Thursday, December 02, 2010
By Maria Orellana
For those not familiar with it, Architecture its completed in
5-6 years. The first 3 years are spent completing a bachelor
degree, then 18 weeks of work experience or exchange and a 2 years
year long Master Masters of Architecture by coursework.
After the HSC and a year of travelling, I started my degree
hoping to be challenged by the mathematical concepts involved in
construction, different materials and how to handle an angry
client. However to my surprise, the degree allows you to ease into
the world of architecture introducing the student into the delights
of building a model and the beauty of ancient Greek temples. It is
a slow start and for those parents seeing in their sons and
daughters as the future Frank Gehry, it will seem like more of a
game than an academic degree.
I understand it is a challenge to try to condense centuries of
building knowledge into 5 years and I also appreciate that the
course focuses on design rather than theory. However, I found it
really distressing to be confronted with the challenge of designing
a house with no background knowledge of building materials. I think
Architecture is like learning to read, in the beginning you learn
the building blocks, then you learn to create sentences and once
you know all of this you may be able to write a haiku poem.
We do learn about construction and how structures workstructural
requirements, but these subjects are thoughttaught in crowded
lecture halls at the end of the week when students are more
distracted onlookers than eager participants.
Design is taught one day per week in small groups with a tutor
that is, thankfully, a real, practicing, up to date architect. In
the course of my first degree I was to design a bush hut, a
theatre, an indigenous center, an art school and a forum. These
were challenging projects where a minimal knowledge of the building
code and the laws of gravity accounted for infinite stairs and
amazing cantilevers (the rule states that if it can stand up in the
model it has to work!).
The curriculum in the Masters changes slightly, Architectural
engineering is pushed to the beginning of the week and out of no
where appears a new subject, unknown to every student. It appears
in the timetable shyly for only one semester, 2-hour lecture,
1-hour tutorial. Contract Documentation. Well, 'it must be one of
those little unimportant subjects' thinks the student. HA! Wait for
the rest of your professional life to be tied to these little
pieces of paper. Other than that, not a lot changes, design
once a week, better tutors yes but same system. I was lucky enough
to have a great variety of projects and great tutors, specially in
the Masters but as the projects got more challenging the time to
spend with your tutor is kept the same and the time to complete the
project restricted to a semester. Even on my final semester where I
was lucky enough to have 3 tutors and a project as inspiring as the
White Bay power station, we were only limited to a semester where
site analysis and masterplaning took more than half of the
semester. I found it such a pity to have to condense so much
research into a month of design.
Nevertheless I have learnt so much. I have enjoyed the sleepless
nights, the last minute models, the high price of balsa, and the
history lecture that never ends. I have seen my engineering friends
going out every night and wondering how am I going to trust them
with my beautiful skillion roofs and cantilevered balconies. It is
probably one of the most time consuming and challenging degrees
offered by university but what I have seen so far of architecture I
really liked and what it is to come can only get better.