0008 What To Expect In First Year
The Brief
Welcome back Ladies and Gentlemen to the Architecture Student Diaries where it is my mission to help you kill it in Architecture school whilst making you, the best you in the process. This article is all about your first year in architecture school, including the challenges, joys and sleepless nights that you have to look forward to. When starting university, regardless of the degree, you are met with a completely new way of life; you are now in control of your own learning and this can be daunting to the best of us. In university you need to be able to be discipline enough to actually go to classes when your course guide says classes are not compulsory and you need to be able to keep track of what is due and when it is due because you won’t have teachers chasing you up for assignments anymore. Basically, you need to grow up... Bummer, right? Your first year of architecture school will be like nothing you have ever experienced, at a lot of stages you will probably hate it and feel like you are way in over your head, but don’t let those times beat you, you’re stronger than that. Below I’m going to talk about what to expect in first year, how to overcome the challenging times and how to make the most of your experience. If you want to be ahead of your cohort before you have even started, keep reading.
Below is a breakdown of what we will discuss in today's class:
The Cohort
The Learning Curve
The Workload
The Staff
The Content
Learning Your Basics
Conceptual Thinking
Art
History
The Emotions
Now, let’s get into it. Class is now in session.
The Cohort
At the start of every year, thousands of potential architects sit down in lecture theatres all over the globe ready to start their University journey, but come this cohort's graduation, possibly in that same lecture hall, they look around and see only a small number of those original faces. Why?
Architecture has a high intake number; however, the dropout rate is just as impressive. In your first lecture there are going to be all types of people; here are a few of the normal categories you might come across:
The ones that have known that being an architect was their destiny from the age of 8 (that’s me)
The ones that decided in the later years of high school
The ones that got pushed into the career by family or past teachers
The ones who chose architecture last minute because they couldn’t decide what to do and think that drawing some bad ass buildings sounds fun and couldn’t be that hard, right?
The latter are typically the first of those to seek education elsewhere...
Over the first few months of first year you will see the numbers of attendees steadily decline, many of these will be dropouts but some will simply be the type of student who doesn’t show up to class and their marks reflect this. I beg you, don’t be this type of student. So much of what makes an architecture student successful in their degree is simply the fact that they show up to class, present what they have done so far and gain feedback. It may sound cliché, but any feedback is good feedback and if you aren’t getting feedback you are wasting your time and your tuition fees.
You will quite soon notice who the students that show up each week to each class and are always engaged are. These are the students that are on the track to success and these are the type of students that you want to surround yourself with. Architecture school will always feel like a competition and you will always end up comparing yourself to everyone else, as will the staff, but you can use this to your advantage. If your friends work looks better than yours or they used a cool technique that you haven't seen before, use this as inspiration to better yourself or learn new techniques. Work together, not against each other, try to be better but help each other along the way. In the long run you are all working to become architects, a group of people who are able to make the world a better place; so, the better each of you are, the better off the world will become. The friends you make in architecture school are the friends you will be catching up with over a coffee when you are old and grey, so treat them well.
The Staff
Architecture school staff, they are an interesting bunch to say the least. It would be hard to find a global teaching cohort more diverse than those who teach architecture. Architects are a unique species and those who teach architecture are definitely not exception to that. You will have staff members you love, and those you hate, those you consider a close friend and those you want to avoid at all cost, but regardless of this, each and every one of them wants you to succeed. Those who go into teaching architecture are there on a mission, to mould the minds of the next generation of humans who will shape the world after them. So, trust me when I say that just like me, they want you to be the best you can be. It may be scary and intimidating to go up to a staff member for help but don’t let that get to you, they are mere humans too, who want you to be your best.
I will be totally honest, yes there will be a staff member occasionally who thinks that they are the be all and end all of the universe and that their designing skills are God-like... But this is a rare commodity, so don’t worry about it, just nod and smile and find another teacher to ask. Treat the staff with respect, they are the key to your success and your future and even though at the time you may think what they are saying is wrong... usually they’re right. This is something you learn over time because what makes an architect great is life experience, not natural talent. Typically, an architect won’t create their best work until they are 50 plus years old, so learn from those older than you, they have a few tricks up their sleeves.
The most important thing to know about the staff of university is that they do pick favourites, and do you want to guess who these favourites are? I will give you a hint, it isn’t the people who are the most talented or the ones who create the best work every time. Did you guess? Yes, it is the students who show up to class each week and ask for help! You will be amazed with the opportunities that showing up to class and getting to know your tutors will open to you. Several of my peers have found employment, internships, competitions to enter (and win) as well as priceless mentors through getting to know their teachers. I got the opportunity to go on a design tour in India, designed for 2nd to 3rd year students, as a first-year student because my tutor knew me and knew I was capable. You don’t need to buy staff members a shiny apple for every studio class, just show them respect and you will reap the rewards.
The Learning Curve
‘It’s going to be a rough ride kid’. This is exactly how each architecture students should be addressed at the start of their first lecture. Do me a favour, get a piece of paper and a pen and draw a horizontal line, now draw a vertical line so that you have a right angle. This right angle that you now have, yeah, that’s your learning curve for architecture school, take note of the lack of a curve... Okay, this may be a bit of an overdramatization, it’s not quite that bad, and if you look for it there is a huge bank of resources that will help you through; like this great platform that I have heard of called ‘The Architecture Student Diaries’, whoever came up with that site must be a genius or something...
Honestly though, the learning curve for architecture school is very steep and it is not one to take lightly. But that’s what first year is for; first year of most architecture courses is designed to teach you the basics of what you need to know without you even realising it. You probably won’t have a subject called ‘sketching 101’, but you might have an assignment where at the halfway mark you have to present 10 conceptual sketches and you have to teach yourself how to do these sketches through whatever mean you wish; after all university doesn’t teach you how to do something, it teaches you how to learn to do that something. Once you have completed these sketches you will have your review and show them to your tutor or professor and they will tell you something along the lines of ‘this is good, but you could have improved on this bit by doing it this way’. Now with your self-taught skills and the input from staff, bipity-bopity-boo, you know how to sketch. Take note that if you hadn’t gone to class you wouldn’t have gotten that feedback to fix your sketch, so, just go to your classes okay?
The Workload
Do you like sleep? Of course you do! Everyone likes sleep, it is essential to lead a happy and healthy life. Studying architecture typically gets a bad rap when it comes to lack of sleep and late night/ early morning studying, and this is with good reason. It is hard to keep a good sleep, life, work balance while you are studying architecture, but it is not impossible. It is all about time management. Now, I am not saying that if you are good at time management that you will never have to have a late night through your degree, because I would be lying. But with time management you can limit them. When I was in first year, I had a tutor who told me his top list of ‘do not do’s’ for studying architecture; number one was ‘Do not do all nighters, if you manage your time, you won’t have to’. Naturally I broke this a few months later... But that was because of external factors forcing me to fall behind in one assignment. Architecture school’s workload is big, it doesn’t matter what university you study in, what country you study in, who is in charge of your course or who is in charge of your country, you are going to be a busy little bee.
You need to know what your assignments are, when they are due, which ones are harder and will take more time, which ones require what materials or resources, and you need to plan how you are going to go about them. To survive architecture school, you must be committed, you cannot go in half-hearted and think you will come out okay. It is all about consistency, do not leave things until the last minute. There are always people who leave their assignments until the last day or two and these are the people who end up having to stay up all night long and end up with an average result anyway. The easiest way to look at full time study is to compare it to a full time job; on average a person who works full time works 40 hours a week, translate this to a university course where you may be doing 4 subjects per semester and this works out to 10 hours per week per subject. That was easy wasn’t it. If you stick to this method, you will typically be able to stay on track with your assignments. Some subjects are harder than others and might require, for example 12 hours per week, whilst others are easier and only need 8 hours. Manage this accordingly for your course and what subjects you are doing, and aim for between 40-50 hours of work a week, this includes class time, but only if you are productive in class... I cannot stress this enough, use your studio hours to do work, don’t just mess around, you will regret it come submission week.
The Content
Learning Your Basics
I’m sorry to tell you but in your first year of architecture school you won’t be designing the next beautiful skyscraper that will grace the New York skyline; you will most likely be designing forms that barely even resemble buildings. You will be working with the basic design elements and principles such as form, scale and proportion in order to be able to correctly implement these in your future design. This may feel a bit tedious while you are doing this, but if you pay attention and put in the effort in your first year, your future design work will thank you for it.
Conceptual Thinking
The first year of your course will be very conceptual where you will not so much be designing structures as opposed to learning how to design. The learning of the how and why behind design is a crucial element in becoming a successful architect, as every detail and every decision an architect makes should be measured with intentions to better the space, aesthetics, function and the user experience. Architecture is not simply just designing a pretty building; architecture is about creating experiences and in order to do this you need to be able to think like an architect.
Art
Continuing on from conceptual thinking, first year will present many opportunities to let your inner artist show. Typically, people who go into architecture are artistically minded for obvious reasons, if you are not an incredibly skilled artist, do not fear as it is not necessarily the aesthetics of the product that is the important element but the thought process behind it. A brilliant example of this is Frank Ghery’s design process where his initial sketches of a building appear as mere scribbles on a piece of paper and then materialise as some of the most beautiful and artistic structures in the world. The Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain is a terrific example of this. In your assignments you will assumedly have the opportunity to explore your medium’s and materials and I highly recommend doing this. Try to experiment with as many techniques as you can through first year, be as artistic as you can be because this freedom will dissipate as the years progress. This openness to creativity also will support your growth as an architect and I guarantee the university staff will welcome your efforts and appreciate the extra effort that you have put in.
History
I cannot overstate the importance of learning the history of architecture to be successful in the industry. Architectural history is truly incredible and very enjoyable to learn, stretching over thousands of years, hundreds of civilisations and throughout almost every religion the world has seen. During your course, you should be presented with several opportunities to learn this history and understand its importance in creating the world that we see today. You will start to look at the world and the built environment differently, you will find yourself looking at a building and telling the people that you are with what era it is inspired by, who the people who lived through that era were and the details of the structure that presented you with this information. You will become a wealth of knowledge that you can take with you no matter where you go in the world. Try to give yourself to your history units and learn as much as you can from them, history is amazing and architectural history is in my opinion, the pinnacle.
The Emotions
Okay, so you know those days that you go through feeling every possible emotion in the world? One minute you’re happy, the next your mad, then crying, then laughing, then angry again and then you’re tired? Yeah, that’s basically how you feel during your whole degree of architecture... Architecture school is filled with extreme highs, difficult lows and perpetual sleepiness, but it’s worth it for the stories you will leave with. You will get confused a lot in first year because the content is designed to get you to think like an architect, which I promise, you don’t do prior to starting your course, even if you think you do. This is a whole new way of looking at life and it is sometimes difficult to wrap your head around. You will also get angry... quite often... usually at something like your model that you are making that blatantly refuses to stay in the shape that you want it to. Never fear though, because you will also make friends that will somehow manage to make those tear-filled nights when you are rocking in a corner of the studio at 3am, manageable. You will be crying one minute and then laughing the next, I guarantee.
Final Notes
Congratulation on being accepted into architecture school. After reading this post, now you are prepared for what you will encounter in your first year, it will be a wild ride, but you will love it! I wish you the absolute best for your first year and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. Your first year of university is one that truly changes your life, this is not only the first step on your journey to becoming a registered architect, but a big step in finding out who you really are, who you want to be as a person and finding the people that will be by your side during that journey.
Ladies and Gentlemen, class dismissed.
Iain Colliver, SONA, YBA, GKIHS
