just be clear about the project team - list the professor or architect who was the team leader and you could say something like 'the design team consisted of 10 students led by professor starchitect whoever ..'

you should also briefly describe your role on the project, just like you do with professional work. it's not plagiarism if it's a project you worked on.

FRC:
true, but "starchitect whoever" in my country is probably "Mr. nobody" in the US!
The problem is, i just don't understand how the admission committee validates portfolios. How do they get references from places that aren't really "on the radar"?
Its worth mentioning that even a friend of mine at UC Berkeley told me that recommendation letters coming in from my region, the mid-east, aren't taken seriously and are a formal part of the admission procedure. This is because 90% of academic recommenders from outside the western world aren't internationally renown.
Being a desperate conservative applicant :-) , i'll probably take your advice, but still good to know what goes on when the final result is evaluated.

that's fine if nobody knows who it is - the point is that as long as you are honest about who was involved in the project then there is no fear of being attacked for plagiarism or for misrepresenting the project as yours and yours alone.

i'm guessing if the admission committee likes some of the work and whatever essay you write (are people still required to do this?) then they might accept you to their program. It seems like most schools prefer a mix of students and experiences so don't give up hope. good luck!

Thanks FRC, I guess i should add the extra 20-pages of design work into my portfolio (with references, of course) and fear of nothing!

Here's the thing: If you're adding twenty pages of bulk to your portfolio, but honestly acknowledging that you had only a minor role in the projects, you're not telling them much about you as a designer, and it could look like you're just trying to pad your application. It's fine to include competition, professional, and team work in your portfolio as long as you always explicitly state who the lead designers (and possibly other team members) were, and exactly what your role was, i.e. "i built this model" or "i put all the people and trees into this rendering." On the other hand, if, as you say, your role was very minor, it doesn't matter how many awards the project won, admissions committees are pretty much going to skip over it because it doesn't really give them any insight into your personal work.

I think generally there is an assumption of honesty in attribution within student portfolios - there's no global database of who did what on which project, they pretty much just have to take you at your word. However, if a student DID misrepresent collaborative work as their own in their portfolio and got caught, they would probably be kicked out of school pretty quickly. Architects (and architecture schools) take fair attribution pretty seriously, and you never know who will be looking at your portfolio - it might be someone who competed for the same projects and knows the other entries well. Better to try and include only images that you worked on directly, make sure you give ample credit to other team members, and be very clear about your contribution to the project. Limit the work you include to those competitions where you made a real design contribution, rather than those that received the most press, and give most of your portfolio space to work that is completely your own.

Maybe i'm just being obsessive about it, but if i don't go through the hassle and stress of adding this skeptical part to my portfolio, i still have about 30~35 pages of well-rounded work that i can claim as solely my own, or at least as a major contributor, this includes some work i did with the UN and the Rockefeller Foundation that are fairly creditable.
Would that be enough, or do grad schools expect more from someone with a background in architecture?
thanks,

Do I have to write all the names of the team I worked with?

Is it Ok just to mention that this was a teamwork and I personally did ... and ... in cooperation with my boss or an engineer?

You always have to add references if it's not 100% your work. The thing is, they won't go and search your work etc. But, the architectural community is very small. There was a guy at my school, plagiarized some projects in his post-grad school portfolio. Unfortunately he applied to a firm where another classmate worked. The HR guy asked classmate #2 if he knew classmate #1. Classmate #2 noticed projects that he KNEW were someone else's. Made it's way through the system very quickly and back to the school. Now everyone knows this guy was ripping off other students and I think he's pretty much black listed. Fact of the matter is, in the US, if in doubt, ALWAYS cite your work. Just say who you worked with, no big deal. Agree with others about adding useless bulk.

nomadzilla, I had 45, got rid of 5, so I have 40 pages now.
I heard it has to be 10-12 projects, but I have 14 and really like them all.

archiwhat, I don't think the "10-12 project" limit is true for all schools,
I've got 14 of my own and 5 "skeptical" projects, all for a total of 55 pages!
Just the thought of be accused of plagiarism at any level stresses me out, i'm gonna stick to my very own work and hope they don't think its inadequate...
anyone else? is 30 pages inadequate for someone with a BArch?

of course not a limit, but you have to be selective to choose your very best work and not to bore anyone with a huge portfolio... let's wait for someone more experienced to add a wise word.

Is working in a team a crime? I thought it shows your ability to work in cooperation with other people if in reasonable quantity.

man..thats alot of pages...... i think my current portfolio is like 12-14 pages max.... and some how i landed to get accepted into 2 grad school programs and a current job.....hmmmm

b

I don't remember what the exact quote is, but you are judged by your best and your worst so make sure to maximize one and minimize the other. Don't include anything for the sake of completion.

I have around 12 8.5X11 spreads - in the end it will probably be around 16 spreads. Then again, I like whitespace.

archiwhat,
working in a team is not a crime but let me elaborate my situation with a little example:
2 years ago i was in a team of five architecture students and we participated in a design competition, my role was to analyze the site and provide data on the environmental and cultural aspects of what was going to become a residential neighborhood, our design won second prize and everyone was happy....
then, last semester i used part of the info i had collected and analyzed as well as some of the work my teammates had done, in my academic studio project, i even used some of the renders they had worked on without much change. All this was fine because in the professional environment we have here, there isn't any difference between teamwork and individual work, kinda like an "all for one and one for all" attitude.
Now, shifting to the approach that the design community in the US has towards reproducing and manipulating this sort of work, i'm sure some might call this a dirty case of plagiarism!
This is too complicated for me to handle right now, so i'm gonna have to eliminate one of my best academic projects because of a cultural clash in the way projects are dealt with!
any suggestions?

cyborg,
wow! just 12 pages, i guess they were pretty loaded!

not really..... remember my work is more hands on design/build type of work.....

still, proving your design capabilities in just 12 pages is great! bravo!

personally i have never bothered with page counts. just put in the stuff that shows your skills and don't sweat it. 50 pages, 12, whatever. no one cares as long as the content is strong.

i don't think anything i have in portfolio is entirely my own. my grad thesis i suppose, though i had 2 engineers advising me on that. for the remaining projects i simply list the people i worked with on each project. since i am design lead and have been for years this is not a problem in terms of authorship. i am the one in charge and everyone else is working at my level or below me, etc etc. that having been said i would never leave out credit for the people i work with. not because its plagiarism, just because i feel obligated to note that it was a team effort. hell, even rem puts a full list of collaborators for each of his projects when they are published. i think all architects should do at least that much.

so yes, put the projects in, as long as your role was relatively significant. any professional will understand immediately what is yours and what is from a group. the only time you might want to think about it is if you really suck in comparison to the group projects. in which case is better to leave the work out ;-)

as far as plagiarism, well you know if you get in to office or school based on the work of others and then your own work is not up to snuff, someone will notice. i guarantee it.

Nomadzilla, I was in a similar situation. let me outline the details and how I see it.

I was in a team of three students working on an academic studio project. We designed it together, but each of us produced some of the output separately, ie I did the plan and some renderings, someone else did a site map and sections, and so forth.

In the end, we all shared every single file, including the process file. And we all used everything in our portfolios. The design was all of ours, and everyone had influenced the output to some degree (even if it was minor critiques of it).

In your situation, I would definitely include the project. You had a prominent role, and greatly influenced the design. The real issue is if you are a draftsperson but present the drawings as your own.

Whatever you do, be honest. Not because you're worried that they'll check, but because you have some self-respect. Don't claim you did work you didn't do.

My strategy has been to present a couple of projects in depth, and then have a two (or more) page spread of thumbnails of everything I've EVER done. This looks really impressive to a reader. Fifty or so 2" square images, each with a title. And the readers subconsciously believe that every one of these thirty or forty projects was done to the high level of the few you've pulled out.

In most programs the admissions committees are far more interested in seeing the "process" and creative hand of the applicant than they are in seeing professional projects or team competition entries. So you may be better off including just the small parts of the project that you were involved in than taking up valuable space documenting the entire project. For example if your role was limited to facade elevations then just include those, and label clearly what they are and what they were for. Really, you'll get much more mileage out of sketchbook sketches and study models than out of construction drawings and presentation boards. For M.Arch admissions purposes professional projects are given much less consideration than personal artistic and conceptual works.

There should be absolutely nothing in your portfolio that is not properly credited as to your role in it and what it is. If you do decide to include team competition entries or professional projects in which you had only a small role then you must state your role clearly.
No, of course there is no big worldwide database of projects against which admissions committees will check your work. However, having sat on some admissions committees, I can tell you that it happens more often than you might think that the same projects appear in the portfolios of multiple applicants, or that someone on the admissions committee has some connection to the project in question.
If you have any doubt at all about whether you can represent your work honestly then you should probably leave that project out of the portfolio entirely.

dont forget to make a hot case too.... keep it simple.... use it for interviews/etc

Now I’m paranoid.

What if one of my academic projects slightly resembles a starchitect’s work because I was his huge fan that year? While the concept is absolutely different, the composition has certain influence but more complex in design... or maybe it’s just my paranoia. Is it plagiarism? Should I throw away this work?

I've worked in two jobs, both famous enough architects, and my portfolio is only 2 projects from my final year of my bsc.arch, 3 projects from one job and prob 3 from the second....
not that i know a limit, but it feels long enough, I don't want to bore the people looking at it, because no matter how good anyone is, a long portfolio is really boring in my opinion...i think mine might be too long..

Who said your references had to be from star architects, if the judging comittee don't like that architect who they know, u might be worse off.....in my references, i chose not to ask the starachitects in my offices to write my references, but the people I worked with to write them...

does anyone think references are fairly generic at this stage anyway!!! people always write roughly the same thing..

Archiwhat, you are kidding, right?

Frankly, I feel the same way archiwhat does.
Its like watching 5 years worth of designs go down the drain, I just realized how i've always been influenced by others works and how even my best work had evolved in a process of collective creativity, small bits and pieces that i've put together to solve a certain design problem.
I'm just frustrated with the amount of dependence i've had regarding some of my design projects.

cyborg: I would have made a hot case but since i'm sending my portfolio from overseas, it'll be ripped up by US customs, believe me i've seen what they do to packages coming in from the mid-east!
Does anyone know any reliable online printing and bonding services in the US? that way i can upload my portfolio and get the printed version (along with an appropriate case) sent to the schools i'm applying to without having it go through DHL and US customs.

Nomadzilla, archiwhat - this is bullshit.

No one creates architecture in a vacuum. If you verbatim copied a building, then don't includ it. However, if you were simply influenced, included.

Just look at the recent trend of slightly disjointed square units (mvrdv, BIG, HdeM). You don't see them suing each other. Even if a design is similar diagrammatically, the end result and concepts behind it tend to vary quite a bit.

Don't worry about copying others work. Some have made careers out of improving on other's ideas (like Meier).

The famous quote "a good architect borrows, a great architect steals".


If it is good, it is good. If it is bad then you're screwed anyway.





PS - why don't you have the portfolios printed and mailed here in the US? You could get any print shop, probably even Kinkos, to print, bind and mail. Seems like a much safer way, probably cheaper too.

Phew… I'm not going into jail. What a relief.

by the way, trace™, whose ideas did Meier improve on? Corbu?

trace, that was a really cool quote, i hope i won't regret what i'm doing when the grad school result come in. And i will specify every detail about the teamwork so that there's no misunderstanding or anything.
I'm thinking of handing my portfolio over to some print shop, but i don't know any good reliable ones that i can order (with printing&bonding&packaging details) online. Is kinkos my best option?

nomad..you could look into kinkos for binding.... i know folks hate kinkos, but if you can maybe talk/email to the head of graphics there and let them know whats up...then toss them a few bucks on the side(paypal or money order the person working on it) they should be able to take care of you..

i had some things printed at kinko's but the trick is to go late and get to know one of the workers...toss them a tip and they'll take care off you.... most of the work kinkos does is heavy volumn so they dont really tweek the settings per job/etc..


b

I'd just start calling some places, maybe close to where you want to send to. Any of the small shops should be able to do it. They'll cost a little more to print, though. Just tell them you want it digitally printed.

aw - sure, Corbu. But there are tons of 'influences' out there. Look at Hadid's ealiest work, looks almost identical to Malevich's Tectonics (formally), most modernist looking buildings could be 'influenced' by any earlier modern looking building.


The big point is that you need to make it your own. Being influenced by great work is good, but you need to take that influence and create your own design.


nz - make sure you think about that quote. Ripoffs occur when someone just grabs a design, copies and pastes into their project, changes the name and is done. That sucks.


My other favorite quote:

"Don't ever do anything just because it looks good, but if it looks good there is a reason why"

trace, I know what your talking about, I think it's a cool quote because
its the untold reality of most great architects,
I guess architecture kinda works like nature, it mimics valuable specifications and functions, evolves in the extent of generations, and ultimately....The fittest are the ones that survive.
If you look at plagiarism from an evolutionist's point of view, it just might be the essence of the whole design profession (as long as it doesn't undermine creativity and make designers a bunch of lazy thieves).

I gotta say that this is exactly what sucks about architecture schools. I don't know which country you went to school, but I'd flunk you if you walked into my classroom with a project that was even remotely copied from another architect. No doubt, if I was on the review board of the grad school you're applying to and saw that project in your portfolio, you'd fail admission.

Admissions are interested in people who can contribute to the profession and discourse of architecture, not those who replicate it like worthless robots. It's one thing to be influenced by architectural theory, movements, and even styles, but to replicate it nearly verbatim doesn't show your strengths as a designer or thinker.

Dump that project, and show something that's yours...And credit all contributors in your other team works.

Good luck.

FP, whats with the attitude?!
I was just trying to make a point about something trace said.
And if you followed the thread, i mentioned that i'm writing down every detail regarding my teammates as well as my role in the project. and i'm not even adding the projects that i've had only minor roles in, so just chill.

FP
Oh, come off it, probably you get all your ideas out of thin air and have never been influenced by anything.

Alright, I've finally elaborated on every project i want to add in my portfolio.... except for one. Now this is a tricky one, but i would like to hear what the experts have to say:
A couple of years ago i went to a museum that had a unique philosophic approach in its form and circulation, then last semester i took that approach and used it in a totally different context, the project wasn't even a museum, but it can be said that my project does somewhat resemble that museum, at least in its general style. I really spent too many hours developing this project to dump the whole project. So, should i just let it go? or perhaps mention what influenced me in the design process, wouldn't that be a too lame to mention in a portfolio?

Honestly, I wouldn't worry about it. Feel free to email me images and I'll let you know what I think (hard to really give concrete advice without seeing).



Music - think about the Beatles. Incredibly original, still copied, but they, too, copied much of their fundamentals, chord progressions, melodies, etc.

Art - take a look at the most famous, like Picasso, and other artists of a similar period. EVERYONE gets influenced by each other (think Derrida, Strange Attractors, Maya, whatever) and things, inevitably, may look similar to other things.


Dunno, I go back to the 'if it is good, it is good.'

thanks trace, I'd appreciate it.

I saw one quote above and it probably comes from pablo picasso's quote
good artists copy, great artists steal....

not that I remember the works of art, but i remember this argument put before it as a college lecture, there was a Picasso which was totally different but COPIED from a Manet which was totally different but COPIED from a sculptural piece above a cathedral door from 1000 years before that, which was probably copied from something else...

Nomadzilla,

Sorry if my response was fraught with attitude. I don't know you and can't make a judgment on the integrity of your work either way.

My only point is that if your building looks and is organized like an existing building with relatively no differences, that is not going to be a great selling point for your portfolio.

Archiwhat: There is a difference between being influenced by other work and copying it. Aside from ethical considerations, there are architects/clients who actually copyright their designs, so copying it is illegal.

an alternative to having notes everywhere that says "i did this, this, and this..." i would take the reverse route.

in my portfolio i have a note that says "all work exhibited is my own unless otherwise noted"

then for the 'otherwise noted' part, i list all collaborators and participants for each project. so the reader assumes everything is my work unless i note it.

sometimes you need images that you did not produce to explain a project. in that case, any image or model that you did not have a hand in producing, write a note to the like "this rendering provided by ___" or "this model produced by ____"

also, in terms of length, i would recommend keeping the number of pages under 20. keep in mind grad school reviewers have a limited amount of time to review literally stacks of portfolios. sure you can have a 50 pg portfolio to keep for yourself, but if you are applying for grad school, you should have the reviewer in mind.

the portfolio should have a 'skimable' quality as well as having good content.

20 pages (like in a book) or 20 sheets? I’m asking because in my country it can be both depending on the context.

yeah, i have the same question.
my final portfolio is 20 double-sided A4 pages.
And thanks for your advice, the format you mentioned seems to leave no room for misinterpretation!