0011 Your First Review
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 going to be focused on how to make it through and nail your very first architecture school review. Reviews can be daunting; you are required to stand up in front of staff members and peers whilst presenting your design and work. During a review, you are in a very vulnerable position and you are opening yourself to a lot of criticism, but if you follow my tips below, you will be able to fly through it with a smile on your face. If you are someone who is terrified of public speaking, this can add another level of fear in a presentation, however, if you truly believe in your work enough, then you will get through it without too much trouble. Reviews are something that you will be dealing with all the way through your degree and your future career, so you better get used to them; once you get through your first, it only gets easier.
Below is a breakdown of what we will discuss in today's lesson:
Know What is Required
Dress Appropriately
Compose Yourself
Present Like a Pro
Expect to Get Offended
Guest Reviewers
Fake It ‘till You Make It
Now, let’s get into it. Class is now in session.
Know What is Required
The first step in undertaking a successful review is ensuring that what you present to the audience is what was asked of you. I have spoken in previous classes about the importance of following the brief, and the presentation is an important example of this. Your brief will outline what is required to be presented and how it is to be presented. This may include something along the lines of 4 A1 Portrait sheets with a minimum of three computer renders spread throughout. Another possibility may be that the review is to be presented with a PowerPoint presentation and a computer-generated flythrough to be accompanied by a partial physical model at a scale of 1:20. You need to ensure that you follow the required outline for your presentation in order to be eligible for possible full marks. However, remember that this is architecture and creativity is rewarded, so don’t forget to sometimes think outside of the box. A terrific example of this was during my first year when we were given a brief to present on 3 A1 sheets, there was no specification as to how these sheets were to be laid out. I had a clever friend who decided to cut each of her three sheets in half horizontally and laying them out one after the other. The result created a thin banner that stretched the length of six A1 sheets, this was incredibly effective when presented and her mark reflected this. Be creative people and find loopholes, but don’t break the rules if it will hurt your marks.
Dress Appropriately
Architects are designers, right? We are visually driven people who are attracted to pretty things and therefore, typically an architect will be a sharp dresser (there are definitely exceptions to this rule though) and sometimes with a bit of an individual flair. I personally am a bit of a fashion nerd and really enjoy ensuring that I always present myself in the best possible manor regardless of the environment I am in. You will find as you move through your degree that most of the students will begin to dress quite on trend and become a bit ‘hipsteresque’. So, stay on top of trends without being a carbon copy of an Instagram influencer and add a bit of your own flair to your outfits. I have a future post dedicated solely to fashion for both male and female architecture students; I will be working with a close friend who is a very sharp dresser to assist in writing the female portion.
In a review however, some of this trendy and individual dressing can be a problem as you do not want you to be the centre of attention, you want your work to be. There is a reason the plain black V-neck sweater and white collared shirt is quintessential to the architect's wardrobe and is so often referred to as the architect’s uniform. It is because you want to appear neat and well-presented when speaking in front of a client, or in university your tutors, but you do not want the eye to be on you, but instead your design. The best option for both genders is simple and basic solid colours such as your blacks, whites and greys. Simple, classic and neatness is the key to dressing for a review.
The Classic Architect: A pair of black Jeans or trousers, a white collared shirt and a black V-neck sweater, you can’t go wrong with this for both genders. If you are a lady, swap things up with a black skirt if you want, this will provide for the same effect with a bit of a difference; think professional fit and length though.
The Simple Dress: A basic black or grey dress that fits well will make you appear professional and well composed without taking any distraction from your work.
Classic with a Twist: If you want to be a bit different than the Classic Architect yet still gain the same effect, swap your colours up. Change the black pants for grey, swap the V-neck for a crew-neck or change the colour of your sweater or shirt.
The key is looking neat and not distracting, so as long as you wear clothes that make you look professional coupled with basic colours and minimal patterns you are on the right track. In my future fashion related articles, I will provide more outfit ideas so stay tuned for inspiration.
Compose Yourself
Script:
Would a professional gymnast arrive at the Olympics without a planned routine? Of course not, that would basically be a suicide mission on the route to a terrible score. The same goes for a review. You cannot go in blind without a planned routine on how and what you are going to discuss. Architecture reviews in university are short and you will almost be guaranteed to not have enough time to say what you want to, so you need to break down your presentation before you present. If you go up unprepared you will flounder your words and talk about things that are unimportant and then run out of time before explaining the important parts to your reviewers. So, make sure you script beforehand and know exactly what you are going to say, pick out the important parts and focus on them.
Practice:
In extension, would the above-mentioned gymnast arrive at the Olympics without having practiced the routine that they have planned. Once again, of course not. Make sure that before you do your presentation in front of everyone that you have gone over what you are going to say a few times, so you don’t get lost when you are mid presentation. You don’t need to professionally stand up and practice exactly what you will do and know your script word for word, but at least know what you are going to talk about, what you are going to say about them and the order in which you will speak about them. Practicing exactly what you are going to do can be helpful for some people who really struggle with public speaking, and maybe you have an acting background and knowing every single stage direction of your speech will help you; in most cases however, planning absolutely every movement can make your review appear robotic and unnatural. You don’t want this. Try to just know the outline and the content and then speak naturally.
Speak Confidently:
Okay so let’s have a quiz; which voice is a client going to be more inclined to want to pay money to work with? A squeaky, quiet and shy little voice or a strong and soothing voice that speaks with authority? I think you know the answer. You need to think of a review as a pitch to a client and if you don’t think the client will want to use your design after your review, your tutor will probably not want to give you a good mark. It is as simple as that. You need to present your design in a manner that shows that you believe in your design and that you are proud of your design. If you show doubt in your design, that doubt will rub off on your client and they will not want to work with you, so you need to exude confidence in every word you say. Even if you are not totally sold on your design, you need to hide that when you are speaking, sometimes you need to oversell to make a sale. If you express confidence, the people around will feel confident in you; but don’t get too cocky, no one likes a show-off.
Present Like a Pro
Have It Well Presented:
A well-rounded presentation is not merely an incredible design slapped onto a piece of paper. You need to put time and effort into your presentation layout itself to make it not only look good but read well also. As stated above, we as architects are attracted to visuals and therefore, it makes sense for the layout of our presentations to be just as appealing as our designs. Do not just make a mish mash of plans and renders, make it logical and simple to read. The simplest way to design a layout is to create invisible quadrants on your pages and work within these quadrants; this will make a neat and well-balanced layout. My go to software for presentation is Adobe InDesign as it is a simple piece of software to create terrific layouts, and in extension, as it is part of Adobe’s Creative Suite, it integrates seamlessly with other Adobe products such as Photoshop. Don’t stress if your first presentation does not look even remotely as beautiful as that of a Master's student, because trust me, it won’t; but that is okay because your tutors will not be expecting it to. The important thing with your first presentation is for it to be neat and simple to read, fancy layouts will come with time as you develop your skills and by the time you are a Master’s student, your layouts will be just as fantastic as those you are in awe of today.
The Quality of the Work is More Important Than the Quality of the Print:
The worst thing about architecture school in my opinion is that the resources to complete the course cost a fortune and as a student, on a student's budget, this makes life very difficult at times. This includes model materials, drafting utensils and especially the cost of printing. Before starting architecture school, I never knew just how much printing cost and it was quite a shock because good quality, large scale printing costs excessive amounts. Never fear though, because the quality of your print is nowhere near as important as the quality of your design and model making. Yes, higher quality prints will make your work look better and give a better impression to the reviewers. Though, I personally struggle to justify the difference in price between a basic colour print on a thin paper and a high-quality colour print on a thick, gloss paper, when the difference in appearance from the distance that the reviewers are observing is not that high.
In the past when your mark was solely taken from what you presented in person, yes, the more expensive option makes sense; yet today it will be very rare to have an assignment that doesn’t also have a digital submission of your pages where most of the marking will probably be taken from. As a side note, in today’s COVID-19 world, many submissions are purely online so you may be able to save some money at the minute; who knew a global pandemic would be so good for an architecture students bank account?! But back to printing costs… If money isn’t an issue, by all means, spend the extra money and get the high-quality print, but if money is tight, the amount of marks you may lose by printing in lower quality is minimal assuming that the end result is still crisp. Some semesters may only require one review and maybe you can justify the high cost prints in this instance because it will only be twice in a year, though some semesters you may have reviews every four weeks which will add up to a lot of printing costs; it is really up to you and your budget on how you print. I personally use a lower cost print for my reviews if I have multiple pages of large scale, this saves money and I have always been awarded high marks because the design work on the pages is of high quality. I also however, in the instance of a review that might only require one sheet, go for a high-quality option as one high quality sheet will usually be similar to the cost of multiple sheets in low quality.
Expect to Get Offended
If every designer in the world had the same view on design every building would look exactly the same, so unfortunately, your reviewer will most likely not see you design as the perfect structure that you do. You will inevitably at some point in your degree have a reviewer who simply does not like your design, and they will make comments that could really hurt your feelings because you put so much time into your work. These comments do not necessarily mean that your design is wrong, it just means that it isn’t right for them. It is highly likely that you could look at one of their designs and not like it, people have different tastes and that is okay. Don’t get personally offended by these comments because they are not personal attacks, even though they may sound like it.
It is important that you are able to stand up for your design though, but do not simply dismiss the comments of the reviewers. Really try to listen to the reviewers and what they say because they do know what they are talking about most of the time, try to take on board what they say because it might just come in handy in another assignment. After listening to the comments of the reviewers you may get a chance for rebuttal to their comments and this is where you need to calmly justify your decisions and explain to them why you did the things that they may have disliked; this is good because they may simply have not understood what you were trying to do and that is why they commented the way they did.
Guest Reviewers
One of the most frustrating things in reviews in architecture school is that quite often you will have two people reviewing you, one being your groups tutor and the other being a guest reviewer who might be an industry professional or another staff member who teaches another class. These guest reviewers can be terrific to gain feedback from because they can provide an outside perspective on your design and fresh ideas. However, from what I have personally found and what several other architecture students I have spoken to have experienced, usually the guest reviewers' comments can be quite disheartening for the person presenting as the guest is not fully comprehending what the assignment was and therefore make negative comments about things that were actually part of the brief. This happens quite often in reviews as sometimes the guests have been found last minute and simply are given a basic rundown of what the end product should be and aren’t told of the process that was undertaken to get there. In these instances, do not get angry or defensive towards these reviewers, simply listen to what they say but take their comments with a grain of salt because a lot of the time they are unhelpful. If you have a good tutor, they may correct the guest, but otherwise you just have to stay strong during the storm. Do not get me wrong though, I have had some guest reviewers, particularly in third year who’s comments really helped and I was able to take on board for my next submission. Feedback is feedback, and even if at first it sounds useless, usually you can find some useful information if you dig deep enough.
Fake It ‘till You Make It
Okay, so sometimes in architecture school you will find yourself at your review with a finished design and ready to present, but you either hate your design or you just can’t think of the words to express to the reviewers what your design is and means. This happened to me in my very first review... So, I was in a subject that was basically as far away from real world design as possible and the brief had no clear direction, the point of this was to teach us to think like architects, but basically what it generated was an entire cohort ready to present with designs that they couldn’t even comprehend themselves and having no idea if what they had done was right. So, what I did in my review was call on my past experience in acting and improvised the heck out of it, I scripted what I was going to talk about but completely made up the inspiration behind each little bit. I got the highest mark in my cohort... The goal of an architect is to design structures and spaces that are 100% purposefully thought out and with meaning behind every window and door, but sometimes in architecture school the briefs make this almost impossible and you just simply don’t have a reason for why it was designed this way. So, brainstorm and come up with a reason, the deeper the meaning, the better. In that first assignment I said that one of my elements was inspired by a drawing I had done that resembled a mountain and then I turned the piece of paper upside down and showed that now the mountain looks like a deep valley. My explanation was that this element was inspired by movement through life's ups and downs and how it depends on the way you look at things as to which outcome you discover. Yep... I don’t know either, but in the moment, in that presentation and in that assignment, it was exactly what the reviewers were looking for. So, think outside the box and you will be on your way to thinking like an architect.
Final Notes
It’s finally time for your very first review in architecture school! It is a day that you will remember for the rest of your life and you will either look back on it with a smile or a shiver will go down your spine. Either way, it is a learning experience and the first one is always the hardest. Once this is over and out of the way you will have a clearer understanding on how these reviews work and you will knock the next one out of the park. I hope that my tips have assisted you in understanding how to prepare for your review and what to expect on the day. I wish you the best of luck and I’ll see you in the next one.
Ladies and Gentlemen, class dismissed.
Iain Colliver, SONA, YBA, GKIHS
