Architecture is perceived in many forms throughout the world. Some describe it as an art form that defines our thoughts into spaces. Some say that an architect’s job is to know how to build a space with his ingenuity and feelings, keeping in mind what the client requires functionally and aesthetically. At least, this is undoubtedly the thought process of any student just preparing to start studying architecture until one starts learning. The five-year-long course offers various topics to ponder over and gain knowledge.
The first few years, as they say, are to explore and understand the creativity of one’s mind. The architecture design studio in an architecture school is the space where mostly, magic happens. Through these years, one learns to illustrate and explain their thought process through mediums like sketching, 3dimensional modeling (hand-made or software), writing, drafting, and rendering (hand-made or software).
One extremely crucial skill that every architecture student learns is the art of presentation because this is the skill that helps determine and convey an idea on a platform. Faculties, jurors, and clients further ahead in life always appreciate a well-presented and drafted drawing. Both hand and software (AutoCAD, photoshop, etc.), drafting, rendering, and modeling requires precision and hard work.
An essential non-architectural skill that every architecture student slowly acquires is to know how to have a constructive dialogue about the design you are presenting and simultaneously take criticism. The field of Architecture is different because, unlike other areas, it does not consist of any set procedure to design. Concepts of individuals vary because everyone has a different perspective to look at things. Of course, one ought to follow the given constraints, but every individual has a specific way to look and overcome them.
It’s a delicate balance since everyone puts in a lot of hard work into a project. Still, one learns to listen to the feedback provided, because if nothing else, one gets to see the similar design problem from a unique point of view.
With learning to demonstrate and defend their design, every student simultaneously also masters the art of problem-solving. Architects are taught to look at a problem from all aspects (often literally), to research thoroughly, and to make thoughtful choices when determining a solution and to analyze the effects of the said choices. This mechanism and such developments can be applied to any issue to make more efficient and effective strategies at solving it.
The later years focus on enlightening how one can inculcate different strategies to make a design more potent. The students understand designing space according to the client’s needs keeping the constraints in mind, and apprehending and acknowledging how the surroundings are affected, subsequently envisaging the policies one can apply so that the environment remains unharmed. As the students finish their internship, they are said to be “Almost Architects” because they have practical knowledge of how the market works and how to fulfill the client’s needs. As one prospers, one tries to capture a broader prospect of what architecture means to an individual.
Another helpful lesson one automatically grasps in an architecture school is a knack to work with and everyone, i.e., Teamwork. At times, it is tedious to handle the frustration of working with others because not every person is a beneficiary and an agreeable teammate. Working in a group always teaches invaluable lessons of how-to and how-not deal with people, but is also one of the many proficiencies that a firm requires.
One of the most critical and challenging values one cultivates during these five years is that they need to appreciate the process, rather than the end product. Designing is a subject that works if the operation of the same is specific. Moving step by step, but with a poignant statement, precise search results, and intellectual connectivity to your work help create habitats that every user can relish on their terms.
THE RIGHTFUL CONCLUSION:
Architecture as a subject teaches us to imagine, create, conceptualize, and bring the latter to life. During the first years of architecture, every student majorly is told to focus upon the visual projection of the built form, i.e., how shall the edifice look from its exterior and its interior ends. Students tend to explore their prolific ideas through various sources and apply them to building design and studies. The later years majorly concentrate on how building formation plays a vital role in the devised micro and macro area.
The combination of these five years results in learning the true meaning of imagining and fabricating. Imagining the spaces is not solely a matter of visual projections; it is a process of embodiment, identification, and feeling the entity as an imaginary extension. Architecture is not only about the ways to build an area geometrically, formally, aesthetically, or even functionally. It is about how a designer envisions himself/herself in the future client’s place and examines the validity of the ideas through imagination. It is a gift, in a sense, an amalgamation of poetry and emotive experiences of a human, woven with the knowledge of spatial requirements.
