Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc)
Pratt Institute
Tulane University
University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
Temple University
University of Oregon
Cranbrook Academy of Art
New York Institute of Technology (NYIT)
Bit of a rant but mainly seeking advice or relatable stories or experiences.
Sorry for the long post but if you can survive reading this then I appreciate it.
Im a 3rd year architecture student and I will say that I've enjoyed the journey so far. There were times when the sleepless nights and the anxiety that builds up hours before a jury review has eaten away at my mental, but the thrill replaces the bits that are taken away. I never knew if I was talented, in fact I always thought I wasnt and always tried as hard or if not harder than my peers in order to reach their level. My first two years were basically introductory courses and low level design classes that teach you the fundamentals and after two years we needed to put up a board presenting all of our best work in order to be admitted into the upper division program. Glad to say I placed top 10 within my class due to the endless nights I put in due to not only fear of not making the program, but also the thrill I had in what I learned so far.
Im in the last semester of my third year and I will say its been rough. I have a teacher thats not as encouraging as my previous ones so I feel like my motivation has taken a nose dive. I know its stupid to give someone else credit for my motivation, but I guess I've never had a teach discourage me from going above and exploring new ways to design. Last semester I was beginning to explore curves and how these curves could create a unique spatial experience despite what little knowledge I have over it. This year i tried reexploring them and my professor was more or less displeased. My bug model with the curves was more interesting to him and he loved it, but when it came to the final model he was unimpressed and said that it wasnt a good idea to present it to the jury, which was 2 days from that night... He gave me two options, either flip a coin and get eaten alive by the jurors or remake a model in one night. I proceeded to do the latter and im so unsatsfied with the result.
I guess the whole point of this story is that Im not exactly sure how to take this critique or experience. Ive always been the one in my class to experiment and try new things. Ive never shyd away from curves or angles while my classmates always said I was brave to explore them. I wanted to try my best and be as creative as I could to explore something new while I was in school, but after this project I feel like Im falling behind my fellow classmates, who kept the 90 degree angles and stayed within their safe spot. I dont really know how to go back to that or whether I should. I just feel like my creativity is in question due to this experience and its really worrying me. I love design and researching new things to solve problems that we're given but Im afraid of not being able to do it well anymore. If you compare my model to my fellow classmates, youll see theres a HUGE difference in theirs in terms of style, material, etc.
I know this was long but if youve reached this point maybe you or a fellow colleague can relate and share your experiences as well. Thank you.
Welcome to architecture school. I know that sounds dismissive of your experience, but there has to be 50 posts on this forum from students like you, and honestly most of them sound even worse than your situation.
It seems like you're capable and care about your work. Don't worry about pleasing everybody or getting everything right - neither will ever happen, at school or in the working world. You'll have to get used to it.
Nothing you're describing sounds all that terrible. Architecture is a marathon, not a sprint, and you've got a lot to learn, including patience and learning from those around you, including your instructors. Hang in there.
There are a 101 reasons not to be an architect, but a bad jury or one bad professor is not one of them. Most (damn near all) of what you do in architecture school has no relevance or predictive value for your career in the profession. Also, remember that those who can, do, and those who can't, teach.
you mean people like Kengo Kuma, the famous teacher not doer? Or Jeanne Gang, so famous for teaching and never doing anything? To the OP, without seeing your project it is hard to say if you took a leap and missed, or if the prof is a jerk. Could be both. But what others have said, architecture education is at least partially about learning to learn; a big chunk of that is how to deal with your mistakes, and with jerks (who will appear oh so many times in your professional career, sad to say). So you are pretty much on track. Try not to take it personally.
anecdote: jeannie gang was one of my studio professors back before she had any built projects. in fact she was one of the very best teachers i ever had, genuinely supportive and thoughtful. i don't think she personally liked my project but she understood my design process and led me to a much broader understanding of architecture than i'd had as a young student. that insight has been much more important than anything specific to the design of that silly project.
Your professor appears to be incompetent as a teacher. Not every semester is going to result in a great project, but it needs to result in a reasonably finished one. The key is to always make enough finished work to pass the class. If the requirement is to have a model and three drawings for the final review, make sure you have that!
The biggest and worst trap you can fall into is to not finish the project because of endless indecision about the design. I had way too many classmates have to leave our program because they they showed up to the final critique with just a fragment of a model or missing several drawings. People didn't finish because the teacher encouraged them to "explore" right up until the day of the final.
Your professor is an asshat.
You're missing the point entirely. The lesson here is to have the courage to stand up and defend your design decisons. That's what the bullying is all about. It has nothing to do with design.
If you knuckle-under and redo the project at the last minute - which you certainly don't have the time to do with care and conviction - you demonstrate nothing but sheepishness. Prepare for more bullying.
As to crits, they can range from insightful to inane to demonstrations of power and they often say more about the critic than the presenter.
My favorite crit story is a landscape project done at RISD for Boston City Hall Plaza. The existing building (massive, with a highly repetitive facade and no visible enterance ) and plaza (a barren windswept masonry plain) were a near-perfect visual metaphor for bureaucracy. Accordingly I left the plaza untouched and changed the building to make it a more literal metaphor.
The crit was done at each students workstation and a crowd moved from one to another. When they got to mine the professor looked at the drawings pinned to the wall, paused, and then moved on to the next student's project without a single word.
I was suprised at first, then disappointed. Not because he had ignored my work but because he hadn't given me the chance to justify it, which would have gotten into ideas about metaphor, juxtaposition, and the human experience of architecture. Ignoring my work said more about him than it did about me.
i pretty much sucked in design studios, but most would say my professional career has gone pretty well. The requirements to be an actual licensed architect are very different. This is why a surprising % of design professors are not licensed.
use first principle thinking.
Profoundly influenced by Euclid, Descartes was a rationalist who invented the foundationalist system of philosophy. He used the method of doubt, now called Cartesian doubt, to systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths. Using these self-evident propositions as his axioms, or foundations, he went on to deduce his entire body of knowledge from them. The foundations are also called a priori truths. His most famous proposition is "Je pense, donc je suis." (I think, therefore I am, or Cogito ergo sum)”
Descartes describes the concept of a first principle in the following excerpt from the preface to the Principles of Philosophy (1644):
Fuck the professor. You are paying him. He’s in the service industry. You are his client. Use the class to gain what you are paying for. Question whatever you want. Use logic and reason to guide your process. Do not let classmates and professors guide your process. “Boil it down to the basic elements and build up from there”. - Elon Musk
i wouldn't trust "academic" advice from someone who doesn't understand basic "principles" like properly citing sources:
Profoundly influenced by Euclid, Descartes was a rationalist who invented the foundationalist system of philosophy. He used the method of doubt, now called Cartesian doubt, to systematically doubt everything he could possibly doubt until he was left with what he saw as purely indubitable truths. Using these self-evident propositions as his axioms, or foundations, he went on to deduce his entire body of knowledge from them. The foundations are also called a priori truths. His most famous proposition is "Je pense, donc je suis." (I think, therefore I am, or Cogito ergo sum)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
He cites Elon "Bro, I want to smell his" Musk but not the wiki article he copy pasted. Says a lot about your values, extreme laxative.
i'll finish xlax's quote they were going to steal:
Now, these principles must possess two conditions: in the first place, they must be so clear and evident that the human mind, when it attentively considers them, cannot doubt their truth..
sadly, nothing they have posted on this website comes close to meeting the first condition; therefore, it is not worth considering the second.
I know. Couldn’t edit comment to add Wikipedia citation. I was too busy with your mom.
Someone needs to fix this bs that you can’t edit from iPhone. I’d like to speak to the manager
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