Floor, Walls, Roof

Il Pelicano | 2001-09 – 2003-07

Ever wonder what a semester at the Dalhousie School of Architecture is like?

Well regardless, here you are.

B1 Semester

Week One
Tight lipped smiles abound. New students poke gingerly around their new environs in natty attire. Nice glasses, nice shoes.
Week Two
Wrappers come off the equipment as they are used for the first time. Faces become familiar, as does the schedule. Some first communication assignments demonstrate what's in store.
Week Three
Your first group Design project is due: the men are unshaven, and the women are sporting ponytails. Alcohol consumption in the studio spaces is on the rise.
Week Four
You soberly realize that all the projects to date have been limbering exercises. Those students who have entered the faculty from the work force start to understand that approaching school from a nine-to-five perspective is just not going to fly.
Week Five
The sprint to the finish has begun. Ha Ha! Rebound confusion sets in as the schedule changes in a seemingly random fashion.
Week Six
The tyranny of group work becomes prevalent. Personalities come out to play.
Week Seven
The weather fails to improve, as does the workload. The pause in regular classes for Professional Practice seems like a pleasant change. It isn’t.
Week Eight
Dog pile on the B1s! Those that have spouses have kissed them goodbye for the month of November. The first Construction case study modelling marathon has clearly and decisively split the student body into plebes and suckers. All nighters begin piling up, like so many drained cans of Red Bull. Halloween was nice. Great hair.
Week Nine
Garbage day again? Week nine? What the fuck happened to week eight?
Week Ten
That free form design project has come back up with a vengeance, now that you’re required to come up with an exploded axonometric construction sequence drawing. The revolution will not be curvilinear.
Week Eleven
Breathe, baby.
Week Twelve
You need the strength of the damned to see this thing through to the end. That, and a couple of carefully positioned real ales.
Week Thirteen
There’s nothing left to do but mop up the blood, peel the crazy glue off the fingers, and settle down for a good long cry, or a scotch and a bath. Ladies’ choice.

B2 Semester

Week One
You’ve had most of a month off. That’s not enough time to get a job, and too much time to stay sharp. The good news is, everyone’s back to fighting weight after a season of binging.
Week Two
By now that antsy feeling has set in, owing to too much analysis, and not enough actual implementation. Pure theory makes you cranky.
Week Three
Let’s not dwell on the gruesome casualties of of group work. It's important however, that you take measures to ensure this sort of thing can never happen again.
Week Four
There’s nothing like a good dressing-down to kick start the week. Or the semester, for that matter.
Week Five
A shortage of glassware in the studio means your morning cup of joe tastes slightly reminiscent of the previous evening’s scotch. Yummy.
Week Six
All retired architects become model railroaders. It must be true.
Week Seven
Reading week turned out to be more like “eating week.” Ten plates of mussels ought to suffice for the rest of the semester.
Week Eight
You spend the week in preparation for the faculty's upcoming work stoppage. Instructors hand out amended schedules, with instructions to carry on without them, bizarrely emphasizing their seeming irrelevance.
Week Nine
Well that’s torn it.
Week Ten
Despite your best intentions to remain focused, your days are only casually filled with schoolwork. You’re caught up on the National Geographic subscription, and you’re putting down pages of Finnegan’s Wake like there’s no tomorrow.
Week Eleven
Tick tock. Tick tock. You’e not in Halifax for your health...
Week Twelve
You realize, when the strike does end, it’s all going straight to hell.
Week Thirteen
In a frenzy of reconciliation, a stay-the-course deal is hammered out. Tensions are a little high between students and faculty at first, but a Friday evening piss-up courtesy of the Director means all is forgiven.
Week Fourteen
The pleas of unfair treatment due to the longevity of the strike are starting to make for a decidedly whiney class. What happened to the famed intensity level?
Week Fifteen
Oh, there it is. We’d almost forgot.
Week Sixteen
The human body can draft for thirty consecutive hours, stopping only for small food and caffeine. To force it to do so twice in the same week is foolish. Afterwards, you lie down on the chequerplate stairs of the exhibition hall, and press the palms of your hands to your eyes. Remember, you wanted this.

B3 Semester

Week One
Marks are in. Shit.
Week Two
While you’re proud that two of your classmates have deservingly won the national Steel Structures Education Foundation bus shelter design competition, it does raise the bar a tad, doesn’t it? At least it proves you’re better than Waterloo.
Week Three
You’re feeling better about your lifestyle, now that you’ve switched from coffee to green tea. You’re a little slower, but your insides feel better. You’ve adopted a more persistent work schedule, and have even finished your last two major projects early. Somewhere along the line you started describing 2:30 in the morning as early.
Week Four
It’s 5 pm, the studio review is over, you have no major assignments due for over a week, you’re at home, you’re well rested, and you don’t have to be back at school until 11 tomorrow morning. This must be how sufferers of Stockholm Syndrome feel.
Week Five
An hour and a half contains too much information to be synthesized in a single desk crit. To cope, you get sick and miss the next one.
Week Six
Group dynamics make your hands bleed. No, wait. That’s the band saw.
Week Seven
Is there room for humour in architectural education? Perhaps not your variety. “Stop. I don’t believe a word you’re saying.” Well, fine. You can do serious—hell, everything you’ve done so far has been deathly serious—but this probably warrants further thought.
Week Eight
Q: “Is there some kind of rule in this school that says you have to build a model?”
A: “I thought there was.”
Week Nine
“The block is your God. Disobey the block, and go to Hell.” Ladies and gentlemen, Tony Viscardi is in the house.
Week Ten
Band-Aids don’t make the modelling any easier. Like an idiot, you continue to use the same dull blade even after sustaining self-inflicted damage.
Week Eleven
The final acoustics module was well run, informative and over in a blink. Soon you find yourself without a deadline or a purpose and waiting for... what? Anticlimax? What climax? Time to find out if you’re still employable.

B4 Semester (Work Term)

Week One
The academia-induced fog in your brain slowly burns off, and you recall the identical first week at every other place you’ve worked. It always takes you a number of days to sort out the critical and minute details of the office, such as learning the copier codes, procuring your own set of keys, and finding a suitable place to perch. Architectural practice, it seems, is no different than any other.
Week Two
Almost unbelievably, you leave your employer in the lurch, and take off for a much needed vacation. Hey, he’s the guy who wanted to start in August, not you.
Week Three
As you slog through paperwork, you begin to wonder how well some architects actually understand the principals of accounting and finance. Didn’t Arthur Erickson go bankrupt? How is this project sustainable? Is torpor setting in already?
Week Four
You’re haunted. You need to find out the answers to some of these questions, like how you’re going to be paid. Where’s the proprietor of this place?
Week Five
Relax, you pantywaist. Everything’s more or less in order.
Week Six
You wonder how the firm’s principal managed to function like that, as you set to work straightening things out. There’s going to be a few changes around here.
Week Seven
Someone saw your contributions to a certain rant-related site, and thought it might be a good idea if you lit your torch for the faculty’s web site. Well, they asked for it.
Week Eight
You get your marks back from the B3 semester, and it all comes clear: When a prof says “I’m interested in the evolution of design through the process of drawing,” he really means “I want to see a pretty model.” When will you learn, you stubborn fool? At this rate of decline, your graduating Design mark should be somewhere near a Flunk Plus.
Week Nine
Your first work-related research finding: Rubitherm GmbH’s GR20 0.2 - 0.6mm phase change granulate smells exactly like a Subway franchise.
Week Ten
After countless phone calls and six weeks of delays, you finally manage to get a single door installed on a renovation project. It’s a good thing no one asked you to do the entire building.
Week Eleven
Back from four nights in Boston, you check your voicemail to discover a simmering crater where a client used to be. Now that’s relevant professional practice experience!
Week Twelve
In celebration of your 30th birthday, you’ve been pressed into wood shop detail. How many plywood boxes does the world really need?
Week Thirteen
A snippet from your conversation with the client mentioned in Week Eleven: “Geometry is a harsh mistress.”
Week Fourteen
Those awful Varathane fumes drifting up from the basement? That’s you.
Week Fifteen
Plywood studio desks: So simple, yet so labour intensive to install.
Week Sixteen
“You’re like lightning with that hammer.” “Why?” “You never hit the same place twice.”
Week Seventeen
A week of image scanning drudgery reminds you why you never post any pictures on pintday.org.
Week Eighteen
The boss is back. And now that you’re not managing it yourself, you’re amazed—but not really surprised—at the low value placed on your time.
Week Nineteen
You kill another week of your term implementing a manual solution to a $150 problem.
Week Twenty
Your swan song comes in a mad flurry of (de/re)construction. And you thought it wasn’t going to get done at all...

B5 Semester

Week One
“So what did you do on your summer vacation?” And a whole lot more of the same.
Week Two
“No, not today, honey. I’m not in the mood.”
Week Three
That good-to-be-back feeling is wearing thin. Replaced with... ennui?
Week Four
Could someone please get this $1000 per month tuition monkey off your back?
Week Five
You feel like you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop.
Week Six
A comment from a crit leaves you scratching your head. Not pithy enough? Seriously? You?
Week Seven
You spend reading week doing some old-school studying. Flash cards and rote memorization are all the rage again.
Week Eight
You will do as you are told, you BML whore.
Week Nine
School has been trying to rudely interfere with your enjoyment of the Briar, but you won’t let it. Alberta!
Week Ten
Chai: the new crack.
Week Eleven
Another functional, grungy model. Ladies and gentlemen, BSI battle is ovah.
Week Twelve
Some advice gleaned from a History paper interview with a retired architect: “People have to bitch.”
Week Thirteen
You discover the technique of photocopying graphite on vellum, with the contrast cranked to 11. The quantity of time saved means you may never ink another drawing.
Week Fourteen
So. How many other students can say their final studio presentation rhymed?

B6 Semester

Week One
This time around they’re not letting you pick your prefered Design studio. Must be part of the New Cruelty.
Week Two
You find yourself mixing up a batch of concrete in the kitchen. If only it were the first time...
Week Three
You learned to weld. Cool.
Week Four
“The designer has to accept that deep-down, he’s brilliant.” Okay, done. What next?
Week Five
A message for the faculty: If it is your desire to weed out candidates for the Master’s programme, do it in the first semester, not the last. At the start of the programme, losing people is expected. Now, it’s just unnecessary and cruel.
Week Six
“I’m going to go weld some shit.” “I don’t think that’s possible.” “Sure it is. It just depends on your diet.”
Week Seven
The I-Heart-Alberta-Beef bumper stickers distributed around the studio sure remind you of home. They also remind you of vandalism.
Week Eight
Sometimes the temperature in the centre studio is set just perfectly. This year it was on June 21st. You’ve marked it on your calendar.
Week Nine
The week before your final Design studio project is due seems like a good time to teach yourself some 3D modeling software. Right?
Week Ten
The week that your final Design studio project is due also seems like a good time to take up watercolouring.
Week Eleven
Maybe the new heavy-framed glasses are working out. While browsing some pinned-up B3 work, a first year Design prof asks you “Are you a guest critic?” No, but since you’ve just proven you can successully impersonate an architect, can you have your degree now?
Weeks Twelve and Thirteen
The less said about that particular Freelab project, the better.

Degree in hand? Good. Now hold your nose and wade into some graduate work.

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