Archinect - M.Arch in a strange land

Week 69

2012-09-24T23:23:23-04:00

Before the semester started I was lucky enough to tak an impromptu visit home to see my family and take one last deep breath before the semester starts. As serious as I am about architecture, spending a week away from the study of architecture makes it completely melt away, I got to see my dad’s new home, stayed in brothers new place and spend the long weekend at the cottage with my mom. It reminded me why I am doing all of this.

It is easy to get sidetracked and forget why you went into architecture school, the long hours, it is expensive and it is certainly not looking good as a profession, but somewhere you decided to go into it and give it your all. I can only speak for myself, but my family has helped me tremendously throughout my education, any kind of support I have needed they have been there without hesitation. I am here on the cusp of my final year and masters thesis and in a way I am doing it for them.

I love architecture and all of its flaws, and I am positi...

Week 68

2012-08-27T00:50:00-04:00

It’s a universal truth that the more you know, the more you in fact don’t know. When starting to investigate a subject, entire worlds open up with questions, and from those questions, ever more worlds, which inevitably lead to even more questions, and just when you think you have mastered a subject, boom, you realize you don’t really know anything.

Having previously done two undergrad thesis’s, I can say I have a good handle on the pressures and disciplines that accompany it and to a certain extent, the architectural thesis process itself. More than any other project you have done, or will ever get commissioned to do, a thesis is a manifestation of you. Everything you think about your industry, your mannerism, your belief structure. There is not one aspect of a thesis that cannot be traced backed to you as a person, and ultimately compared to you. You are setting up the rules of the game, you are playing both sides, and it is ultimately a reflection of your experience and attitu...

Week 67

2012-08-20T02:53:00-04:00

New York is about 5,000 kilometres from Vancouver, not an incredibly long distance, there are further distances across the globe, it’s about a 5 hour plane trip. Yet for someone who wants to make architecture and design their career or life’s work, the distance to NYC can be a bit more relative. New York has a number of architectural institutions which are looked at from all over the world, some of the best schools and firms are positioned in New York. Culturally and socially it is definitely a city that other cites try to resemble, it has celebrities, sports figures, politicians and designers, museums, consumerism, and Saturday Night Live. I am a huge fan of SNL.

It is no secret that many young designers feel the pull of NYC, a place to be able to test ideas and work to an utmost of potential. I am certainly not the first student to feel the allure, nor will I be the last. However right now it feels so much further than 5 hours away, but I am working on closing the gap.

It is...

Week 66

2012-08-20T01:08:00-04:00

In an effort to streamline the thesis process starting in Sept, I wanted to take all of my remaining elective courses this summer. I was supposed to do a design build but it unfortunately fell through, so I decided to take a class I had heard good things about from some other architecture students, a class on modern Chinese history, not architecture or art history, a full history course. It was nice to take a class and not have the pressure of other architecture students, critiques, or any of that performance anxiety that comes with design school; I could just take a class and try to enjoy it.

Taking this class outside of architecture made me think of the relationship design students have to architecture school. Some love it to bits, some hate it to its core, many are indifferent to it and simply “want to finish” at any one time you can feel all three of these or any kind of mixture. There are such highs and lows but I have always wondered, is it the architecture or the educatio...

Week 65

2012-07-28T19:59:00-04:00

Before there was architecture, for me there was photography. In fact the decision to undertake architecture instead of photography at an undergraduate level was not a matter of philosophy or ideology, it was timing. I had my heart set on either pursuit, I just happen to get the acceptance to architecture school first; it is amazing how fragile journeys can really be, and how many paths there could have been. I do get to use whatever photographic talents I maintained in architecture school but it is limited, so the opportunity to take an intensive two week course on architectural photography this summer was something I was really looking forward to.

When I was doing photography in high school, it was completely analog, dark rooms with enlargers, chemicals and photo paper. Most of my class time was spent in there, as well as lunches and after school, Mr. James always praised my technical ability, but my subjectivity always fell short, or I how thought about it. I could always comp...

Week 64

2012-07-08T03:09:00-04:00

I have yet to make my mind up about Vancouver, it is a wonderful city to study in, and it has been great to live outside of Toronto, but there is still something about it that doesn’t feel like home, and maybe it is not suppose to feel that way. Somewhere in the back of mind getting my M.arch degree here has always been a transitionary step, to what? Well that is still being decided.

There are great reasons to stay however, case in point, hiking. Almost non-existent in Ontario, is part of almost everyone’s daily lives here. Emily, Jen and I hiked up the Cheif a little while ago something if you come to Vancouver is a must. It was pretty spectacular, the views for miles, I can totally understand the high people here get from the rush of it all. I was told before I came out here that when people ask you what you do they do not mean your career, they mean do you run, or boat, or climb, ski, snowboard? On the east coast I think it is a question that is directed at what you do...

Week 63

2012-06-27T15:25:00-04:00

My architecture education will conclude next year with the completion of my master’s thesis. I have mentioned it once or twice before how things are organized compared to my previous undergrad thesis, and another aspect which sets it apart is the submission of something akin to an abstract submitted close to the end of the summer. From my point of view this submission has two functions, the first being administrative, so every student entering GP 1 is accounted for with an appropriate mentor, and the second being that when the semester officially starts, it is possible to hit the ground running rather than squander the first few weeks humming and hawing, although this tends to happen anyway with topic research and knowledge expansion.

This leaves work to be done over the summer on the developing the germ of an idea that is to blossom into a thesis. Even now in late June with lots of time to actually do this work, am I feeling the weight and pressure of developing a thesis.

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Week 62

2012-06-19T17:13:00-04:00

Architecture school takes its toll, mentally, physically, psychologically, existentially and lots of others ways and forms. During the terms, you are forced to look at society, culture and maybe hardest of all; yourself, design can be a powerful lens in which you have to look through. Thankfully we have summer vacation, it is the perfect avenue to recharge and refuel, cooking, laundry, cleaning, sleeping on a regular schedule, the banality of everyday life seems to obtain a deeper meaning. I guess it is no surprise that the moments we never have time for, we relish in the summer.

Physical deterioration is one of the most obvious symptoms of architecture school, some people substantially lose weight or gain a little... showering, shaving, and eating healthy. We can all be excused a little during the year in the name of design. But then the weather starts to get warm and we switch from working on models working on ourselves. Case in point is the photo above, I’m ashamed to say t...

Week 61

2012-06-07T17:23:00-04:00

There is something great about doing nothing.

Every architecture student knows the never-ending mindset whilst engaged in a project and that feeling of unnamed tension just after completing the semester. Your body still tells you that it needs to work on something, it takes a few days for this to wear off, a kind of re-entering into society. And that post state of pure existence is amazing.

Even after “school” is finished, it is not really finished, there is hardly ever a moment to take a breath because there is always a portfolio to do, a new project to familiarize yourself with so you have talking points for others designers. A conference, a lecture, a blog (I know, I know...), and let alone your own personal projects that you want to undertake. Sometimes it can feel like to make yourself visible and important in the discourse you have to be vigilant and unyielding in pursuit of ambition. I am certainly not arguing for less ambition, great things often start with the most a...