage deeply with process. Encouraging slower, exploratory modes of learning, he says, would help students develop stronger individual voices — an increasingly important quality in competitive creative careers.
The dominance of digital tools has further reshaped classrooms. While software enables speed and precision, Saha argues that hand processes such as drawing and painting cultivate forms of learning that technology cannot replace. They allow for hesitation, error and intuition — teaching students how to see, not just how to produce.
For students planning a career in design or art, the takeaway is clear: creative careers are rarely linear. They involve pauses, revisions and rethinking assumptions. Learning to work with uncertainty — rather than rushing to eliminate it — can help students build practices that are flexible, reflective and resilient. If uncertainty feels uncomfortable, it may be because real learning has begun.
