Simplistic + Simple

These two artifacts, my Freshman Year Studio Drawings and my third year Spring Studio Portfolio, represent my personal understanding of architecture and design at two very different stages in my academic career. In first year, I knew that I liked certain things, but I did not know why. My Freshman Year Studio Drawings are highly indicative of this lack of understanding as I based my decisions off gut-instincts rather than a series of rational decisions. Even in my third year projects, I barely began to understand the ‘why’ factor behind my decision-making. However, the most important change between my first and third years was that I finally began to understand that my design inclinations were conscious decisions that I needed to explore and understand on a deeper level.

The two projects are compositionally similar in their linear logic, and both communicate some understanding of visual and physical relationships between objects. My third year project clearly advocates for a stronger understanding of these relationships, however, and is a clear progression from where I began as a designer and a thinker.

1.1 | First Year Studio Drawings

My Freshman Fall Studio Final Drawings laid the foundation for my academic, architectural career; they became my architectural roots. Two years, and ive semesters of studio, later I began the spring semester of my third year of architecture school. In the time that passed, I began to learn about formal composition and what it takes to understand architecture, in both the abstract and the real. In my first year of studio, I learned how to draw clearly and carefully. I then applied these lessons in my second year studios as we transitioned from hand drafting to digital drawings by using the software program AutoCAD. Maintaining a high quality of line work is key to any successful drawing, and it is something that I continue to work with today as I grow and develop my kit of tools and apply them to all of my projects. That tool kit now contains a high understanding of digital modeling software such as AutoCAD, Rhino 5.0, and Revit, all wonderful for the digital conceptualization and realization of projects. I utilize these programs in conjunction with other software, such as Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, and Bridge, which serve as finishing and final editing for my drawings and digital renderings of my projects.

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1.2 | Third Year Portfolio

Our project for the end of our third year of studio was to create a Brewmaster’s Institute, which would house three microbreweries, six in-residence brew masters, a large barroom and administrative spaces. The resulting Spring Studio Portfolio is my second artifact and demonstrates a more practical exercise in architecture. My professor, Eric Sauda, encouraged me to return to my architectural roots and begin my design through a gridded, diagrammatic approach, similar to how I began my Freshman Fall Studio Final Drawings. Unlike my previous artifact where I did not discover my big idea until the end, I began with a strong theme and clear focus.