Appearing for a jury is the moment of maximum anxiety and stress. At the beginning of the semester, you get a brief. Sitting in front of your class – both desirous and happy to learn something new. The former taking over you for your final design semester. Each semester you get a brief however, this is the last semester and you have to research a topic through which you can deduce the need or a project building it in the final semester of your curriculum.
The Research
Firstly, research must be done in such a way that one can see the trajectory of the study and come to the conclusion of what are the options one can use to build your design. For example, someone studies on the five senses, which describes how a person feels walking through space, the texture of the flooring, whether it is smooth or ripped.
The height difference in the volumes/spaces, whether it has a slanting wall with glazing or a straight brick wall with the openings. Consequently, giving the space a purpose, it can be for viewing a certain art product, space for tranquility, or an operation theater where the lives of people can be saved.
Designing Conundrum
Acquiring full freedom to research, study; learn all the things you wished in five years looking at buildings for your design semester. Consequently, you select a topic to research and start with case studies. Likely you reread the research and try to make sense out of it and simultaneously visit Buildings to apply it on site. Thus start realizing stuff like giving voids for foyer, entranceway, and how to use tight spaces and large volumes.
Additionally, Buffer space can play a large part in dividing space and compartmentalizing your building wings; thus you start getting ideas for the design and you get in front of the desk and scribble away the thought cart at this point to devise a plan (pun intended).
The Aftermath
When you make a plan it takes all of you to plot a line the way it is and the next day your professor points out flaws you did not even know were an issue. You do and redo plans until you understand the flow of the design and make functional spaces. Consequently upgrading your thinking in every design semester. For instance, each space/room needs to be designed considering the six sides of the room facing inwards.
Thus, the constant need for corrections and simultaneous progress grounds and humbles you as a person to be empathetic to creativity. Additionally, your understanding of problem-solving and design knowledge grows exponentially.
Presentation
This must be an easy part for most architecture students. Personally, this part of project making is my least favorite as one can learn to be good at understanding design and construction details but what about which shade of red goes on which side of the sheet? Consequently, this process needed extra attention and some help from my colleagues but at the end of the day, there is no skill you cannot learn.
D-day
The jury date advances and you are NOT even close to being ready for the jury. Model – Incomplete, Sheets rendered but dimensioning left, Nameplate – “Drafted in pencil and need to fair it!!!”. Border?” – “Applying orange sellotape”– “UMM seriously?. Afterward, you reach college being awake for days and hopping up on caffeine.
You see an empty desk and sit and wait for your roll call, some students are finishing their work as you are now pretty awake at this point both tired but too anxious to sleep. You walk as if floating in a dream state. Your roll no. is called; you gather all your sheets and models and enter the jury room to greet the juror.
The Jury
You start to speak about the research making bringing you back to the time you started this process, probably a year ago. Following the site and then your concept. You start to tell a story for traversing through space is it a civilian, a staff member, or the customer to that particular project. You are practicing for some time and get excited whenever you say a major point.
The juror tells you some mistakes you never would have thought. You are still happy that it’s done. Coming out of the room answering questions while learning and being aware of your mistakes.
Lastly, your horizon broadens and you understand what your shortcomings were. The design you started with is different from what you end up displaying, the work is more defined as it took hundreds of tracings to come to that final drawing set. After coming out all the stress bids you farewell you come home and all the coffee is still inside you leaving you to stay up like an owl so you watch a series and go to sleep, happy times.