Studying Architecture: A Review of Third Year
We’ve come to the end of our third year of undergraduate study at Westminster, which means we have another review lined up for you guys reflecting on how we found the past academic year. So sit back, relax and enjoy this retrospective account on our final year studying architecture at the University of Westminster!
Sude
I think it would be important to first mention that third year has been our only full academic year since the beginning, 3 years ago. It has been great to finally experience a complete start to finish especially with our current exhibition preparations.
For me, third year is up there as my most stressful but also most enjoyable academic year; Elif and I had finally been put into the same studio, I got into the studio that I wanted to be in and I was happy with the brief. Additionally, I had a pretty good idea on what I wanted to write my dissertation about from early on. It sounds blissful but many things still didn’t turn out as expected and some unexpected changes occurred. The usual studio intention of studying in China for a semester was ruined by COVID-19 yet again so off the top we had to accept, what would have been an amazing eye opener, wasn’t going to take place. A lot of my dissertation research didn’t go ahead due to the pandemic and a corrupt light study recording had to be binned. So no matter how much I had prepared for this year, many things still went wrong
Let me first talk about the stressful moments. I realised how important it is for all parties to be organised for a degree to work. As much as it is expected for students to be on top of their studies, the same goes for those teaching the course. There were times in the year where students, like myself, dealt with the consequences of staff not being able to meet student standards of the education that they were paying for. To be completely honest, without a doubt they were all avoidable situations. It was upsetting for matters to be dismissed and given an excuse alongside it. As a result of time-to-time negligence. there were multiple emotional rollercoasters throughout the year which I could have done without.
With regards to design studio, both semester projects were based on housing; one small-scale housing for two transient communities in an area near Kings Cross, London and another housing project in Beijing, China which accommodated for 200-300 people. Looking back at my past 2 academic years, I happened to always be working around the idea of a ‘home’ but I hadn’t designed housing. I realised the vast difference between a private individual client and an urban scale housing project this year. I entered the year thinking that the design thought process behind both would be similar but it definitely wasn’t. There was an additional focus on convenience and meeting capacity demand as well as understanding when you are being lenient and when you are cramming people into a small space. It was challenging but rewarding at the same time. In my case, my first semester project really pushed me. I spent, or what some may say wasted, 5 weeks trying to figure out a way of making a front entrance facing a back entrance work. In the end, it still was not fully resolved which made me panic since our second semester project was meant to test this dwelling prototype in Beijing. In other words, it wasn’t a good start to our first design module at all.
Luckily, my second semester went more smoothly. I adapted the main principles of my first semester project to Beijing and left what didn’t work. There was no point in dragging along my problems that I wasn’t able to resolve into the second project and instead I looked for answers in the new context. In this instance, I dedicated the project to reviving traditional Chinese gardens which used to exist in the near vicinity of the site for multigenerational families. Off the bat, I was more motivated and excited for this project. My only complaint would be to have more time but other than that it was a good note to end the 3 years on. Something that was new in this semester was that our technical module was now recognised as a part of the design module rather than separately. This meant one had an effect on the other. Looking back on the past semester, I think it would have been smart to work more technically on the project so I wasn’t left with heaps of work right before the deadline. The typical situation that 90% of architecture students are in but yet to learn from.
A module that I didn’t expect to excel in what our ‘Cultural Context’ module which was dedicated to our dissertation. If you have read last week’s post, I mentioned my lack of confidence in academic writing. I haven’t been the best essay writer so reason being, I wasn’t looking forward to the dissertation. Even though I was confident with my topic and I had the research to support my findings, I knew how much I struggled to put my point across clearly which inevitably led to a mediocre mark that I would be unhappy with. This time round, I surprised myself. I made sure to turn up to all my tutorials but in most of them it was always an instance of, “I’ve yet to do it but I plan on…”. I was dedicating so much time to my design project which led me to write my dissertation within a week that was somewhat close to the deadline. In the end I received a mark I was happy with but I still question till today if I could have performed better had I came to my tutorials with more material.
Linda
Third year. The final year of our undergraduate study in architecture school. To say the least, I think I barely survived this academic year, and that statement itself is dependent on the final grades which we’re still waiting for.
This year, our design project was based in the Docklands in London. We had to design a network of small structure prototypes across our site that responded to both the environmental characteristics and cultural context of the area for the first semester. The second semester consisted of a larger, more complex project which related to these initial prototypes. Jumping from being given an existing building to work on at the end of last year to pretty much complete freedom over site and programme in my third year project took some time to settle into. Our technical assignment ultimately reported the environmental analysis part of the design process of this project, looking at how the environmental data shaped our design as well as the building performance through simulations and analysis exercises. The cultural context module that we had in first semester consisted of the research behind our personal interest that drove our main semester 2 design project. Our fabrication module also supported our semester 2 design project, where we were asked to fabricate and iterate a component of our proposal and document the process. The professional practice module that ran throughout the year helped us to contextualise the project in an industry setting; this also included some other assignments that generally prepared us for practice.
In theory, all these modules sounded great. I remember looking at the module specifications at the start of the year and feeling excited about exploring environmental themes in a creative way, and finally being able to return to full time studying in person with lifted COVID restrictions (meaning full access to our fabrication workshop which I had been looking forward to). I was enthusiastic and ready to put everything I had into third year, no matter the challenges I would face. Looking back at the last two years of insecurity, making mistakes and just a general lack of confidence in my work, I was prepared to make up for it all and perform the best I could in the last two semesters of my degree.
Or so I thought.
It was only a matter of weeks before I fell into the same unhealthy patterns and mindsets that held me back previously in the last two years of uni. I was overthinking again, unable to produce my deliverables in a timely manner and fell behind before I even properly settled into the year. The project was moving so fast and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere as I struggled more and more to find my feet with where my design was headed, which had a knock-on effect on my other modules. I didn’t know what I wanted to respond to on site, I beat myself up whenever the deliverables I was working on didn’t meet the standard I had set for myself. I hated every line I drew, every cut I made for my models, every page that I tried to format. I couldn’t accept the work I was producing, telling myself that I shouldn’t be at this level in third year. My enthusiasm was soon replaced with anxiety and a distorted image of my (lack of) progress. And, in the context of the intensity of third year, the consequences of this were dire.
Late arrivals to studio turned into missed tutorials and skipped lectures. I kept telling myself the same thing – I was going to ‘make up’ for lost time and do twice as much work instead of attending that technical lecture or cultural context tutorial. But this clearly wasn’t the case, nor was it realistic or smart. I was struggling severely with focus and concentration when I came down to do my work, and no amount of extra time was going to fix that if I was falling behind the way I was. Retrospectively, it’s so easy for me to see that this is the wrong thing to do. I know that if I am struggling, avoiding the very people and situations that have the answers I’m looking for is illogical. However, I wasn’t thinking clearly, and the whole year just felt out of control. Other areas of my life were impacted too - my personal life and other commitments that I had such as the blog and society-related work I had signed up for a few months before. I was in survival mode, and every new task felt like another battle I had to face. I was exhausted, and not coping. There was one thing that I knew for certain - if I continued like this without taking action, I wouldn’t get to the end of third year. So I decided to do something about it.
I can’t exactly remember what happened in which order, but in short, during the first semester, I had gotten into contact with my mental health adviser, my personal tutor, my GP and spoken face to face to all four of my design tutors about what I was struggling with. It would have been great if I could say that I was immediately in a better position to continue with my degree, but unfortunately it wasn’t that simple. I struggled for the rest of the year, and ended up missing three out of four of my crits. Everytime I made a step forward in catching up, it felt like I fell three steps behind when I ran into a struggle with my project. I didn’t feel satisfied or relieved with the majority of my submissions, and yet again, I came to the end of the year with little pride in the work I produced. It got to a point near the end of the year where I completely questioned whether I was going to pursue architecture, and lost the will to persevere with my degree. It was difficult to deal with feeling detached, and like a disappointment to those who were trying to support me during my studies.
There were pockets of moments where I felt positive and enjoyed my degree, but I’m going to be honest and say this year just wasn’t my year. As much as I would have liked to give a balance of positive and negative accounts of this final year, it wouldn’t reflect the magnitude of what I struggled with. I did submit something for all my modules, but it’s definitely not the way I wanted to end the year and possibly my degree (if I do end up passing my third year).
Elif
Third year has been a whirlpool of experiences and emotions, that I don’t even know where to begin. Thinking back on it, when someone asks me ‘how was it?’ I find myself struggling to answer concisely. For me, the past year has such a combination of negative and positive experiences that it’s difficult to say it was a really good or a really bad year. I found myself in situations which I’ve never been in before, questioning my skill set more now than I have ever before and I realised that a significant amount of stress was a product of situations that were out of hand, such as underperforming staff, but I’ll get onto that later on.
Over the summer after second year, I began researching and reading for my dissertation. This is where I made my first mistake. I was so worried about finding a topic that I really enjoyed, whilst also picking something which would be approved by my tutor as a good topic, that I overwhelmed myself before the academic year even began. When it comes to writing academic text, I have never been ‘bad’ per se but the lack of confidence in my own skills only made the situation worse. Thankfully, by the time September came around, I had a brief idea of what I would want to write about, which is all that was asked of us to have prepared. Despite this little hiccup, I can confidently say that I started the year on a positive note. Sude and I were finally selected for the same studio, we had just finished a two week FANs (Friend of Arriving New students) role together and all three of us were on the committee for the Westminster Architecture Society (WAS). I was excited to get started especially since the studio that we got into was based on housing and it was going to be a completely new experience with designing in a different country. The start of the year was a pleasant experience and even though I had no idea what to expect from the next nine months, I was determined to do everything that I can, to achieve what I had set as goals for myself.
As we settled into our design studio, it quickly became apparent that I would need to learn how to use software and new drawing types more efficiently. If you had asked me to do a section axonometric this time last year, I wouldn't even know how to approach the situation. But now, I can confidently say that I have developed my software and drafting skills with this studio in order to meet the deliverables. For example, whilst I had a basic understanding with rhino last year, I can now use the software with the use of more tools and efficiency, especially on a three dimensional level. Alongside my studio peers, I got the opportunity to spend time making a 1.20 section model, which I really enjoyed and had never actually done before, due to covid first and second year. All in all, looking back, semester one was probably the better half of the year.
Outside of the design module, I was attending dissertation tutorials with my tutor to discuss how to write long academic text as well as receiving individual feedback and even though I was still struggling with the topic for a couple of weeks, it all worked out in the end. Simultaneously, I was working on my CV and cover letter for my Preparing for Practice (PS3) module), contributing to the events held by WAS and discussing with Sude on how we should approach the technical module, which we completed as a pair. Personally, I found that design studio took up 90% of my time, which was chaotic to say the least, and at times it was so difficult to find time for other modules, let alone our own interests outside the curriculum. Looking back at this now, whilst this is true as a product of the workload, it is also partially a result of having a habit of always feeling the need to improve work and never feeling completely satisfied with what you produce until its ‘perfect’. When Christmas rolled around, to say that we were all relieved would be an understatement. It wasn’t necessarily a break but we were going to be able to catch our breath from the rigorous routine of coming into university everyday for 12-13 hours, focusing on design. We were able to focus on dissertation more, this is where I pulled a lot of my weight on this module, and also on submitting drafts to PS3 and technical.
Semester two was a whole other story. This is where it really hit the fan for me. Not only 2 weeks into the start of 2022, I submitted my dissertation and even though I wasn't 100% happy with it, I was so relieved that it was over. Struggling at the start, I got into my own head so much that it was giving me anxiety and stress which I didn’t need, so for it to be over was a huge weight off my shoulders. At this point I had done the best that I could and there was nothing more for me to do. Would I have liked more time to work on it? Maybe, but in reality I really didn’t want it to drag on for much further.
The remainder of the semester went by in a whirlwind, the weeks were going by so quickly it was difficult to stay on top of it all, especially with mistakes on deadlines and announcements being made from the university, which didn’t really help the overall situation. The feeling of not being understood by certain staff or even seeing the lack of effort for them to empathise with students was demoralising and quite sad. When you are in that mindset of a final year student trying to do everything you can to get the best possible outcome, it feels like a let down when the people you expect to see support from, don’t make any effort.
Final semester was pretty much a situation of prioritising modules and pieces of work depending on the deadline proximity and the impact the work would have on the overall project. I spent a lot of my time working on my design studio module, now that we had carried out our prototypes into a complete new setting, where looking back I probably overestimated the amount of ‘final’ pieces of work I could produce with the amount of development and iteration that I was doing. One thing which was consistent throughout the year was my love for the brief in design studio. I really enjoyed the context and the conclusions I was drawing as a result of the research and iterative processes I was undertaking. One of the few things which I would have liked more of was time.
To conclude, whilst there is a lot I would do differently now, being able to see clearer what was worth investing more time into, we managed to submit everything and graduate with a smile on our faces.
We hope that you enjoyed this reflection on our final year of architecture school. It was refreshing to round off our undergraduate study with a look back at how we finished our degree.
Once again, don’t forget to check out our other blog posts on our site as well as our CAD Store, and follow us at @archidabble on Instagram to keep posted on our content.
