Studio culture is essential for architecture students. Studios train students regarding respect, intellectual engagement, experimentation, cooperation, collaboration, and time management. Architecture is a technical, aesthetic, and social discipline in scope. The capacity for synthetic problem-solving is best taught and understood in the context of design studio work. Skills like research, conceptualization, drawing, and model-making are exercised. Students are encouraged to implement knowledge from all subjects, such as building construction materials, history, building services, and professional practice. Studio work is a collaborative process among teachers, fellow students, and visiting critics. The studio promotes creativity, innovation, and discovery. The studio also teaches students to take responsibility for their designs and to be able to present and defend their work when questioned or judged.
Benefits of Studio Culture
- Supports intellectual curiosity.
- Ground for multiple points of view.
- Promotes cooperative understanding.
- Guidance from the mentors.
- Exposure to new ideas and constructive criticism.
- Group-based assignments encourage collaboration.
- Teaches the coexistence of contradictory viewpoints.
- Students learn to be professional and confident while presenting.
Impact on students
As mentioned above, the benefits of studio classes are plentiful, but so are the drawbacks. Studios are meant to be a place of cooperative learning and interactive classes but with time, they have become just burdensome assignments that come with fatigue and stress. The studio is supposed to be where the work is done, but with increasing assignments and not enough studio hours, eventually, the majority of the work becomes homework. The professors have unrealistic expectations and wish the students could complete a week’s worth of work in a day. Though design is an important subject, it is not the only one that students have to deal with. The professors don’t seem to realize that and keep pounding students with assignments for every subject.
The gigantic number of submissions and unreasonable deadlines ruin students’ work-life balance. Students who are just in their teens and at the prime age to socialize and explore the world are stuck at homes or colleges completing their submissions. This even restricts the architecture students from going out and exploring real architecture and gaining some practical knowledge. Students don’t even have the time to have a proper chat with their parents, let alone seek out time to intern at a firm and acquire work experience. This pattern, in due course, ruins a student’s ability to interact with others, making them introverts who lack social manners. Students, after passing out of their respective colleges, realize that they have zero idea of the real world of architecture and have hit the harsh pit of reality.
These endless assignments also have significant impacts on a child’s health. To complete the assignments, students usually stay up late and barely get a healthy amount of sleep. The majority of architecture students survive on 2-3 hours of sleep a day. During final submissions, students can’t even afford that many hours of sleep. They just function like zombies sustained on energy drinks and coffee. Not sure how students in these conditions can give their best and be presentable, but that’s the way architecture students exist right now. A person cannot live a healthy life with such a random and obnoxious sleep pattern. This is bound to have long-term effects that will lead to weak, depressed, lonely, and frustrated architects of our future cities.
Working unhealthy hours also have poor effects on a student’s diet. With being so busy and engrossed in work, students usually forget to have meals at their regular times. Over time, studios and completing submissions all the time force students to eat whatever’s easily available at hand, and that mostly includes oily, fried, street food. Students living alone away from family find sanctuary in fast food because they neither have the time nor energy to cook something. Feasting on Maggie and toxic food leads to an obese and unhealthy lifestyle for architecture students. With such hectic schedules, they can’t even find time to work out or exercise to take care of themselves. These practices result in overweight teens which has adverse effects on their confidence and mental health.
Conclusion
Studios that keep students laboring for unreal hours make them exhausted and miserable. Students lose track of time, sleep, food, friends, family, and everything else. They don’t even realize this until it’s too late. This unhealthy lifestyle leads to burnt-out kids who have lost all flair for architecture and are just managing to complete the course for the sake of a degree. Some students even drop the course and change fields.
Studios should not be conducted so awfully. Studios should be fun and a good learning experience. Studios should motivate students to become great architects, not drive them towards quitting architecture. Studios should be student-centric and designed to cater to their time and needs. Faculty should focus on students’ efficiency and speed rather than the completion of the syllabus. Studios should not extend until after hours, and the work shouldn’t be carried on to be completed at home but rather moved to the next studio. These students are the future, and they can’t be busy stressing about homework; there are many important aspects of life in this world. These students are the youth of our society and they have a much bigger duty towards our nation and world but they won’t be of any help if they are stuck at home drafting sheets for the nth time. Also, these students are going to design the future so it’s important to keep them in good shape, both physically and mentally.
References:
- Princeton University School of Architecture: Studio Culture [online] Available at – https://soa.princeton.edu/content/studio-culture#:~:text=Studio%20culture%20encompasses%20a%20number,reviews%20of%20varying%20degrees%20of
Image Sources:
- Image 1: Centre For Architecture [online] Available at – https://www.centerforarchitecture.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/2/2017/12/Studio-for-Web-1280×854.jpg
- Image 1: Active Socioplastics [online] Available at – https://activesocioplastics.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/tumblr_mliyoevnkl1rmw35wo1_1280.jpg
