I put together a sort of poetic article about the studio culture of architecture school and the social, underlying impact of hand drafting as a curriculum feature. I don't know how much the "late night studio" and "architecture school experience" things varies from place to place, but I thought I'd share this piece of writing here in the off chance it might bring you a little bit of enjoyment or nostalgia.
"In the pre-digital age of architecture school, life (life, here, being studio) was immobile. Drafting pencils, drafting boards, drafting tools – all these things crucified us to the studio. The luxury of a portable work station was not available to us, and so we lingered at school long after regular class hours. Studio became some great operation running twenty-four hours a day, a morphing creature from sunrise to sundown. Midnight was peak time. The morning was intimate, unbroodingly quiet. We made a home out of some strange monotony of desks until, eventually, the pin boards above our heads became a reflection of our newly metamorphosing character. Photos, swatches, sketches, and cliche string lights from Urban Outfitters were ever abundant. In the peripheral vision of being bent over a drafting board, you could see the blur of people rushing back and forth through the row; you could hear the frustrated crumple of paper in your friend’s hands; you could feel the tension between that nearby whistler and the stickler fuming in the other row. We cycled through drafting, modeling, desk visits, breaks – coffee breaks, TV breaks, Instagram breaks, hot chocolate breaks, I-just-sliced-my-finger breaks, too many breaks – and microwave lunches that didn’t go well with coffee. The air changed, too. It was heavier during deadlines week. It could have been stress, or the floor area that got eaten up by stray models, spilled stacks of vellum, or maybe just the slightly offensive breath that told everyone around the perpetrator, “maybe one all-nighter too many”. One could say that studio was a prison – at least my inmates were alright."
Strange you speak of nostalgia when you're only barely half-way through, come back in 10+ years and you'll crave those late night spontaneous moments when someone realizes that saw-dust is a great lubricant between your tennis shoes and unfinished concrete floors.
Nice pictures, I remember late night desk crits in those studios.
Never did an all nighter and hung out with my frat and was on a club sports team. All I did was come in, make goals for the day and meet them. Yet I was considered lazy, even though the kids who were so 'dedicated' were really just watching movies, going to Starbucks and goofing around the majority of the time. It's funny to see how this celebration of being busy but not actually accomplishing anything filters out of school and carries on into the working world and we wonder why most firms aren't profitable?
^This is so true. People brag about their long hours, but most of the time it's bull because they didn't do anything. There were exceptions though.
On another note. I remember a group of people I had three studio's with in undergrad. Every final they would pick one song and play it for 5 hours straight the night before each review.... whenever I hear those songs my ears still burn. Solid group of designers though.
Hm while I agree that some all-nighters are memory treasures to hold, once I learned how to manage my time well and set priorities not only my grades went up, my quality of life also improved. It is usually common for undergraduates to pull all-nighters - maybe understandable up to a degree but when you are at March I or II or a post-graduate student in general and have to pull an all-nighter, it seems just immature to me (personally).
Mar 23, 15 7:25 pm ·
·
First off, I would agree with some points. Most all-nighters was spent chit chatting, maybe watch a movie while waiting for the 5 computers being used to render a model at the maximum rendering setting. Wow... I've seen that and really most of the time, students doing that just come and go while hogging the cpu processing of all these computers. Totally, ridiculous.
I've done some all-nighters but it was mostly spent getting the work done it isn't something I would get too excited about. Most of the time, it is because of any combination of the following including others not mentioned:
procrastination
indecisiveness
not understanding the assignment and taking time to get the info to clearly understand it.
rushing while misunderstanding what the assignment is and then having to redo the work... in other words, not working smart and organizing what you need to do.
deciding to do something you're not capable of doing in the time frame adequately without spending so much excessive time instead of doing something more realistic and achievable under your knowledge and skill set. ie. biting more than you can chew.
... the list goes on. Some manage to get through ok. Others manage to pull through but substandard and don't do too well.
Is it a culture... I don't know if we really want to celebrate that. However, this isn't unique to architecture school. Most other disciplines just don't talk about it because half the time, it is due to procrastination which is indicative of poor student discipline.
So I think, one has to think carefully about celebrating such stories.
Mar 23, 15 7:39 pm ·
·
Pan90,
yep... Often by the time you are in grad school, you have a full-time job and you don't have time to spend all-nighters. Also, when you get older, doing that can often get harder and after all, you choose your scope of work to be more manageable but not doing such pie in the sky options.
Time management and better student academic discipline is expected and you have enough stuff as it is to do as an grad school student.
Sounds like late night poetry to me.........there were those who lost sleep on purpose and just dicked around all day and then those guys and gals like me who were often enrolled in 20+ credit hours and worked 2 or 3 part time Jobs and partied like frat boys - that meant I just didn't sleep. In grad school i was an ivy league commuter, which got me in trouble because i went home to my fiance...This hasn't changed professionally for me - I take on far too much work (like right now, fuck me!!!) but I am too old for the all-nighter stuff now, although it is not uncommon for me to do 19 hour days...finish at midnight wake up at 5am and keep plugging away......my favorite time even today is 4am if I make it to there. 4am in snow covered winter outside in a t-shirt drinking a could one is damn near heaven.
I loved late nights in studio. I loved the entire architecture culture of charretting before a deadline and falling asleep in all my other classes when I was charretting. I'm still, 30 years later, best friends with those fellow students I was best friends with back then, even though we're far flung across the globe.
I had such a good time. Some people just aren't into that studio scene, and that's fine. Bianca, I enjoyed your memory, and I love this idea of being immobile due to the drafting table. As designers of places, we should feel that kind of spiritual connection to places frequently.
Mar 23, 15 11:55 pm ·
·
When I did a charrette during HOPE conference in a few years ago, we spent 5 days around the clock running long as hours every day and kicked ass and push the limits because it was one of those fun ass projects with a fun group, me a lead building designer, a CAD / Environmental Science major, and two landscape designer.
If I look over my inofficial transcripts, I can look at what year it was. I was working on taking notes, and working on the charrette work, as well as late hours. It was a push for sure. Sure, we took a few hours each day or so to rest and get back because this was 5 days hard drive. Two of us at the very least aren't fresh out of high school and the two landscape majors although were the younger two had their busy work load. It was crazy but heck it was fun.
However, it was intentional that we took this much time because we had our other courses and it was a charrette so we worked hard to get it all done.
I have a little habit of charretting at time because it sometimes takes a little while to work things out in my head.
Who needs a frat when we have hazing of our own, that allnighter experience is our fraternity initiation ritual. And the co-ed studio is a wonderful thing
As for Allnighters being immature or wasteful, there is some truth to that, fun is not productive but if we did not have fun doing our projects we would not spend as much time as we did. It was a labor of love, love of architecture, love of learning, love of camaraderie, and most of all love of accomplishment. Having that third perspective rendered, or the little touched on you model that feeling that you have your best possible effort pinned up is kind of awesome.
Also since I was the only person named Peter in school I was Peter-Man from Office Space
We had 2 Bobs on our faculty and every Friday night when a weekend of work was ahead of us we would lean over each others desk
"so, yeaa we are gona need you to come in on Saturday um kay...." (slurp Coffee)
Someone in a stroke of genius decided to make architecture studio a communal environment instead of the way it often is in other art programs where you are isolated in a little room alone (this may be the result of many a dormitory being converted into fine arts studios) But having an isolated work environment would be sad and dangerous, but most of all boring, the study and practice of architecture on balance is not boring, and for that I am thankful every Monday I get to go to work.
I can't imagine a studio where you wait around for your computer to render; well, I can and we weren't stupid enough to use them (they crashed 90% of the time), but I was pre-computerized studios.
Between deadlines, we taught each other things like airbrushing, ink wash, pastels, marker, watercolor, graphite, screening (layers of trace), etc.... technique stuff. And not just chipboard type models, but clays, Styrofoam block cutting, wire/solder fabrications, etc. Basically, we learned a lot of art techniques and stylized our own mixed media.
.
Mar 24, 15 10:23 am ·
·
I agree,mightyaa, who the hell would sit around for 12 to 18 hours to wait for 3-5 computers to finish rendering.
Mar 24, 15 12:41 pm ·
·
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A Throwback to the Culture of Architecture School
I put together a sort of poetic article about the studio culture of architecture school and the social, underlying impact of hand drafting as a curriculum feature. I don't know how much the "late night studio" and "architecture school experience" things varies from place to place, but I thought I'd share this piece of writing here in the off chance it might bring you a little bit of enjoyment or nostalgia.
"In the pre-digital age of architecture school, life (life, here, being studio) was immobile. Drafting pencils, drafting boards, drafting tools – all these things crucified us to the studio. The luxury of a portable work station was not available to us, and so we lingered at school long after regular class hours. Studio became some great operation running twenty-four hours a day, a morphing creature from sunrise to sundown. Midnight was peak time. The morning was intimate, unbroodingly quiet. We made a home out of some strange monotony of desks until, eventually, the pin boards above our heads became a reflection of our newly metamorphosing character. Photos, swatches, sketches, and cliche string lights from Urban Outfitters were ever abundant. In the peripheral vision of being bent over a drafting board, you could see the blur of people rushing back and forth through the row; you could hear the frustrated crumple of paper in your friend’s hands; you could feel the tension between that nearby whistler and the stickler fuming in the other row. We cycled through drafting, modeling, desk visits, breaks – coffee breaks, TV breaks, Instagram breaks, hot chocolate breaks, I-just-sliced-my-finger breaks, too many breaks – and microwave lunches that didn’t go well with coffee. The air changed, too. It was heavier during deadlines week. It could have been stress, or the floor area that got eaten up by stray models, spilled stacks of vellum, or maybe just the slightly offensive breath that told everyone around the perpetrator, “maybe one all-nighter too many”. One could say that studio was a prison – at least my inmates were alright."
Read the whole article here: http://waterlooarchitecture.com/bridge/blog/2015/03/20/hand-to-cursor/
Enjoy.
Strange you speak of nostalgia when you're only barely half-way through, come back in 10+ years and you'll crave those late night spontaneous moments when someone realizes that saw-dust is a great lubricant between your tennis shoes and unfinished concrete floors.
Nice pictures, I remember late night desk crits in those studios.
I remember the music getting loudest just before the sun rose
And Mr coffee was my hero
Peter N
We put on stand-up comedy albums at full volume around 3–4am every night. Chris Rock got me through architecture school.
Never did an all nighter and hung out with my frat and was on a club sports team. All I did was come in, make goals for the day and meet them. Yet I was considered lazy, even though the kids who were so 'dedicated' were really just watching movies, going to Starbucks and goofing around the majority of the time. It's funny to see how this celebration of being busy but not actually accomplishing anything filters out of school and carries on into the working world and we wonder why most firms aren't profitable?
^This is so true. People brag about their long hours, but most of the time it's bull because they didn't do anything. There were exceptions though.
On another note. I remember a group of people I had three studio's with in undergrad. Every final they would pick one song and play it for 5 hours straight the night before each review.... whenever I hear those songs my ears still burn. Solid group of designers though.
The OP didn't experience the pre-digital age.
In school or in life.
Hm while I agree that some all-nighters are memory treasures to hold, once I learned how to manage my time well and set priorities not only my grades went up, my quality of life also improved. It is usually common for undergraduates to pull all-nighters - maybe understandable up to a degree but when you are at March I or II or a post-graduate student in general and have to pull an all-nighter, it seems just immature to me (personally).
First off, I would agree with some points. Most all-nighters was spent chit chatting, maybe watch a movie while waiting for the 5 computers being used to render a model at the maximum rendering setting. Wow... I've seen that and really most of the time, students doing that just come and go while hogging the cpu processing of all these computers. Totally, ridiculous.
I've done some all-nighters but it was mostly spent getting the work done it isn't something I would get too excited about. Most of the time, it is because of any combination of the following including others not mentioned:
procrastination
indecisiveness
not understanding the assignment and taking time to get the info to clearly understand it.
rushing while misunderstanding what the assignment is and then having to redo the work... in other words, not working smart and organizing what you need to do.
deciding to do something you're not capable of doing in the time frame adequately without spending so much excessive time instead of doing something more realistic and achievable under your knowledge and skill set. ie. biting more than you can chew.
... the list goes on. Some manage to get through ok. Others manage to pull through but substandard and don't do too well.
Is it a culture... I don't know if we really want to celebrate that. However, this isn't unique to architecture school. Most other disciplines just don't talk about it because half the time, it is due to procrastination which is indicative of poor student discipline.
So I think, one has to think carefully about celebrating such stories.
Pan90,
yep... Often by the time you are in grad school, you have a full-time job and you don't have time to spend all-nighters. Also, when you get older, doing that can often get harder and after all, you choose your scope of work to be more manageable but not doing such pie in the sky options.
Time management and better student academic discipline is expected and you have enough stuff as it is to do as an grad school student.
Sounds like late night poetry to me.........there were those who lost sleep on purpose and just dicked around all day and then those guys and gals like me who were often enrolled in 20+ credit hours and worked 2 or 3 part time Jobs and partied like frat boys - that meant I just didn't sleep. In grad school i was an ivy league commuter, which got me in trouble because i went home to my fiance...This hasn't changed professionally for me - I take on far too much work (like right now, fuck me!!!) but I am too old for the all-nighter stuff now, although it is not uncommon for me to do 19 hour days...finish at midnight wake up at 5am and keep plugging away......my favorite time even today is 4am if I make it to there. 4am in snow covered winter outside in a t-shirt drinking a could one is damn near heaven.
I loved late nights in studio. I loved the entire architecture culture of charretting before a deadline and falling asleep in all my other classes when I was charretting. I'm still, 30 years later, best friends with those fellow students I was best friends with back then, even though we're far flung across the globe.
I had such a good time. Some people just aren't into that studio scene, and that's fine. Bianca, I enjoyed your memory, and I love this idea of being immobile due to the drafting table. As designers of places, we should feel that kind of spiritual connection to places frequently.
When I did a charrette during HOPE conference in a few years ago, we spent 5 days around the clock running long as hours every day and kicked ass and push the limits because it was one of those fun ass projects with a fun group, me a lead building designer, a CAD / Environmental Science major, and two landscape designer.
If I look over my inofficial transcripts, I can look at what year it was. I was working on taking notes, and working on the charrette work, as well as late hours. It was a push for sure. Sure, we took a few hours each day or so to rest and get back because this was 5 days hard drive. Two of us at the very least aren't fresh out of high school and the two landscape majors although were the younger two had their busy work load. It was crazy but heck it was fun.
However, it was intentional that we took this much time because we had our other courses and it was a charrette so we worked hard to get it all done.
I have a little habit of charretting at time because it sometimes takes a little while to work things out in my head.
Who needs a frat when we have hazing of our own, that allnighter experience is our fraternity initiation ritual. And the co-ed studio is a wonderful thing
As for Allnighters being immature or wasteful, there is some truth to that, fun is not productive but if we did not have fun doing our projects we would not spend as much time as we did. It was a labor of love, love of architecture, love of learning, love of camaraderie, and most of all love of accomplishment. Having that third perspective rendered, or the little touched on you model that feeling that you have your best possible effort pinned up is kind of awesome.
Also since I was the only person named Peter in school I was Peter-Man from Office Space
We had 2 Bobs on our faculty and every Friday night when a weekend of work was ahead of us we would lean over each others desk
"so, yeaa we are gona need you to come in on Saturday um kay...." (slurp Coffee)
Someone in a stroke of genius decided to make architecture studio a communal environment instead of the way it often is in other art programs where you are isolated in a little room alone (this may be the result of many a dormitory being converted into fine arts studios) But having an isolated work environment would be sad and dangerous, but most of all boring, the study and practice of architecture on balance is not boring, and for that I am thankful every Monday I get to go to work.
Over and OUT
Peter N
apparently architecture school was designed to teach kids to plan on working lots of free overtime? was that from the ecole?
I can't imagine a studio where you wait around for your computer to render; well, I can and we weren't stupid enough to use them (they crashed 90% of the time), but I was pre-computerized studios.
Between deadlines, we taught each other things like airbrushing, ink wash, pastels, marker, watercolor, graphite, screening (layers of trace), etc.... technique stuff. And not just chipboard type models, but clays, Styrofoam block cutting, wire/solder fabrications, etc. Basically, we learned a lot of art techniques and stylized our own mixed media.
.
I agree,mightyaa, who the hell would sit around for 12 to 18 hours to wait for 3-5 computers to finish rendering.
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