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Architecture School Secrets We Wish We’d Known
- Mount drawings on backing boards with two small dabs of rubber cement in the top corners. You can then reposition them easily, and the cement just rubs off.
- If you must pin up on vellum, be sure to back it up with a white underlay. Otherwise the vellum will look grey, and your drawing will wash out.
- The architectural school shibboleth* is whether or not to scrub your lines (cross the ends) in your drawings. Scrub your lines.
- Roll your drawings drawing-side out. That way, the edges don’t curl up when you unroll them.
- To build a contour model, use one contour map and two sheets of contouring material (card, wood, whatever). Cut every other contour on alternating sheets. That way, each successive piece has an overlap to which it can be fixed, and you use less material.
- Draw nothing with a Sharpie, regardless of what you see your TAs doing.
- Soft pencils are your friend.
- Guess. Don’t measure. No one’s going to check. Your drawing is an abstraction of a building anyway.
- Choose Wade Company over Kinko’s.
- FLW=Frank Lloyd Wright
- Your models will take three times as long as you think to build, and six times as long as could be considered reasonable. Budget your time accordingly.
- Take credit for happenstance.
- You will not be taught to letter “like that.” If this is important to you, you’ll have to pick it up on your own.
- The same goes for CAD. Deal.
- Quote your damn sources.
- Beams go this way: —
- Columns go this way: |
- Pillars are from antiquity. These days, we use columns. (Sometimes we use pilotis.)
- “Cool space” is not a programme. (Well, actually it is, but never just rely on it.)
- Don’t describe your work as comparable to a shopping mall atrium.
- Triangular rooms: almost always wrong.
- Don’t use your scale as a straight edge. The markings rub off, and it cuts like cheese.
- Concrete = cement, aggregate and water.
- Cement ≠ concrete.
- Computer fonts that look like hand lettering are lame.
- Contrary to appearances, it’s not a competition. (But it will take you six months to believe that.)
- The salt stains on your shoes can be taken out with a slice of onion.
* Shibboleth: a word or pronunciation that distinguishes people of one group from those of another.
Expressions To Avoid
- Artsy
- Decoration
- Basically
- Nobody will look there.
- Who cares, because we won’t be here.
- Because it’s pretty.
- Forcing people to...
- No, that’s not what I intended.
- More Mies, please.