Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
Pratt Institute
University of Southern California (USC)
Tulane University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Temple University
University of Oregon
Cranbrook Academy of Art
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)
Kansas State University
Help with Architecture portfolio.
Not sure if this is the right forum, but I needed some advice on my architecture portfolio for applying to college. I'm a junior in HS and I've been thinking about majoring in arch. ever since 7th grade. I plan ahead a lot, so I already knew what college and backup colleges I wanted to go to, but when I started checking the admissions info for all of those colleges I ran into something. At every single one of those colleges (and many other random ones), their example portfolios included beautiful art that didn't even have to do with architecture, many of them had zero architecture-related images and it kind of made me panic. Some of these looked like they belonged in an art museum. Do I need to be an actual artist (like painter, sculptor, etc.) to major in architecture? Because I thought the architecture portfolio was supposed to have pictures related to architecture or urban planning, and I wanted to here from some past arch. majors on what they did on their portfolio.
No you dont, designing and painting, sculptin etc, are two very different skills, it could help, but its definately not essencial to be an architect
So your portfolio will include pictures of architecture? That's very weak.
Most schools will look for artistic flair and creative talent which more often than not, is demonstrated through drawing/painting/sculpture.
Schools want to see how you interpret the world and communicate visually. That can be sketches, paintings, photography, things you have designed, whatever. As a high school student going into an undergrad I doubt you will be expected to have a portfolio focused on architecture. If you haven't taken any drawing classes, sign up now.
That's quite common actually. Normally a school would want to gauge your potential in terms of artistry interpretation and the range of your possibility later on in the field of architecture. Or in a simpler saying, for example photography or sketches, so that the school can evaluate your appreciation and understanding of what's beauty mean to you. These are what going to make you different from other students and to show that you deserve to be enrolled. Architecture is a long journey & the knowledge is wide. I guess by joining the course at this early stage, one just simply wont understand the meaning and purpose of it, nor capturing the essence. The architecture photo/drawing that you think is good, might not feel the same when it faces the admission committees that had already spent years in teaching or researching about architecture, even worse they might totally disagree with it. So it's better for you demonstrate a broader range of skills to make yourself stand out and to show the potential of what you can become. In the end I believe all schools want to produce great architects that could think out of the box but not the boring one.
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