Actually, I think you could push it much more towards elegance, and don't worry about it being 'boring'. Many of the images you have to work with are beautiful, and your layouts occasionally distract from that. Sooo, thoughts:

1) Type. Ditch the right-aligned thing. Also ditch the center-aligned thing. Everywhere that they occur. Just don't do it. It's TOTALLY OK to left-align something, even when it's not on the left-hand side of the page. I swear. It's easier for us all to read, and far less cute.

2) More type. You need more leading. Your numbers on your title page are about to be sucked up the butts of the titles they're associated with. Same with your subtitles on your later pages (especially note the A/V MAPPING page...)

3) Type + Consistancy. Regulate your tracking. Turn your spacing to 'Optical', and it will fix a lot of it. For instance, the CO combination in 'CONTENTS' is very tight, where the CO combination in 'CONFLICT' is much looser. This is just one example of something that is a systemic problem. Also in the consistancy category is the fact that 'Materiality' is set in mixed case and the other titles are set in upper case. I know I sound like a type nazi here, and I may indeed have become a type nazi, but fixing these things can make 'elegant' a reality.

4) Image treatment. More full-bleeds, please! Your A/V mapping images look gorgeous, as do some of your Beyond Media images- I just wish everything else could be treated similarly. When you've got an images that's black and you're setting it on black, adjust so that they are the same black and let the image bleed into the black background.

5) Devices. Ditch the black bars, translucent or otherwise. They're thick and clunky. If you're feeling some superswiss type and stripe, go with a thin rule, or a small bar that bleeds off the edge.

First and initial reaction - the formatting works fine and reads with your intent. I think you should include a break page between you work and the photography - turning the page and seeing Calatravatron without any statement of why I am seeing Calatravatron immediately breaks my ability to look at what is presented to me. Instead I have to stop engaging in the portfolio to figure out the 'why' - which should be a given.

Overall, the content shows the ability to think and process architectural in multiple modes, scales and scopes. It shows you can work rough and then refine.

If you go 10 more spreads I think you will have maxed out your ability to demonstrate. This feels about right to pair with a letter of intent, and later an interview.

Thanks for the advice guys. Some of your comments were along the same lines as what I was thinking. Great stuff!

Rationalist, Thanks for the heads up on the text issues. I would have never caught these in a million years, haha!

copy + paste your text into word and run spellcheck, and then have someone else proofread it for grammar/spelling after that. i think the comments above regarding graphics and typeface are spot-on, but you've got to go over all of your text with a fine-toothed comb. on your very first "materiality" page, "frehman" should be freshman, "sophmore" should be sophomore, "studing" should be studying, "laying" should be lying or lying down..... you get my drift. generally the content of your text is fine, it just looks careless with so many typos.

generally i would also consider spending less time telling what the assignment was, and more time just explaining what you did. you can still present some of the project constraints, but if you can describe them more as inspiration or jumping-off points, it will make your design choices seem less passive/reactive and more active/generative.

and definitely, definitely, definitely adjust the blacks on the model photos that are placed on black backgrounds. one way to cheat it so that you don't have to risk screwing up the contrast in the photo is to add more canvas space to the image in photoshop (so that it's the same size or larger than your final page) and then clone stamp and brush in that extra space with more of the same black from the back of the photo. it won't be truly black, but you won't be able to tell much of a difference once it's printed and you'll avoid getting clear lines between different blacks.

for team projects, i also think it's nicer to say "in collaboration with so-and-so" than to say "1 of 2" or "2-person team." it gives the same information, just a little bit more graciously.

stressing over this application stuff isn't fun, but i think it's ultimately worth it. good luck!

Thanks Snarkitekt,

I have not gotten to refining the text or images yet. The reason the text is full of mistakes is that I have not read through all of it yet to check for mistakes. Those will be fixed.

Also, I know the black images nead to be tweaked. saving that for the end.

Thanks again.

looks good apart from comments above.

i agree you should simply name the people in your team for group projects. not doing so feels a bit like you don't want to admit you worked with someone else...

Considering for one of my projects, there was a construction team of 8 people. Should I name all of these people or just say 'in collaboration with ____ studio'

Thanks for all the advice

Blues

Blues - that sounds appropriate, as long as the text is informative enough to relay that it was an 8 person team, yadda yadda.

Bump!! Are there any other comments out there, maybe?

maybe consider dropping the one word titles for the photographs. they read a little like a series of "successories" posters. also set the transition up a bit as suggested above. the rest has a nice look.