Pursuing a career in architecture has always been a dream of mine. I was aware of some of the risks that I would be required to undertake during my years of undergraduate study. It was almost similar to learning an entirely new language. To finally master how to decipher and create floor plans has been incredibly rewarding and to be able to present in front of a jury without worrisomely doing so was a goal of mine during those years. Even though I was more than willing to do whatever it took to succeed, these risks have taken me aback more often than I had expected. I am ever so grateful for this career path that I have chosen as it has changed my perspective on life, how I represent myself to others, and has made me yearn to be part of something bigger, that contributes to building a better world.
I have chosen to share one of the many incidents that I had to endure during my last year of undergraduate study that I do not think I will ever be able to forget. Whenever I look back on that day it almost feels like a fever dream because it was truly a nightmare that I had to withstand, but I could thankfully have a laugh about in this present day.
It all happened on a sunny Monday, a week before submitting our competition model, where my group mates and I were running on a series of sleepless nights and a now-regressing kick of adrenaline to perfect our set of drawings, scaled models and the presentation. Just like any typical architecture student, we wanted to put our best work on the table, so my team and I have decided to go a little bit overboard and have a wow factor that is capable of captivating the jury. Since we were working on a bigger scale model that required more and specific details to be done, we ended up spending more days than we had initially planned on it. The mere idea of spending one more day in the workshop seemed so stifling and dreadful. We feared that the clutter that we have created in the workshop might lead to an occurrence of an accident or losing some of our components. We decided to take our work outdoors by the pier as it was conventional to do so.
Like any other, the architecture world is highly competitive which is what makes it so exciting. As a team, we made sure to make our model stand out by spray painting it with the color grey to give it a clean finish. After cheering ourselves for finally completing the model, we decided to grab a bite to eat from one of the cafes by the pier while the model was left to dry, only to come back to find it completely destroyed into pieces. Accidents are always bound to happen, especially for an architecture student, and when they do, it is important to remember that it is not the end of the world and to take a few deep breaths to calm down to get back to work. However, this was not the case as we strongly believed that our opponent team was the culprits and it was really getting under our skin. We moved past the incident after calming down and resorted to channeling our frustration into fixing the model.
After presenting our work with our final models and drawings, the team was still curious as to what had actually happened. Even though we were so set on believing that it was one of the other team’s ways of sabotaging our efforts in the project, we wanted to look at the security camera’s footage by the pier. When we found ourselves looking at our project being demolished by a group of seagulls and pelicans that usually surrounded our campus, we all burst into a fit of laughter and tears.
This accident can be taken as a lesson for any aspiring architect. Even though I cannot stress enough on the importance of time management and organization, we cannot put a stop from having accidents like this in our field and it is perfectly fine to bounce back from a destroyed model to a freshly completed one. Studying architecture is an experience that allows you to put into practice various skills in order to succeed, from presenting to time management skills and more. An architecture course allows individuals to improve the skill-set that is used in a daily life routine, followed by patience and continuous trials. Overall, this accident has taught me the importance of the trial and error process in this course, leading to the development of prototypes hence the final design proposal.
