If last year moved at a glacier speed, this semester moved at the speed at which glaciers are melting. Like a sprinter right after the gun goes off, the semester didn’t slow down until the end. Design, deliverables and deadlines.
In studio, within the first two weeks, we had a project due and the amount of work it required, tired us out for the following weeks. It was due the Wednesday after Labor Day and this year my birthday fell on it, but I spent the weekend and all day and night in the studio working to finish the project, while simultaneously learning how to use a new architectural modeling software/program and how to watercolor. Part of the assignment was to showcase the house mimicking a comic books style. I have never really done watercolor before and have been wanting to try it, so I thought it would be a perfect opportunity to learn it while using the style in which Calvin and Hobbes were created, watercolor outlined in black ink.
Following the completion of the first studio project, we had two more that we worked on simultaneously until the end of the semester. Generally, a semester will consist of an initial smaller project and then one bigger one. We had two, and the amount of work each required was the equivalent of one. We would spend a week or two working on one getting the deliverables done that our professor asked of us and the switch to the other project working on and completing the deliverables for that project. As a standalone class, it was intense, but combined with the work required from our other classes made good time management skills imperative.
Our structures class had weekly homework assignments that required 1-2 hours of attention. Our Environmental Building Systems class introduced another project (a gallery for Ansel Adams and later one for Alexander Calder) using what we were learning in class. I’m actually more proud of my work for this class than I am for my studio because we were working on two projects simultaneously we never really had time to dig deep into the designing of what we were doing once you had an idea you kind of just had to go with it because something was due for it.
One of the biggest shortcomings of studio this last semester is that we didn’t really focus on design, but rather producing the deliverables of what was asked from us. In our materials class, we had weekly or bi-weekly quizzes and the material project and a project where we had to produce a detailed wall section of one of our buildings. I also took 18 credits and the extra class I took required a weekly presentation on a building that has been renovated (the class was about revelatory reuse and historic preservation), as well as a final paper that was due at the end of the semester. Additionally, each studio project required something different when it was due: one was an IKEA style booklet and the other, a section model of our building.
As intense as this semester was, I’m glad it was that way because I feel cheated at the pace at which we moved last year. All of us felt a sense of urgency because of our limited time in the program, but our professor did not. The pace we moved this semester should have been how all of last year was.
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