May 2015 – Lisa in Arch

Yesterday we had our final crit for the spring 2015 semester. This semester has been a whirlwind of stress, and I can only imagine how future studios will be as I still have 3 more studio semester left before graduation from my undergrad.

Architecture is extremely time and resource intensive– you’ll be spending hours and hours making models, renderings, drawings and buying materials (which don’t come cheap!). As one of my classmates said, “All nighters are not healthy. Architecture is not healthy!” haha.

But I’m also fond of the friends made through this major, and it makes the architecture major a bit more bearable knowing you have such a strong community of people to support you, and it helps you feel just a bit better knowing that you are all going through the same thing.

The truth is, I always hated all nighters and I kept them at a minimum for the 3 semester of studios I’ve taken in the past. But this past semester I pulled so many all nighters– about a week’s worth ‘real’ ones where I would literally be working all night to the next morning, and LOT of really late nights, where I would be in studio till 2 or 3 a.m before heading home and getting at least a couple hours of sleep before having to wake up the next morning and do it all over again. So this post is just a collection of pictures I took throughout this semester of things that happened around studio:

The first project we did for studio was conceptualizing circulation and space.

Not for studio, but a structures class, where we were given building specs and had to build a structurally correct studio building--this means concrete foundations, stem walls, joists, asphalt roofing, shingles, etc on top of a manually excavated site of dirt. — Not for studio, but a structures class, where we were given building specs and had to build a structurally correct studio building–this means concrete foundations, stem walls, joists, asphalt roofing, shingles, etc on top of a manually excavated site of dirt.

We then went nature hunting to find “natural” materials to use as a site. We had to make interventions on it (i.e., buildings, etc) that didn’t overwhelm–but rather, built upon–the site.

The day before Spring Break, a couple of my friends and I went to eat sushi buffet.

Now here’s a spam of models: some of them were done for our studio class and some of them for our structures class. I’m not really sure which is which anymore, but these were all models laying around studio. These following models were all precedent studies, which means they are models of iconic buildings! Can you recognize any of them?