The Most Important Thing To Know as an Architecture Student (& Before Becoming One) | SAS Podcast 15

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The Most Important Things To Know as an Architecture Student

Last week, I asked the Instagram community of Architecture students (@successfularchistudent) what they thought was the most important thing to know as an architecture student (or if you want to become one).

I was genuinely amazed at the responses I had gotten. Students from all over the world summed up what they thought was the most important thing to know as an architecture student, and it inspired me to make a video about their replies.

In this video, I share responses from @trigger444, @egle313, @logori96, @seanbroomy, @dlau0741, @andrejriger, @edurom.48 and @_honnappa. Thank you so much!

  • Time management
  • When to shut up (in crits)
  • Mental health is an important matter
  • Criticism is a form of feedback, not an attack on your work
  • Design for the people with sustainability in mind
  • Get involved in BIM ASAP
  • Stop comparing yourself to others
  • The sleepless nights
  • Be ready to face REDO’s

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Hey! My name’s Kyle.

From a sample of 25,000 students that applied to enter architecture school:
15.30% of them were accepted.
8.50% of them made it through to the second half of their education.
2.04% of them were awarded a degree in Architecture (post-graduate)
0.78% of them ended up working a job in architecture.

Successful Archi Student is a platform for architecture students to learn off one another to become the LESS THAN 1% of students who end up being successful in the profession.

On the podcast, you’ll hear from practicing architects, other successful students and myself, Kyle, a third year architecture student from South Australia.

Doing so, you’ll learn the tips and tricks to excel past the rest of your cohort and build the skills needed to take your work to another level.

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Episode 15 Transcript. The Most Important Thing To Know as an Architecture Student (& Before Becoming One)

0:00 

This is the Successful Archi Student’s podcast episode 15.

 

0:03 

Welcome to the show today, guys, I want to talk about something that I posted on the Instagram page a couple of days ago. And it was a question that I put out to you guys, which was, what do you think is the most important thing to know as an archi student? I’m genuinely overwhelmed with some of the great responses that you guys gave me. I was actually so impressed that I put up another story saying how impressed I was.

 

0:24 

“Yo guys. So I just posted a question before earlier, which was, what do you think is the most important thing as an archi student” and there are so many great responses like, wow, you guys have killed it.

 

0:34 

And I would continue to share these stories over the next couple of days, which I did. And I still got more to share as well because I got hundreds of responses to this question. And so really, with this video, what I want to do is collaborate all those responses and find out what some of the most common things that people said, were important to know as an artist student and also some of the most important things that resonated with me that I think are extremely important to know as an artist to So I genuinely think this is going to be so, so valuable to everyone listening. If you’re an architecture student, or you want to be an architecture student, you know, some of the things that you guys and gals said, were just amazing, and they blew me away. So I’m going to share those with you now.

 

1:54 

So as I share these responses, I’m going to be putting the Instagram names on the screen as well with the question that So you can check out who said that and you can confirm that they are real architecture students and they know what they’re talking about. And let’s go from there. So @trigger444. That’s their Instagram name, they said, time management is the most important thing to know as an architecture student. And this is completely true. Not just time management, I think management in general because as an architect or an architecture student, there’s a lot of things that you have to manage, whether it be time money, stress yourself, your the people around you or your finances, everything has to be managed, if you want to be successful, but more specifically, he does mention time management, which is true because managing your time, you know, you’re obviously going to be working on multiple projects at a time you got deadlines coming up and to be able to manage yourself to produce the right amount of work and the right work before the deadlines is extremely important if you want to be successful in architecture school, but not just that. It’s more the fact that once you Getting into the profession of architecture, you’re going to have multiple projects going on at once as well. And so being able to manage yourself in architecture school is going to make that extremely easy or much more easier once you’re in the profession working as an architect, and so that kind of involves the ability to schedule and habits and routines that kind of change the way that you live every day, you know, being able to review a diary or schedule, a scheduler is going to be extremely important and extremely helpful to helping you succeed.

 

3:33 

The next response was from @egle313. I think that’s how I say your name properly. egle. If not, I’m sorry. What she mentioned is that you need to know when to shut up. During the final presentations. It is not the best time to defend your design ideas. That’s what she says. And that is true as well. I resonate 100% with this because the fact is, so many students are trying to defend their designs and their ideas and their and what they’ve been working on. Because you know, you’ve been working on your project for the last couple of months, and you put in your your hard, hard work and sweat and tears into your projects, except when you go into your credit, and your credit starts saying that your project could have some extra work on, say, the facade, or you can add a bit more detailing stuff like this, then it kind of brings you down. That doesn’t mean you need to defend your ideas. Because really, what they’re giving you is information based of what they know. And these are professional architects who have worked in the profession and there, they’ve been through it themselves, they know what to look for. And so, really, they’re giving you advice. It’s not something that you should take to heart, really, it’s something that needs to be said if you want to continue to learn and progress with your designs and ideas because that’s the only way you’re gonna get better by making mistakes and listening to or learning from your mistakes by listening to your crits quite often I find students trying to defend their designs. making up excuses as to why they lift up an hour or trying to just make stuff up on the spot to defend their hard work. Except if they just spent the time to listen to what their critics were saying. They would be able to learn so much more and be able to progress forward. And really, that’s the only way to move forward and to get better as an architecture student and an architect. So she reckons that’s probably the most important thing to note as an architecture student just went to shut up and listen to the feedback you’re getting because it is it’s there to help you not bring you down. It’s It’s there to move you forward.

 

5:35 

So @logori96 mentioned that mental health is an important matter. I completely agree with that as well. You cannot function if you don’t have sleep, if you’re depressed or having anxiety. These are things that everyone experiences at least once in their life. So everyone’s experiences before. But mental mental health is a priority over getting good grades. And so if you find yourself getting down or you’re lost, or you just need someone to talk to definitely spend that time to figure it out and talk to someone because that is a priority to take care of yourself. You know, school is not easy, it’s going to be hard, it’s gonna be stressful, you’re going to have a lot of uncomfortable situations on your learning journey. And so to be able to deal with them and to deal with them in a healthy man is definitely going to be helpful.

 

6:20 

As an addition to the previous response from egle. on when to shut up. @seanbroomy mentions that criticism is a form of feedback, not an attack on your work. And so I think that’s also extremely important

 

6:33 

@daul0741. I think that’s how I say that. He mentioned that you should design for the people with sustainability in mind. And so I think that’s incredibly important as well, because to design for the people means that you’re more UI designing for humans, you know, designing as an artwork, you’re not designing sculptures, what you’re doing is designing spaces for people to live in. And so I think it’s incredibly important to design of the requirements and the wants that your clients have. So if you’re designing for people, then you need those spaces to be habitable and you need them to be function before form. And definitely have sustainability in mind because the world is finite, and it’s not going to last forever. So definitely try and do your best to contribute to being sustainable.

 

7:19 

Andre says, to get involved in BIM technology ASAP. I think this is incredibly important as well. And I wish I had gone into kind of Revit and sketch up and CAD know this stuff before starting architecture school. I had no experience for those programs before I started, and although it wasn’t a disadvantage, it would have been an advantage to have those skills already. I was lucky enough to kind of play around with these programs before most other students did in my first year. And I ended up getting really good results for one of my projects because I was experimenting with this. However, I think that’s a great point by Andre to definitely play it. with them at least before starting architecture school, and getting involved with the technology of the future, as soon as possible, because it is definitely where the industry is at, at the moment. It’s not heading there. It’s there at the moment. Although sketching and drawing and drafting and stuff is still prevalent, it’s just where it is. It’s the industry standard. So to learn these things is incredibly important.

 

8:25 

@edrum.48 mentioned that true design starts when you stop comparing others work and begin creating your own stuff. I think this is super, super important. And as I mentioned in one of the other podcasts, I think, in the in the interview with Andrew McDonald, I mentioned that one of my classmates every time he rocks up to uni, he’ll have all his hard work and his he’s putting all this time into his project. And then he will look around at everyone else’s project and get a bring himself down because he thinks his isn’t as good as everyone else’s. But the truth is you You should just work on your own skills, you know your own skill level, it doesn’t matter what everyone else is doing. If you want to build the biggest talent in the city, you don’t have to bring everyone else’s down, you just have to build the biggest talent. So don’t care what other people don’t care what other people are doing. And just focus on your own work. You know, I post a lot of work on my Instagram page. And you guys might see that and think, Oh, my works not that good. But the truth is, if you just focus on your own work, it doesn’t matter what anyone else is doing. Just stop comparing yourself to others. And you’ll find yourself progressing a lot more quickly and a lot more efficiently.

 

9:37 

So this is one that a lot of people mentioned, the sleepless nights is the most important thing to know, in architecture school. This is a bit of a different take on it. But to know that there are sleepless nights in architecture school was important, especially if you’re looking to getting into architecture. You know, it kind of is just a choice to make the you don’t have to have sleepless nights, you can definitely have a balanced life within architecture except you’ve got to make the sacrifice of if you want to be successful, then you might have to put in the hard work. And that goes with anything, not just architecture. So like every night, you’re going to have to stay up late. However, the more time you put into your projects, obviously, the better they’re going to be. And so yes, they end up instead of sleeping is definitely going to improve your work. However, there are already for like 186 hours in the week during the day. So it’s just a matter of balancing, getting the right amount of sleep with doing what you love, and working on something that matters.

 

10:39 

then @_h… mentioned that we should be ready to face redo. And I’ve mentioned this before, I don’t have readers in my country. I know that a lot of countries do and I’m thankful that I don’t but be ready to face them because what it means is that you’re going to put in all this hard work into your project and then you’re going to rock up to Uni and You’re going to get big stamp with a red thing through or cross that gets put through your work and says to redo it. So get ready for that if you’re in one of those countries that have redos.

 

11:10 

There’s still tons of responses to that question. And I’m going to go through them more over the next couple of days and in the next couple of episodes, but I want to keep this short. So for that reason, I’m going to end it here. Thank you guys so much for listening. Please consider subscribing if you’re new around here. And like the video because it helps me so much. If you haven’t checked it out already. I’ve got my new ebook here, how to ace any project in architecture school. It’s a step by step guide pretty much to anything any project in architecture school, and it’s going to help you achieve excellent results. So until next time, guys, take care and thank you guys again so much. See you in the next video.

I'D LOVE TO HAVE YOU ON THE SHOW!

If you have a project you want to delve in to and discuss, or you have some useful tips for other students you think would be helpful, please, send me an email to kyle@successfularchistudent.com and get in touch about it!
Otherwise, direct message me on Instagram @successfularchistudent and I’ll be keen to set up a skype call.

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