A place for architecture students to humorously laugh about the glories of our daily lives.
Share your stress, habits, opinions, happiness, experience or whatever you find insightful for other students.
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hello@lifeofanarchitecturestudent.net
Congrats on starting college. Welcome to the world of architecture! Here are some answers to your questions:
1. Meh, I’ve seen many people make it through school without freehand drawing. However, I think it’s an excellent skill to have/develop!
2. The only thing that was helpful from high school was learning autocad and developing plans/sections. So yes, you will take that experience with you to college. You’ll eventually learn to develop ideas, concepts, design, theory, etcetera in college. I think high school helps with the technical and overall idea of what architecture is, but you really dive deep on the concept of architecture in college.
3. You don’t need to drink coffee to be an architecture student lol. However, it’s a better way of staying awake than drinking energy drinks honestly (those are gross and terrible for you in excess). I just drink straight up black coffee with one sugar or green tea to get me through a hard/long day. You will have many of those in your future, you’ve been warned!
4. Meh again, some firms pay well and others don’t. You’ll find something that works for you. Also, you don’t need to work for an architectural firm, you can do a lot more with your degree. I work in construction and make more than what I would have if I went into architecture. However, it comes at a cost, I am deprived of my creativity most of the time. I find other avenues (art and local architecture groups) to keep my creativity flowing.
I’ve just been on a really looooong unofficial hiatus that included getting married, buying a house, adopting several animals, getting work promotion, working on art projects and just life in general.
But I’m back now??? I’ll try to be more consistent!
Featured image: The Tower of Babel (Pieter Bruegel)
A narrative is a string of connected events told with effect. Subtle or overt, stories drive home emotional points. Should buildings have an emotional point? If so, would better prose produce better buildings—or at least, sell them better? It would be interesting to test the idea, architects embracing story-form presentations, artfully describing moments as well as monuments, delivering ideas, not just information.
In architecture, the act of formally critiquing design is ubiquitous. The crit, as its called, is almost a rite of passage. And while the format of this practice is universal, its objective, goals and ultimate purpose are unfixed, beyond a broad and often vague imperative to make a given design better. This is a problem because it leaves a foundation of the profession to take the form of whatever discussion happens to arise between a designer and a critic. If the expectation of empirical evidence for design decisions were introduced as the basis of a design crit, the cumulative effects of this change could improve the credibility of the entire discipline.
The Architecture of the City is free to download and read! I recommend this book to everyone interested, I had to read it for an elective and I loved it.
Shot of me stumbling home at 7am in the morning after my eighth all-nighter of the semester, with a dead look in my eyes, oily hair and skin on the verge of breaking out, coughing intermittently because my immune system is not dealing well with the sleep deprivation..
*Record Scratch* *Freeze Frame*
No, I am not a long time abuser of hard drugs. I am an architecture student.
- Having a messed up sleep schedule, for example stay awake for 3 days straight, then have a thirty hours nap.
-Gradually losing your eyesight because of the hours you spent in front of a screen.
- Your bedroom being a constant mess, composed of cut out cardboard and sheets and spare scalpel blades scattered all around.
- Your hands looking like they’ve gone through a blender, your eyes having dark circles around them
- Glue everywhere. On your desk, on your hands, on your ceiling (true story)
- Not even caring about the other subjects because studio is the most important.
-Constant trips to the shop with your archi friends, walking across town with huge sheets and balsa and glue and always forgetting something.
-You go with a model, you come back with a pile of torn cardboard because your teacher didn’t like it. And even if they did, you’d have to do it again
-Spending all your money on prints, and pencils and stuff you’ll only use for one year or two. Architecture studies are expensive
-Making true friends who understand what you do (I hate when people tell me “Well that’s only some drawing an DIY) and comfort you and with whom you spend hours and hours (Working or talking, or both)
Of course there are a lot more that i didn’t talk about. Also, I’m from Belgium so it might be different where you live…
During a crit in second year I was trying to explain my concept and said hangovers instead of overhangs.
My professor stopped me immediately and asked if I was the one hungover while proceeding to laugh, making the entire class mock me the rest of the semester. You better believe he asked me the same question during the final review. 😧
Tomorrow I’m going to get ripped a new one during my final presentation, but on the plus side they can only yell at me for 15 minutes before it’s time to move on 🤷🏻♀️
