What motivates us?
I think this video would speak very much about the creative field; why people still strive to work harder. And Money may not always be the biggest deal..
from the real world.
I agree with Solidred about why most of us got into this field. I am not trying to say we should be greedy and take advantages of our clients in any way. The bad pay to employees are mainly due to bad fees and bad management and lousy business decision of projects by the office. Many of these false expectation and ill business skills are fostered and cultivated from the very beginning at architecture school.
Schools need to be more realistic about the real world of architecture and how they operate. Most students aspire to be their own boss and be a great star architect; there is nothing wrong with that , but instead of keeping the student in a fog of false optimism for 5 to 7 years by churning out paper architecture ,at the very least, the schools need to show students, the odds of becoming Zaha Hadid or Frank Gehry. Architecture school should team up with Business school to teach basic cash flow of a typical small firm, the risk, how much does everything cost from insurance to employee’s salaries, how large scale projects are funded, who control the money and who make the final decision. This should take place in the first year of architecture school.
The schools should also teach real world building codes and how they affect real world project. This will also make fesh graduates more useful to the office instead of just knowing those fancy cad programs.
AIA, RIBA or similar bodies need to constantly teach and update/ sharpen the real and dirty basic project negotiation and management skills to all licensed architects. Clients are constantly shopping around trying to get more for less and architects ( banned from discussed fees amongst peers) are pressured to lower their fees unrealistically just to keep the cash flow and fueling their dreams from school . Currently architecture schools are supplying endless stream of bright eyed and bushy tailed fresh graduates to help lower these unsusutainable costs.
Low end clients have hungry pit bull ambulance chasing lawyers to help them, high end clients have more lawyers than most architects have magazines. Architecture board needs to leverage their power to help the small firm, give them more confidence to ask for realistic fee.
The business of good architecture is not like making tooth brush or track housing, it cannot make up the lower per unit profit by doing a million units. A small little home addition for a crazy client ,sensitive neighbours, lowest bids contractors and over deamanding councils can suck all the life out of the office for months. Try to get 10 of those in the office and see if the profit. if any .. is worth it.
Without healthy profit there is no business of architecture and we might as well all paid $100K by government like csintexas suggested.
Year 2 Project: SOHO Apartment [stage 1]
Design of a multi-storey dwelling unit development for the year 2 project. In this year-long integrated project students will be assessed in all modules such as ADS II, MAT II, ES II and HTA II. Students are required to interpret the design programme and reconcile their design with consideration towards:
1) Local Building Codes and Regulation.
2) Design Issues & Theoretical Application.
3) Contemporary Environmental Issues and Ecological Concern.
4) Mandatory use of Pre-Cast Concrete Technology and Architectural Detailing.
Areas of Investigation
“Architecture is not simply about space and form, but also about action, events and what happens in the space … there is no architecture without event.” – Bernard Tschumi, Manhattan Transcript
1) Explore a new form of living space configuration, taking cues the idea of transient space that establishes frameworks for possible social interface through strategising zones between private and public spaces.
2) Investigate the potential of “modularity” in architecture that underlies the conceptual and constructional framework of mass social housing systems. Explore the notion of authoring a system or language of modules that define dwelling spaces.
3) Interpret site context to generate strategies in addressing urban social spaces with site specific intervention. Investigate issues pertaining to sustainability in both social and environmental aspects, by exploring notions of “Green Space” (integration of vertical gardens) as well as “Active Beautiful & Clean” water strategies.
The Project Site
Located along Alexandra Road and bounded by Prince Phillip Avenue, the site is only walking distant from Redhill MRT Station. There is an existing entrance driveway located on the east of the site. An important feature will be Alexandra Park Connector on the north, which stretches from Tanglin Road to Zion Road, as a continuation of Alexandra Canal Linear Park. Currently both the park and the canal are under construction for future recreation. When completed, this urban Park Connector would provide scenery of various high-rise condominiums along the Alexandra Canal.
How to build an Animal
I’ve always been fascinated at how good the Design of animals are (probably because there are too many good photos on Tumblr), and so I decided to put down in a brief what it takes to create one:
1. The Habitat – The locality where the Design would be spending its life at. Basically, identify whether its a land, sea, of sky creature.
2. The Habits – its eating, sleeping, social habits, movements. Its the important part that plays the role in its daily routines, providing the convenience.
3. The Function – how many legs, feathers, scales or fur the Design should have and all its external features. The basic form should be out by now.
4. The Mechanics – then you’ll have to engineer it. The science of it, if it flies, it needs to be aerodynamic. If it runs really fast, it needs to have the correct type of muscles. If it swims, it needs to be buoyant.
5. The Program – for the Design to function, it needs some programming. It needs a system, or a big system which comprises of many systems. The Design needs to eat, breathe, burn fuel, excrete, sense, rational, reproduce.
6. The Character – every Design needs a definite character, that’s what makes Design, a Design which is unique and one of a kind.
7. The Raw Materials – to build this Design, we need the molding clay. In this case, its made up of different types of chemical combination. The simplest form would be amino acids, glucose, fatty acids etc. Then the compounds would be like Haemoglobin, derived from the simpler form of protein, the amino acids.
8. The Sequence of Construction – got to build it from the basics, maybe the bones first, then the tissues and muscles.
9. The Skin – now, choose the prettiest combination of colours, the materials, and the texture.
10. The Details – don’t forget, every good Design deserves good detailing, which involves a lot of thought process and effort. The detailing definitely spices up the aesthetic by a large margin.
And there, brush off the dirt, Masterpiece is done.
Doesn’t it sound like steps to building a good piece of Architecture, every step of it?
The Site, The Client Profile, The Function, The Structure, The Design Program, The Character or Image, The Building Materials, The Sequence of Construction, The Building Skin and Facade, and then the Details.
Clean up the place, and its ready for use.
Design steps are all similar, yeah? (:
Cheers to awesome Designs!
Bruce Branit – World Builder
I’ve saw this more than a year ago, and the storyline and visual effects still amazes me with its beauty. How about doing architecture virtually? Create it for someone who’s in a coma, or in someone’s dream. Sounds like Inception, the concept of it. (:
Instant!
You see, there’s the stereotype concerning glasses and your profession. It instantly gives you an upper edge, distinguishing you as a talented, educated sort-of-person. There is no more a need to go through a decade of torture, you can just get these:
If you’d noticed, all the famous guys wore this. Le Corbusier must have set the trend again; not only in modern architecture and how a city should be in the future, he even dictates what people in this line should wear. Heh.
I’m scared of him, actually.
Cheers!
Cheers to good movies!
Inception. Caught it recently and I’ve started fangirling over joseph-gordon levitt. Oops. (the whole thing reminded me of my History & Theory lecturer, also a Joseph (:
Secretly, I seriously thought I could study architecture because I dream up of good designs, literally, through my night dreams. Be it colourful sofas or architectural spaces, or the unnaturally big blue moon in the sky, or outer space/parellel world with millions of celestial bodies hanging upside down. But in fact, studying architecture in real life isn’t as interesting as dreaming them. Well this movie definitely reminded of my 17 year old dream, just when I was about to choose my future path after high school. Its a whole lot more technical when we are bounded by gravitational forces.
In one part of the movie where Cobb takes Ariadne to his dream space for the first time ever and she overturns the world making it a square box, its shows how impossible fascinating things like that could be realized in the real world. Maybe it’ll be possible, but our already-advance-technology hasn’t figured out how to defy gravity. I was in the Tube (MRT, actually) when I’d realized it wouldn’t work if its in anti-gravity; well the train might be hooked down to the trails but we float in the train, and when the train moves forward, we’ll all slam into each other backwards, into the back of the train like mash potatoes until the train remains in constant velocity- then we’ll float aimlessly around. When the train decelerates we’ll all hit the part cabin. Ain’t that even more annoying compared to an impatient old auntie or an occasional durian fart in one particular car of the train?
Well, well. Anti-gravity means human can fly. We can fly, yes, by strapping ourselves to a machine called the aeroplane, or a glider, or any device that could generate the energy to pull away from gravitational forces. I guess it won’t happen on earth, it defies even the simplest form of logic.
Recently I read about Academy of Neuroscience and Architecture (ANFA) in San Diego founded under American Institute of Architects ( AIA), and I’m extremely excited of what they are going do to in the following years. Its an interesting study of the sciences of how human reacts to space. Now I have 3 solid reasons why I want to visit San Diego *winks*.
***
Joint Crit 2’s over. Year 2’s critiques are much heavier than the first year’s; but it better be or else we won’t be learning and getting any better. Inception was right after Friday’s submission, with my mum and dad! 😀
Cheers
no sunlight.
1. Green Tea.
2. Ele 1
3. Ele 1
4. keith disrupts, marketing the hk trip.
5. Ele 1
5. Mr Goh (finally)
6. Section 2
7. Section 2
8. New lecturer?
9. Section 2
10. Here & There.
11. Section 2
12. More annotations.
13. PL, FL.
14. Toilet.
15. Section 2
16. CAD FATAL ERROR
17. New lecturer over again?
18. New lecturer complain computer slow.
19. Ele 2.
20. Ele 2.
21. 3 biscuits
22. More Green Tea
23. Ele 2.
24. Plans D;
25. Plans D;
26. Plans D;
27. Ipod batt running low D;
28. Which song to play next?
29. D;
30. long night ahead. More green tea.
the same julia. 