Choosing a college can be one of the most important decisions of your lifetime. The career you choose, the professional skills and network you develop, the mentors you learn from; it all begins with the institution of higher learning you choose. If in fact your school of choice chooses you back! For high school upper classmen and adult learners hoping to continue their academic development, it can be an overwhelming challenge to find the right fit.
In my case, this crucial decision was made for me almost as much by circumstance as by choice. Here, I will explain how I ended up studying Architecture at Miami Dade College in Miami, Florida, and how the experience turned out to be such a positive one.
Design Studio Classes
Starting college can be quite challenging, either fresh out of high school, or if you’ve been out of school for a time, as I had been. You will be met with a wide variety of courses, some of which will be heavier than others – in GPA weight, in workload, or both!
In my case, I was searching for an affordable program near to home that was highly regarded for its accredited Architecture program. As a resident of Miami, Florida, Miami Dade College appealed to me for its cheap cost and excellent teachers. It serves as a feeder program to a number of other highly regarded architecture programs too, making it an ideal place for me to start my training in the field.
Miami-Dade College offers an Associate in Arts program, from which you can choose the Architecture Pathway. You cannot complete this without certain electives, which can be chosen from a variety of other departments at the school. At MDC, you must complete four design classes in order to graduate. In my experience studying architecture at MDC, the Design Studio classes were by far the most important and challenging electives in which I partook.
Design 1 and 2 have a certain simplicity, as model assignments are usually of an abstract nature. Do not confuse simplicity with ease. For most, these courses will be extremely intensive. Here, you are not expected to know all of the rules that one must follow in order to design a usable space (though it cannot hurt to study such rules in advance). However, you are expected to narrow down your imaginative self-expression to a set of imposed parameters. For some, this might be the first time they are required to tame the beast that is one’s creative ego. I know it was tough for me, coming from a Fine Art background! “Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little [architect’s] heart, kill your darlings.”, whispers horror novelist Stephen King eerily in the background.
Designing is at its center an artistic act, and we all know how unreliable the creative self can be. At our best, we manage to tame our eagerness, that feeling of wanting to do more than what we are asked to do, convincing ourselves that the foundation of our project is in good, perhaps excellent shape. At our worst, we fight the apathy or confusion of not even knowing how to make the thing we were tasked to make in the first place with sheer artistic exuberance. This tension is always at play as a student at Miami Dade. At the midway point between those two extremes, you might find yourself designing exemplary pieces that will satisfy the brief and your artistic inclinations simultaneously.
Design 3 and 4 are more professionally oriented courses, in my experience. You might be asked to design a museum, a conference hall, or a community center. A place that is for the public and/or for the showcasing of art. A place that will require a physical site (in theory if not practice) and to complement the existing local architecture. You are finally designing for a client, albeit imaginary. This imaginary client will be embodied by the class professor, and this will be an added challenge to the yet-to-be architect. It is possible that this client will have you change the design week after week until the project’s deadline. This client might appear rude, annoying, demanding, in direct conflict with what you are trying to achieve. But this client is actually teaching you a valuable lesson: how to navigate difficult clientele while stressing you into creating something that not even you thought you could create. And even though a real building will likely not be built from your design, you will keep models, renders and drawings that will tell a tale of who you are becoming as an architect.
So you better try make the tale worth the while!
Technical Classes
Another set of courses that the architecture pathway at Miami-Dade College requires are technical classes like ‘Materials of Construction’ and ‘Computer Aided Drafting’. There are a few other electives that are not required, but that provide good training, so, if possible, you should sign up for these too. It is always wise to consult an advisor with any questions, or to chat directly with the professors that teach these courses. Something I found to be positive is that some of these electives are taught in small classes, so you can benefit from more one-on-one time with professors, while getting to know all your classmates, form study groups, etc. This makes for a more personally tailored classroom experience. These classes are still demanding, as there is so much in them to absorb, memorize and calculate. In some ways, they are a trial version of what working as an architect can be, in that you are expected to know building codes and material properties, maybe not as comprehensively as a civil engineer, but in depth enough that you can keep up with what is being planned and discussed in a firm.
Theory Classes
What I refer to as theory classes are those that are focused on teaching you how to think and speak the architect’s language. Classes like Architecture History and Theory of Architecture are good examples. The first one, like any other history class, aims to teach you how the field of architecture evolved, from the earliest manifestations up to today’s modern world. How different a building is depending on culture, region, and period. The second one will teach you how to think for yourself about what architecture is, what is should be, and how we should look at it. Theory of Architecture is a class that will test your interpretation of concepts learned in History, Design and other related courses. This class requires essay writing on a week-by-week basis. It is thanks to this class that I am writing this essay for you today, as it was this class and the mastery with which it was taught that inspired me to pursue a career in architectural writing as well as in architecture.
Miami-Dade College is a community college, but its architecture professoriate, in my sincere opinion, is on par with any elite college. Ultimately, the Miami-Dade College experience is what you make of it. I like to think I took full advantage of the possibilities it provided, and that it made me into a more professionally capable person. So, if your city is Miami, do not fret about it being a community college, and apply today.
References:
Academics (no date) Miami Dade College. Available at: https://www.mdc.edu/academics/ (Accessed: December 26, 2022).
Images:
1_School of Architecture and Design at MDC _© Miami-Dade College. [online] Available at: https://www.mdc.edu/academics/
2_CAD Section Drawing _©Giselle Reyes. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/gisi_reji_studio/
3_Design 2 Class Assignment _©Giselle Reyes. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/gisi_reji_studio/
4_Design 3 Class Assignment _©Giselle Reyes. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/gisi_reji_studio/
5_CAD Drawing of a Floor Plan _©Giselle Reyes. [online] Available at: https://www.instagram.com/gisi_reji_studio/
6_Architecture History _©Digital Design College [online] Available at:https://www.digitalschool.ca/a-brief-history-of-architectural-design/
