Architecture College
The five years spent in architecture college is one of the best phases in the life of an architect. First-year students would be anxious and apprehensive about the difficulties that they may have to face. As time flies, five years pass by and you look back at the beautiful lessons that you got to learn in these years. Architecture college teaches you more than just architecture. Let us take a look at some of the major ones.
Do not love too much!
Everyone loves their ideas. Who does not? It is theirs after all! As you start working on your design project, you tend to get attached to your design and become very defensive about it. Hence, it hurts when your lecturer scraps it up at one go. As semesters pass, you learn to ‘let it go’. Another huge mistake that I committed during my first year of architecture is to firmly stick to my first design idea and not look beyond it. I never bothered to put that little extra effort to look out for more. while It is absolutely good to fix and develop our idea, it is equally essential to look out for other options as well. Another fantastic idea might be just around the corner of your brain!.
Stop at a point.
Perfection in design is highly subjective. A design that blows one person off could not at all be appealing to the other. The process of design involves the tedious job of altering your drawings multiple times throughout the semester. At one point in time, maybe two weeks before the submission deadline, you learn to stop altering it and freeze on the design. This is necessary because the buffer should be utilized to detail your drawings out, render your sheets, and generate your portfolio. Do not try to please your faculty and achieve that perfection in design. It would not happen.
Being a wallflower does not work.
Architecture course involves multiple discussions, reviews, and juries on the design. No matter how good your drawing skills are, if not properly presented to the jurors, it would be a …… Open communication skills are one thing that architecture college would teach you. Effective and efficient communication is one of the foremost requirements to develop your design and finally present it during external reviews and juries. By the end of the first year, your stage fear and fear of public speaking disappears.
Time Management.
You must have heard horror stories about architecture students spending sleepless nights drafting their sheets. The simple reason for this would be the lack of efficient time management skills. When your lecturers start dishing out tons of assignments, after a series of trials and errors, you gradually fall into a certain rhythm of prioritizing them according to their importance and credibility. These assignments help you to hone your time management skills and make you more efficient and disciplined at the end of the day.
Learn to learn from everyone!
Architecture is a vast subject with a scope of endless possibilities of learning. In an architecture college, you get to learn not just from your faculty, but also from friends and peers alike. Everyone has the potential to arrive with a fantastic idea. U never know, you could learn a lot from your juniors as well! Architecture is not a book based subject but an experience and interaction-based one. So, keeping an open mind (and ear!) is a prime quality which you would learn.
You become a better critic.
Having continuous exposure to numerous designs and having to learn about various principles and elements of design, you tend to criticize things much more confidently than before. Be it the house on the next road, the film set in your favorite movie, or the title card of the daily soap opera that you watch with your mom- everything that has to do with design draws your attention. You begin to read buildings! You notice the construction technique, the materials, design elements, and many more. Do not be surprised if you find some flaws too! You also become better with the choice of color palette- for your home interiors and dresses too!. These skills also benefit you to pursue alternate careers such as a movie set designer, art director, or graphic illustrator to name a few. Architecture opens up many such possibilities for you.
You become a team member.
Architecture courses involve various studies (case studies, literature studies, site analysis, etc.) to be done in detail before you start designing the building. The studies are usually carried out in groups. Each member needs to coordinate with the others to produce good quality, presentable works. Many times, you may not get to work with your friends. Worse, one of your team members may be the one you secretly hate! As you continuously get involved in teamwork, you learn to grow up on your misunderstandings and cold shoulders. You learn to strive to get the full potential of your team into action.
You develop your own style.
As you work on various design projects with each passing semester, you tend to identify your strengths and weaknesses. You realize your strong point and all your designs would reflect that. One might be a master with modular spaces while the other would design sweeping curves like a pro. By the end of the second year, you would have invariably developed your signature style. Cheers to that!
Technical skills.
Apart from these life lessons, you also master some crucial technical skills which help you survive architecture college. Your physical-model making skills improve dramatically in your first two years of college. Then you gradually learn different softwares which makes your life a lot easier. You attain speed in drafting, your lettering improves, and also does your sketching abilities. You also learn to visually measure stuff. Sounds cool, right?!
The endnote…
Most of these skills mentioned above get imbibed in you without your knowledge. With each passing semester, you master these skills and by the end of the third year, you can look back and realize, ‘Oh gosh! I have actually learned all this!’. You develop your own, strong personality and grow up a lot as an individual. You create an identity for yourself, lift your head high, and proudly say, ‘Yes! This is me!’.
