Architectural Education
Before enrolling into architecture school, I’ve heard from people that architecture is a hard profession. Things like “it’s very tough”, “hard subject leh boy”, and “good luck”, but I just nod my head and smile. Now that I’m already enrolled in this degree programme and have went through almost two years of gruelling pain and torture, there are still some things which I wish I could have learn in this architecture school.
Thirdly, another thing that I wished I could have learn in architecture school is the skill and abilities to integrate with other courses. Right from the start we all have that common perception that architects and engineers do not go well together. Maybe we could start from a new generation of future architects to help break that mental barrier and start working together as one. I remember the visit that we had to USM to learn things from their architecture school. Apparently, during their first 2 semesters, every field in the built environment will work together for one project. The students’ group will consist of around 10 people where everyone is of a different course related to the built environment. They would have students taking structural engineering, civil engineering, landscape architecture, architecture and also interior design working together on the same project, each playing and contributing their own knowledge in their respective fields. This I believe is one of the way where students can start having a basic and common ground of understanding of the people that they would be working with in the future. Just as the picture below, when all the different types of strings are brought together, there will be strength in number and the outcome will be beautiful. Where else better to start than now.
Secondly, I wished that our school would have taught us more on socialising skills. Things such as public speaking and networking with other universities should be a common practice as in this world of technology, networking with other potential architects could make a difference in the future. I also strongly believe that public speaking is a very important skill not only for our presentations but also in life. This is because communication is an essential part of our daily lives which we all have to use one way or another every day. Knowing the fact that design is a very subjective and complex topic, it really helps if we possess the skills to properly and clearly communicate our ideas to our lecturers, friends and clients. I feel that this skill would come in handy until the day we die.
Firstly, back in my first year when all our works are manually drawn and made, it didn’t really come across my mind of properly storing all this work. Lecturers would tell us once in a while to keep it until you grow old and when you look back at it, it could inspire your next big project. But along the way things break apart, files on my computer get corrupted, hard drives died, and laptop have to be formatted. This happened only after semester 2 when my external hard drive died out of the blue. I believe that there should be a short segment in class that give us options and also solutions on the best practice of documentation and storage of data. What I am doing now is using a cloud server to save my work but I really wished I did this right from the start. Now all I have though is the hard copy of my work (yes I still keep my year 1 projects). Maybe they could have included common practice of architecture firms and how they shared their work.
Lastly, as the future keep evolving and advancing at a higher rate, we have got to keep up with the technology that it offers to be competitive. Looking at other universities. They have 3D printers and laser cutters to use for their project but we don’t have it. I think that if we have access to this machinery, it would bring out or even inspire us to think further in detail as we can cut things more precisely down to fractions of a millimetre. Besides that, complex forms and structures could be printed to help in the visualisation process. Being able to do this in a physical form would be very much helpful. Though I still do agree that manual works have a higher appreciation, I still think that these skills and the way to use these machineries should be taught in universities as this might be used in some of the firms we may be working at in the future. None the less, it is good to practice and tradition to practice manual works as it is the basis of where our designs come from. Things in our mind has to be transferred down on paper by means of drawing or sketching as it is the fastest and most efficient way and further developed till it is refined and can be finalised with a computer aided programme.
Thank you for bearing with me til this line :p