Hey WonderK. I would tell you but then I'd have to kill you. Ah what the hell, I graduate in 4 days from Grad school. University of Florida Baby!!! Where the big dawgs eat their young.
lars larson...then i guess you are one of the lucky ones. some universities have faculty tuned into that type of architecture, others do not. I think i got a good balance. I think some profs are willing to, in the earlier/younger studios, let some of the technical slide in student projects...but in later years you'd best have your head and your ass wired together. Some profs just get stuck teaching first year studio for 20 years, you know what i'm saying?
first year studio story of my own. i built a concrete cantilever but didn't really think about using different materials just to 'simulate' concrete so it would stay together...basically i just used somewhat sifted redimix so the thing LITERALLY fell apart during my crit. bad news, bad grade.
another first year crit, luckily not me. A transfer student was getting his 'music club' reviewed and one of the faculty on his jury was the individual in charge of admitting transfer...i.e. the guy who let him and only two others in as transfers that year. anyway, the guy's music club was a jazz club and the floorplan was a saxaphone...i don't mean that it implied a brass instrument...or that it was a metaphor...it WAS a saxaphone. the stage was the bell, the keys were barstools, the n'th degree, you name it. bad...horrible. actually worse than mine and that would have been tough. anyhoot, during his jury, the aforementioned prof had been silent but finally to close the crit he just said flatly: "I can't believe i let you in here"....and the jury disbanded. i, and everyone else was in shock, including the student who i don't remember seeing second year.
I honestly think first year studio should have been entitled..."how not to design in simile and metaphor".
IoA, your gonna have to tell me who that was... I think a horrible music club was par for course. I did a country club....it was total urban cowboy.. actual moviing mechanical bull and all
there was a guy who didn't show up for weeks before the final review. he came in late cause he "was working on his model so hard until the last minute." he even told us that he'd been up all night!
he presented last, didn't have any drawings, but then he whipped out a piece of shit model made out of sponges! the kind where one half of it was the green rough stuff and the yellow spongy stuff on the other side.
he literally spent 10 minutes on it right before the review. then he proceeded to talk very highly of its "architecture" in a very grown-up professional voice.
needless to say he failed.
if you mean the prof, you'll have to ask me tomorrow at work because i won't sully the prof's name here. as for the student? I don't think i ever knew him nor could i remember his name. he was in the 'other room' of the frosh studios, and was a transfer so he didn't hang with us DAAP floor dorm animals.
that club project was really a test, i think. most everyone utilised metaphor or simile in some shape or form...hideous. I'm ashamed of half the ideas i had freshman year, i swear. hell, i'm ashamed of half the ideas i had LAST year, for that matter.
urban cowboy, eh? hehehe...i can't see your 'fro underneath a cowboy hat, Monkeyboy! I'll buy you lunch at the bbq shack if you wear it all day at work this week, if you have a cowboy hat that is!!!
iOF - I enjoyed my music club project. It could be because that was during my disco phase and my scale figure was a little John Travolta.
Strawbeary, we had a guy my senior year who never worked in studio at all. This guy was a legend....he had been there maybe 8 years and had failed and retaken a couple of studios, rumor has it he even sued the school when he failed 5th year. So there he was at our mid-term crits, we're supposed to be half done with our thesis projects, and he has drawings that are basically irrelevant to his downtown Chicago high-rise scheme and a model that everyone knew he had commissioned at a professional shop. We heard that he had the money because he stole it from his former fraternity.....
The story doesn't really get good until our final thesis crits 3 months later: he came with the same exact model and drawings in tow. Literally the whole class showed up for his crit to watch him get torn apart, which he did, but then at the very end, our dept. head stood up and shook his hand and said "congratulations" as if to say "you graduated"! Well, he didn't.
Saturn> The entire state of Florida scares me, in so many ways. Why do so many strange people get to hog all the good weather?!? Congrats on graduating, by the way...
In a freshmen studio, we were given multitudes of drawing exercises that were graded on the usual A thru F scale. At times, the return grade would be "C, a gift", meaning it marginally met the criteria to receive grade.
One day someone had a drawing returned to them that read:
Thanks WonderK. Its been a long time coming. In terms of weather, I hate the weather. It is so damn humid in florida that you walk out of your house and in 5 minutes you think to yourself, "I should have put deoderant on my balls."
Not a trantrum, but funny nonetheless: A prof told a student that the kite museum he'd designed looked like the headquarters for the Southern Mortuary Society.
I used to have a teacher who said quite frequently, "You like this? You think this is good?" and the answer would inevitably be something along the lines of, "Well, I did. Until you said that." It was a very effective deflator of egos.
There are so many bad crits to choose from! Not all mine, but worth sharing.
1. "I can honestly say when I look at this project I cannot find one single room that does not fill me with complete despair." Not me, but the prof said at the end of the review, "Yeah, sometimes you've gotta take one for the team."
2. "Look at this project. Let's psychoanalyze this like we were psycoanalyzing your brain. What does this say about you? It's like a prison. Totally maniacal." Totally me. I actually enjoyed this crit very much.
3. "Here, if I take your model and flip it upside down.... There. How does that make you feel? See? I think it looks much better that way." Not me, the poor guy was crushed, and actually tried to defend himself, which didn't turn out well.
4. "Why are you here? Don't come back next semester." This one was a rumor about someone the previous year.
right after awful presentation of truly clueless student, juror stands up, walks up to a column. starts bumping his head repeatedly against the column. then walks away.
I've heard probably five times where are particularly volatile instructor from my school has just basically said, "Why are you wasting my time with this? You don't have enough work pinned up for me to have the slightest clue what you're talking about."
Just yesterday a second year student was reviewing, and when the reviewers started to criticize, his professor basically said, "He's my student, and we've been over all of this stuff many times, and it's just a waste of everyone's time to go over it again."
first year undergrad-
the guest prof said to a girl with a South African accent about her final model:
"This is great.....just don't let your dog play with it next time."
Also, 5th year undergrad:
"the program you invented was meant solely for your architectural masturbation......"
i read this term alot: architectural masturbation..
what does it mean?
so, is there architectural sex?
who comes up with these?
i really don't respect proffs who resort to obscenities to make a point.
i know its like an exclamation point.. like a BANG to get attention of students. i hear this a lot, and i really think that they are just trying to fit in.. as absurd as that sounds..
architectural masturbation- the excercise of adding things (usually program elements) to a project purely for graphic/formal reasons, that add no real value/usefullness to the project. Just yanking your own chain, as it were.
once had a crit who was a priest, a pianist, and also claimed to be an architect (not sure whether he built anything). he had written a book on music & architecture. during the entire midterm crit, he would compare each student's project to western music history.
i.e. "this drawing is so bach"
"this model is like classical music, so mozart, but also very baroque"
...
nobody really understood what he meant.
I showed up 6 hours late to my first grad school final review. I had been up for 3 days and didn't hear my alarm, phone, or friends pounding on my door. My crit thought I was dead, so he was glad when I showed up. I presented last and was in a total daze and had no idea what they were saying to me. My critic defended my project for me.
Second semester I had horrible work, but managed to BS really well and ended up having the best review of the studio. Architecture is a farce.
Same review, this one kid was totally bombing and our studio crit was just sitting in the back with me showing me his new Blackberry. What the hell.
i actually just had a review on wednesday... it was our midterm
a couple people who i respected were there so i was hoping to get a lot out of it...
however, it just turned out to be hysterical, as two of the women who we will call SCA and SD, seemed to have an innocent women crush on each other, and bascially teamed up, making objections and inserting comments... backing each other up on every thought
when they got to me, the conversation went a little like this
i give them my concept, explain the project and away they go
SCA - i think this project would be better off in an industrial area
SD - your right, it might be a more effective use of the space, and ecologically might have a larger impact
SCA - yeah, and community gardens... you cant even eat the food from them... they are so...
SD - cutesie?
SCA - totally cutesie! they are just too .... cute...
imagine the two looking longingly at each other... respecting the hell out of their combined intellect
after a fellow student in first year presented a model (fairly well made for first year) of a sort-of classical temple with half a snickers bar protruding from the roof... prof: "i can't remember the last time a student pissed me off this much"
also, a friend and professor of mine was telling me about a crit he recieved from peter eisenman during his thesis year (late 70's, early 80's, not sure). my prof's project was very personal, to which eisenman responed by yelling at the studio professors for allowing someone to do a very personal project that he (eisenman) could not possibly critique... next person presents and eisenman responds by saying "you know, you're the kind of guy i'd hire for my office... (hushed crowd)... cause you don't have an idea in your head. (points to previous student, my prof) i'd never hire that guy!"
I think this guy was in one of my classes too!!! His crit went something like this:
He presents the stupid model that obviously took only 10 minutes. The prof says: "I can see we don't have anything to talk about here, next!" Never saw that guy again...
strawbery said:
"there was a guy who didn't show up for weeks before the final review. he came in late cause he "was working on his model so hard until the last minute." he even told us that he'd been up all night!
he presented last, didn't have any drawings, but then he whipped out a piece of shit model made out of sponges! the kind where one half of it was the green rough stuff and the yellow spongy stuff on the other side.
he literally spent 10 minutes on it right before the review. then he proceeded to talk very highly of its "architecture" in a very grown-up professional voice.
needless to say he failed"
Actually, I learned (from teaching studio) that you can't give nice reviews to all your students. If you give a nice review to the bad students, the good ones think they don't have to work hard, and so don't try, and the bad ones work even less. So you gotta be mean to the bad ones, and praise the good ones, at least some of the time. It's not fun for me, but has to be done.
I witnessed a few legendary crits in my time as an undergrad. Luckily, neither of these were my crits. If I remember correctly I was in my senior year and these crits were 2nd year students.
First, I witnessed an early semester crit where the female prof took all of her class' models out into the courtyard of the building and turned them into a barbecue with a steel trashcan and some lighter fluid.
Second, I witnessed a final crit where a student had essentially the same model that he had at midterm. It was woefully unfinished and was little more that a base for a future model. One of the professors on the crit had been there for midterm and asked the student why he hadn't completed the model. She then pointed to the model, which looked like an altar, and asked the student if this was where they sacrifice the animals. After that she picked up her stool and moved it in front of the next presentation and sat down. The other professors tried to save face and give the poor guy a crit. The harsh prof went outside to smoke a cig and then came back in and told the other profs that they needed to move on and not discuss this project any further. The student then proceeded into the corner of the room to curl up in the fetal position and cry.
Also, in grad school in my Masters Project studio my professor walked up to a fellow classmate who was pinning up his final presentation. The prof told the guy to take his presentation of the wall and that he wouldn't be graduating this semester.
during my very first crit - we had been pulling mad all nighters. a girl fell asleep in her chair, fell off the chair and hit her head on the wall. i think my prof later required us to stop working on our projects at midnight...
also...one of the legendary professors at my undergrad school used to have students trembling in fear before crits...he would yell at students throughout their presentations to "SAY IT ANOTHER WAY!!"...the same prof also famously slashed a student's 3' x 6' ink on mylar drawing with an x-acto knife to which the student responded by cutting the prof's neck tie off!!!
he was also fond of telling his less talented students, "Have you ever considered a career in accounting?"
I had him for my first design class. He came in to the studio and introduced himself. He then told us that he had a reputation on campus for being a bastard. He then had us introduce ourselves to the people sitting to our left and our right. Then he told us that by the end of the semester at least one of those people would be gone. He was right. In fact about 10 of the 50 people didn't even come back for the second class. Only about half of the class made it to the end of the semester.
He was the type of professor that you hated when you were in school, but years later you understand and appreciate.
I had that professor, and he was nice to me, but Im still a little anxious when I talk to him.
But what he taught me has stayed with me, and really I wish ALL professors where as rigorous and demanding.
His favorite saying was interrupting you with a "BULLSHIT" followed by the infamous "Say it another way"
We have talked about him extensively with AP,even pointing out that he is the cover of Architrave 9.
jesus, my school experience wasn't very entertaining at all. about every crit i had was the worst one because they were all the same.
crits were the most useless part of my education because i already knew how to "graciously" accept criticism from four years in the haltom high school band. where i experienced outbursts and tantrums that would put (most of) these crit stories to utter and abject shame.
the stories that involve fire and bodily fluids, though...priceless. nothing ends a crit like a barbeque.
geez... i remember arguing with my professor Anna Klingman... well not arguing... but with her i was always wrong and never working hard enough...
i was tired and going home for thanksgiving... i had my breakfast. lunch and dinner [a banana... very healthy ey?] laying on a seat as i was presenting and was getting dizzy so i sat down on my banana with out realizing it... slowly i got up again to see what happened... all i remember is her deep german laughter... and her gucci belt... and the buring against my cheeks... it was difficult to adjust to her way of thinking... especially after only dealing with an architecture that was formed based and not branded... i do however wish now that i could have her... it just took me too long to realize what i was most interested in...
ok, this forum isn't called "confessions of an ex-band geek" (and current archidork) but i can't say how i experienced much worse in band than archschool without proving it:
"i may be a f----t but you are one suck-ass trumpet player"
(the word rhymes with "rag it" and fortunately i played bassoon. this was the first time i ever heard anyone admit they were gay. but we always knew about the director anyway)
"if you weren't pregnant you'd play better" (nobody knew she was pregnant before this)
and my favorite incident of pitting one student against another:
"don't play like X -- he's a child molester"
(X really was, that's the sad part)
most painful crit of mine was one in which i absolutely did not finish. i was unable to cope with the size of the project. the 3 things that sucked the most about it:
1. i felt as though i failed my professor who i truly respected. he felt like he had failed to guide me successfully to completion.
2. the critic was really really interested in what i did have, but said he just couldn't put it all together as it was in its current state. i basically missed out on what could have been a great critique of the work.
3. most of the students in the class were happy to see me not finished. caught someone who i thought was a good friend smiling gleefully.
about a week later, my computer was stolen from the studio. worst week of school ever.
well, you know, that IS the worst kind of crit: when you really want to do well and you try and it just doesn't come together. and it doesn't matter what anyone else says because YOU don't feel right about it...and i've definitely had that kind of crit before...
also we were designing a cemetery and mausoleum and a friend of mine who was mormon had based her mausoleum on the mormon ritual and theology of death, rebirth, etc etc. i'm episcopalian so i didn't understand too much about it. but basically one of the profs out and said, "why base a design on religious beliefs that are just wrong?" he was jewish.
to be fair, there were 350 people in the band -- only 2 or 3 pregnancies at any given time and the child molester was a unique instance -- word was that he got what was coming to him in tarrant county juvie
most of the crits in schools like ucla (where i went actually) are just parties of like minded academics to chit chat with each other...and happen to glance at some projects by the way
One of my fellow class mate framed his drawings for the final presentation-crit and was asked what was the reason to frame those brawings and he answered:
"Because it's like a window to your soul really"
Then, when he was giving a walk through through his design, at a particular part of the building he said:
after an all-nighter-week of working so hard on my conceptual approach for one of the pjcts and maturing every bit of it, i stood in front of 4 critics and my profs completely blank headed! forgot what my concept was or what i was supposed to say so tried to bullshit a bit that it was more about the process than the end result and they have to go through every step with me to get everything.. after a good 10 minutes of me recalling my footsteps - talking gibberish - and their bored asses getting up to move on everything finally came flooding back, so i viciously declared (shouted) that no one's getting up until i finish what i had to say.. i can still remember the look of terror on their faces.. must’ve sounded (and looked) like the devil. ridiculous.
i guess they weren't so impressed with the freak show.. u can say i got on their black list from that day. felt damn good though.. i'm usually so calm and obedient.
Worst Crits
Hey WonderK. I would tell you but then I'd have to kill you. Ah what the hell, I graduate in 4 days from Grad school. University of Florida Baby!!! Where the big dawgs eat their young.
lars larson...then i guess you are one of the lucky ones. some universities have faculty tuned into that type of architecture, others do not. I think i got a good balance. I think some profs are willing to, in the earlier/younger studios, let some of the technical slide in student projects...but in later years you'd best have your head and your ass wired together. Some profs just get stuck teaching first year studio for 20 years, you know what i'm saying?
first year studio story of my own. i built a concrete cantilever but didn't really think about using different materials just to 'simulate' concrete so it would stay together...basically i just used somewhat sifted redimix so the thing LITERALLY fell apart during my crit. bad news, bad grade.
another first year crit, luckily not me. A transfer student was getting his 'music club' reviewed and one of the faculty on his jury was the individual in charge of admitting transfer...i.e. the guy who let him and only two others in as transfers that year. anyway, the guy's music club was a jazz club and the floorplan was a saxaphone...i don't mean that it implied a brass instrument...or that it was a metaphor...it WAS a saxaphone. the stage was the bell, the keys were barstools, the n'th degree, you name it. bad...horrible. actually worse than mine and that would have been tough. anyhoot, during his jury, the aforementioned prof had been silent but finally to close the crit he just said flatly: "I can't believe i let you in here"....and the jury disbanded. i, and everyone else was in shock, including the student who i don't remember seeing second year.
I honestly think first year studio should have been entitled..."how not to design in simile and metaphor".
IoA, your gonna have to tell me who that was... I think a horrible music club was par for course. I did a country club....it was total urban cowboy.. actual moviing mechanical bull and all
there was a guy who didn't show up for weeks before the final review. he came in late cause he "was working on his model so hard until the last minute." he even told us that he'd been up all night!
he presented last, didn't have any drawings, but then he whipped out a piece of shit model made out of sponges! the kind where one half of it was the green rough stuff and the yellow spongy stuff on the other side.
he literally spent 10 minutes on it right before the review. then he proceeded to talk very highly of its "architecture" in a very grown-up professional voice.
needless to say he failed.
if you mean the prof, you'll have to ask me tomorrow at work because i won't sully the prof's name here. as for the student? I don't think i ever knew him nor could i remember his name. he was in the 'other room' of the frosh studios, and was a transfer so he didn't hang with us DAAP floor dorm animals.
that club project was really a test, i think. most everyone utilised metaphor or simile in some shape or form...hideous. I'm ashamed of half the ideas i had freshman year, i swear. hell, i'm ashamed of half the ideas i had LAST year, for that matter.
urban cowboy, eh? hehehe...i can't see your 'fro underneath a cowboy hat, Monkeyboy! I'll buy you lunch at the bbq shack if you wear it all day at work this week, if you have a cowboy hat that is!!!
prof pointing to part of a model, "Did you chew this?"
iOF - I enjoyed my music club project. It could be because that was during my disco phase and my scale figure was a little John Travolta.
Strawbeary, we had a guy my senior year who never worked in studio at all. This guy was a legend....he had been there maybe 8 years and had failed and retaken a couple of studios, rumor has it he even sued the school when he failed 5th year. So there he was at our mid-term crits, we're supposed to be half done with our thesis projects, and he has drawings that are basically irrelevant to his downtown Chicago high-rise scheme and a model that everyone knew he had commissioned at a professional shop. We heard that he had the money because he stole it from his former fraternity.....
The story doesn't really get good until our final thesis crits 3 months later: he came with the same exact model and drawings in tow. Literally the whole class showed up for his crit to watch him get torn apart, which he did, but then at the very end, our dept. head stood up and shook his hand and said "congratulations" as if to say "you graduated"! Well, he didn't.
Saturn> The entire state of Florida scares me, in so many ways. Why do so many strange people get to hog all the good weather?!? Congrats on graduating, by the way...
Not exactly a crit but...
In a freshmen studio, we were given multitudes of drawing exercises that were graded on the usual A thru F scale. At times, the return grade would be "C, a gift", meaning it marginally met the criteria to receive grade.
One day someone had a drawing returned to them that read:
"F, a gift"
Thanks WonderK. Its been a long time coming. In terms of weather, I hate the weather. It is so damn humid in florida that you walk out of your house and in 5 minutes you think to yourself, "I should have put deoderant on my balls."
wow
Not a trantrum, but funny nonetheless: A prof told a student that the kite museum he'd designed looked like the headquarters for the Southern Mortuary Society.
I used to have a teacher who said quite frequently, "You like this? You think this is good?" and the answer would inevitably be something along the lines of, "Well, I did. Until you said that." It was a very effective deflator of egos.
There are so many bad crits to choose from! Not all mine, but worth sharing.
1. "I can honestly say when I look at this project I cannot find one single room that does not fill me with complete despair." Not me, but the prof said at the end of the review, "Yeah, sometimes you've gotta take one for the team."
2. "Look at this project. Let's psychoanalyze this like we were psycoanalyzing your brain. What does this say about you? It's like a prison. Totally maniacal." Totally me. I actually enjoyed this crit very much.
3. "Here, if I take your model and flip it upside down.... There. How does that make you feel? See? I think it looks much better that way." Not me, the poor guy was crushed, and actually tried to defend himself, which didn't turn out well.
4. "Why are you here? Don't come back next semester." This one was a rumor about someone the previous year.
the classic urban legend [said to be wilfred wang at the gsd]:
'here's a quarter. go call your mom and tell her you're not going to be an architect.'
another one:
right after awful presentation of truly clueless student, juror stands up, walks up to a column. starts bumping his head repeatedly against the column. then walks away.
I've heard probably five times where are particularly volatile instructor from my school has just basically said, "Why are you wasting my time with this? You don't have enough work pinned up for me to have the slightest clue what you're talking about."
Just yesterday a second year student was reviewing, and when the reviewers started to criticize, his professor basically said, "He's my student, and we've been over all of this stuff many times, and it's just a waste of everyone's time to go over it again."
All totally deserved.
first year undergrad-
the guest prof said to a girl with a South African accent about her final model:
"This is great.....just don't let your dog play with it next time."
Also, 5th year undergrad:
"the program you invented was meant solely for your architectural masturbation......"
i miss school
i read this term alot: architectural masturbation..
what does it mean?
so, is there architectural sex?
who comes up with these?
i really don't respect proffs who resort to obscenities to make a point.
i know its like an exclamation point.. like a BANG to get attention of students. i hear this a lot, and i really think that they are just trying to fit in.. as absurd as that sounds..
architectural masturbation- the excercise of adding things (usually program elements) to a project purely for graphic/formal reasons, that add no real value/usefullness to the project. Just yanking your own chain, as it were.
I was once told my project was "immoral"--because it didn't respect the urban edge..and it was situated in LA....hmmm....
i love this thread!
once had a crit who was a priest, a pianist, and also claimed to be an architect (not sure whether he built anything). he had written a book on music & architecture. during the entire midterm crit, he would compare each student's project to western music history.
i.e. "this drawing is so bach"
"this model is like classical music, so mozart, but also very baroque"
...
nobody really understood what he meant.
The crit: “the worst expression of macho culture.â€
The crit: Power trips and macho culture
go to study sculpture and work in disneyland,
you are waisting my time (typ)
if you build this and after 10000 years the aliens see it, they would understand why humans extinguish (to some one else)
i saw someone describe their model as post-apocalyptic.
michael volk told me once that he understood my project better before i tried to explain it.
you know how people say that you can't take the critiscism personally well I had a prof say during a crit: its not your project, its you
also, a prof walked up to a drawing and goes:
hmmm, yeah, not so good, its boring, like you, just look at your hair man
I showed up 6 hours late to my first grad school final review. I had been up for 3 days and didn't hear my alarm, phone, or friends pounding on my door. My crit thought I was dead, so he was glad when I showed up. I presented last and was in a total daze and had no idea what they were saying to me. My critic defended my project for me.
Second semester I had horrible work, but managed to BS really well and ended up having the best review of the studio. Architecture is a farce.
Same review, this one kid was totally bombing and our studio crit was just sitting in the back with me showing me his new Blackberry. What the hell.
i actually just had a review on wednesday... it was our midterm
a couple people who i respected were there so i was hoping to get a lot out of it...
however, it just turned out to be hysterical, as two of the women who we will call SCA and SD, seemed to have an innocent women crush on each other, and bascially teamed up, making objections and inserting comments... backing each other up on every thought
when they got to me, the conversation went a little like this
i give them my concept, explain the project and away they go
SCA - i think this project would be better off in an industrial area
SD - your right, it might be a more effective use of the space, and ecologically might have a larger impact
SCA - yeah, and community gardens... you cant even eat the food from them... they are so...
SD - cutesie?
SCA - totally cutesie! they are just too .... cute...
imagine the two looking longingly at each other... respecting the hell out of their combined intellect
its funny to me
after a fellow student in first year presented a model (fairly well made for first year) of a sort-of classical temple with half a snickers bar protruding from the roof... prof: "i can't remember the last time a student pissed me off this much"
also, a friend and professor of mine was telling me about a crit he recieved from peter eisenman during his thesis year (late 70's, early 80's, not sure). my prof's project was very personal, to which eisenman responed by yelling at the studio professors for allowing someone to do a very personal project that he (eisenman) could not possibly critique... next person presents and eisenman responds by saying "you know, you're the kind of guy i'd hire for my office... (hushed crowd)... cause you don't have an idea in your head. (points to previous student, my prof) i'd never hire that guy!"
I think this guy was in one of my classes too!!! His crit went something like this:
He presents the stupid model that obviously took only 10 minutes. The prof says: "I can see we don't have anything to talk about here, next!" Never saw that guy again...
strawbery said:
"there was a guy who didn't show up for weeks before the final review. he came in late cause he "was working on his model so hard until the last minute." he even told us that he'd been up all night!
he presented last, didn't have any drawings, but then he whipped out a piece of shit model made out of sponges! the kind where one half of it was the green rough stuff and the yellow spongy stuff on the other side.
he literally spent 10 minutes on it right before the review. then he proceeded to talk very highly of its "architecture" in a very grown-up professional voice.
needless to say he failed"
Actually, I learned (from teaching studio) that you can't give nice reviews to all your students. If you give a nice review to the bad students, the good ones think they don't have to work hard, and so don't try, and the bad ones work even less. So you gotta be mean to the bad ones, and praise the good ones, at least some of the time. It's not fun for me, but has to be done.
I witnessed a few legendary crits in my time as an undergrad. Luckily, neither of these were my crits. If I remember correctly I was in my senior year and these crits were 2nd year students.
First, I witnessed an early semester crit where the female prof took all of her class' models out into the courtyard of the building and turned them into a barbecue with a steel trashcan and some lighter fluid.
Second, I witnessed a final crit where a student had essentially the same model that he had at midterm. It was woefully unfinished and was little more that a base for a future model. One of the professors on the crit had been there for midterm and asked the student why he hadn't completed the model. She then pointed to the model, which looked like an altar, and asked the student if this was where they sacrifice the animals. After that she picked up her stool and moved it in front of the next presentation and sat down. The other professors tried to save face and give the poor guy a crit. The harsh prof went outside to smoke a cig and then came back in and told the other profs that they needed to move on and not discuss this project any further. The student then proceeded into the corner of the room to curl up in the fetal position and cry.
Also, in grad school in my Masters Project studio my professor walked up to a fellow classmate who was pinning up his final presentation. The prof told the guy to take his presentation of the wall and that he wouldn't be graduating this semester.
during my very first crit - we had been pulling mad all nighters. a girl fell asleep in her chair, fell off the chair and hit her head on the wall. i think my prof later required us to stop working on our projects at midnight...
also...one of the legendary professors at my undergrad school used to have students trembling in fear before crits...he would yell at students throughout their presentations to "SAY IT ANOTHER WAY!!"...the same prof also famously slashed a student's 3' x 6' ink on mylar drawing with an x-acto knife to which the student responded by cutting the prof's neck tie off!!!
he was also fond of telling his less talented students, "Have you ever considered a career in accounting?"
I had him for my first design class. He came in to the studio and introduced himself. He then told us that he had a reputation on campus for being a bastard. He then had us introduce ourselves to the people sitting to our left and our right. Then he told us that by the end of the semester at least one of those people would be gone. He was right. In fact about 10 of the 50 people didn't even come back for the second class. Only about half of the class made it to the end of the semester.
He was the type of professor that you hated when you were in school, but years later you understand and appreciate.
I had that professor, and he was nice to me, but Im still a little anxious when I talk to him.
But what he taught me has stayed with me, and really I wish ALL professors where as rigorous and demanding.
His favorite saying was interrupting you with a "BULLSHIT" followed by the infamous "Say it another way"
We have talked about him extensively with AP,even pointing out that he is the cover of Architrave 9.
www.ufarchitrave.com
jesus, my school experience wasn't very entertaining at all. about every crit i had was the worst one because they were all the same.
crits were the most useless part of my education because i already knew how to "graciously" accept criticism from four years in the haltom high school band. where i experienced outbursts and tantrums that would put (most of) these crit stories to utter and abject shame.
the stories that involve fire and bodily fluids, though...priceless. nothing ends a crit like a barbeque.
geez... i remember arguing with my professor Anna Klingman... well not arguing... but with her i was always wrong and never working hard enough...
i was tired and going home for thanksgiving... i had my breakfast. lunch and dinner [a banana... very healthy ey?] laying on a seat as i was presenting and was getting dizzy so i sat down on my banana with out realizing it... slowly i got up again to see what happened... all i remember is her deep german laughter... and her gucci belt... and the buring against my cheeks... it was difficult to adjust to her way of thinking... especially after only dealing with an architecture that was formed based and not branded... i do however wish now that i could have her... it just took me too long to realize what i was most interested in...
ok, this forum isn't called "confessions of an ex-band geek" (and current archidork) but i can't say how i experienced much worse in band than archschool without proving it:
"i may be a f----t but you are one suck-ass trumpet player"
(the word rhymes with "rag it" and fortunately i played bassoon. this was the first time i ever heard anyone admit they were gay. but we always knew about the director anyway)
"if you weren't pregnant you'd play better" (nobody knew she was pregnant before this)
and my favorite incident of pitting one student against another:
"don't play like X -- he's a child molester"
(X really was, that's the sad part)
"oh, so it's like some kind of orgy pit!"
i burst out laughing. the girl presenting her project did not.
most painful crit of mine was one in which i absolutely did not finish. i was unable to cope with the size of the project. the 3 things that sucked the most about it:
1. i felt as though i failed my professor who i truly respected. he felt like he had failed to guide me successfully to completion.
2. the critic was really really interested in what i did have, but said he just couldn't put it all together as it was in its current state. i basically missed out on what could have been a great critique of the work.
3. most of the students in the class were happy to see me not finished. caught someone who i thought was a good friend smiling gleefully.
about a week later, my computer was stolen from the studio. worst week of school ever.
well, you know, that IS the worst kind of crit: when you really want to do well and you try and it just doesn't come together. and it doesn't matter what anyone else says because YOU don't feel right about it...and i've definitely had that kind of crit before...
also we were designing a cemetery and mausoleum and a friend of mine who was mormon had based her mausoleum on the mormon ritual and theology of death, rebirth, etc etc. i'm episcopalian so i didn't understand too much about it. but basically one of the profs out and said, "why base a design on religious beliefs that are just wrong?" he was jewish.
ochona i am intrigued what kind of high school band has child molesters AND the pregnant in it?
ouch!
my high school band
to be fair, there were 350 people in the band -- only 2 or 3 pregnancies at any given time and the child molester was a unique instance -- word was that he got what was coming to him in tarrant county juvie
most of the crits in schools like ucla (where i went actually) are just parties of like minded academics to chit chat with each other...and happen to glance at some projects by the way
Yeah. My second semester crit was just people talking to each other. It was a waste of time.
the sad state of grad schools with starchitects....
One of my fellow class mate framed his drawings for the final presentation-crit and was asked what was the reason to frame those brawings and he answered:
"Because it's like a window to your soul really"
Then, when he was giving a walk through through his design, at a particular part of the building he said:
"It's a walkable stairs"
after an all-nighter-week of working so hard on my conceptual approach for one of the pjcts and maturing every bit of it, i stood in front of 4 critics and my profs completely blank headed! forgot what my concept was or what i was supposed to say so tried to bullshit a bit that it was more about the process than the end result and they have to go through every step with me to get everything.. after a good 10 minutes of me recalling my footsteps - talking gibberish - and their bored asses getting up to move on everything finally came flooding back, so i viciously declared (shouted) that no one's getting up until i finish what i had to say.. i can still remember the look of terror on their faces.. must’ve sounded (and looked) like the devil. ridiculous.
howd it turn out hibz?
i guess they weren't so impressed with the freak show.. u can say i got on their black list from that day. felt damn good though.. i'm usually so calm and obedient.
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