Are you someone looking to join an architecture college? Are you a student studying in an architecture college? Are you a graduate of an architecture college? Then you’re at the right place. Read ahead to know more about what actually happens in an architecture college, if it’s the right course you’re looking for and, also to relive some nostalgic moments that you can relate to as present students or former graduates. Here I’ll be mentioning a few things that I learned in my architecture college. I am a final year student and I’ve pretty much gone through most of the incidents that a typical architecture student goes through.
A Typical Architecture College
You certainly would have had a vague idea about how an architecture college works but the real question is did it actually end up being just the way you imagined it would be? If you’d ask me the same thing my answer would be a no. We all tend to think architecture is just about drawing a few lines and coming up with buildings but only once we get into an architecture college and start learning will we know what actually goes into designing buildings.
A typical architecture college consists of way more than just drawing lines. It consists of juries, exams, workshops, events, reviews, competitions, theoretical study and not to forget the sleepless nights just before our jury. It takes a lot of hard work and dedication to pass through these 5 years of our architecture life and one thing I learned is that with passion and interest in the subject you can do really well in this field.
Creativity
Along with passion and interest in this field comes creativity. There’s a lot of competition in the present world so you need to come up with new designs and technologies. Faculties in an architecture college really appreciate when we come up with something unique and different from the normal.
Architecture is a creative field and as far as I’ve learned we will be prioritized based on our creative skills, uniqueness and, the will to learn rather than our marks or the college we study in. These two factors do matter up to a certain level but the main focus is on creativity. So we just have to free ourselves and think out of the box.
Time Management
Another thing that I learned is to manage my time efficiently. We, architecture students, get a lot of work to do within a particular deadline which takes a lot of time to finish even if we spend the entire day on it. I would suggest you finish the given work as and when it’s given to you, instead of keeping it to the last minute. This will not only reduce your work outcome but will be the main cause for your sleepless nights.
The best way to overcome last-minute submissions and sleepless nights is to maintain a particular schedule where we mention our deadlines and how much time we are going to give ourselves to finish that particular assignment. This way everything is kept organized and we may also get extra time to include some add-ins to our assignment.
Unique Skillsets
Every student has his/her own skill set which they are good at. A lot of skillsets go into producing an effective and functional design in architecture but it’s not easy for one individual to master all of these skills. We must go through all the projects and designs that we have done and note down a few points which help us to get a clear idea of what skills we are good at. There are various skills one can master which can be differentiated as soft skills and hard skills – soft skills are those which reflect your character and personality as a professional while hard skills are more of practical skills as a professional.
Figuring out our skills is an important factor in the later stages of our college life or at the beginning of our professional life as it will determine what kind of work we will be great at handling as compared to another individual with a different set of skills.
Exploring and Learning Everyday
Not everything will be spoon-fed to us once we are in college so it’s very important to explore and learn new things from the outside world. The academic curriculum is just one small percentage of the entire field, so travel, look around the world and notice every small detail. Now, this can even mean we look around our immediate surroundings and where it’s accessible for us.
Architects love to travel and pick-up new concepts and inspiration from around the world. As a student too I got the opportunity from my college to travel around my country where I got to learn about different people and their different perspectives. Even if it’s not about traveling from one place to the other, visit places in your locality, visit different events and workshops, meet new people from every different field and read a lot of books.
Careers in Architecture
Considering one’s progress from the first year to the fifth year, we have an idea of where we want to take our careers forward and what exactly we want to work as. I learned a lot of things and one of which was that there are a lot of careers one can take up after college apart from being an architect. From our interests in this five-year course, we somehow tend to be more interested in particular subfields of architecture rather than architecture as a whole.
I attended a lot of workshops and did my own research to find out what I’m really interested in under the branch of architecture, from the research I got to know about architectural journalism which I’m really interested in so here I am doing my very first internship where I’m getting to learn a lot of new things.
These were a few main things that I learned in my architecture college and wanted to share with you all. For those of you planning to join an architecture college, I hope I gave you an idea of how it works, for those who are studying currently in an architecture college I’m sure you can relate with me on most of the things I’ve mentioned above and for those of you who have graduated from an architecture college I hope I made you feel nostalgic.
