ARCHITECTURAL DESIGN 1

Before starting this course, I thought Architectural De­sign is just all about thinking of design ideas, instead of apply­ing all the other architecture course subjects such as theory of architecture, architectural graphics, manual visual technique, and more. Here, I get to use what I have learned from other architectural subjects and integrate them into my design proj­ects. It can be both enjoyable and stressful because you will have fun thinking about your designs and ideas, but it takes a lot of hard work to convey them in drawings and presen­tations. What’s good is that you get to express your ideas to others instead of just keeping them only in your mind.

When starting architectural design, I have very little knowledge of creating concepts, so I struggled with why and how something is a problem; I wouldn’t realize my mistake un­til someone had told me. Through this experience, the lesson I learned is to try to make every part of your design rea­sonable or have its purpose and relevance to the design. I learned to ask myself how I would think if I were the audience listening and what comments I would have. After that, I’ll try to fix it. To harness architectural forms to convey meanings, I would understand the forms first, think of what meaning and emotion it shows, and how it applies to my design project.

Now nearing the end of the semester, I realize that I need to improve on every aspect of the design process, in­cluding forming ideas, sketching, making sketch models, illus­trating architectural drawings, and many more. I will continue to improve on all those aspects so that I can have better ideas and designs. A bit of advice I would give to next year’s Archi­tectural Design 1 students is to be familiar with architectural design before starting the school year because it will benefit you a lot, and it will make you learn faster. Some other piec­es of advice are: (1) learn to be confident in presentations, (2) make sure you know your design thoroughly, don’t create a design based only on personal opinions, and (3) learn to work with others and cooperate with them.