ARCH1142 REFLECTION

Architectural Communications has been a very invaluable subject that incorporates various scopes of the architectural field. The three workshops that I chose: Drawing, Fluid Thoughts to Actions, and Material Modelling, allowed me to express creatively and communicate through architectural language, the important ideas and concepts that lie in my work, while also capturing nuances of artistic style.

I really enjoyed the method of working in a cyclical workshop, choosing three workshops and rotating every four weeks after creating a final project from each workshop. It allowed me to experience different aspects of the workshops, and use the strategies and methods learnt from the previous workshops, and applying them to the subsequent workshop.

In each of the workshops that I undertook, I learnt different approaches in communicating my thoughts and ideas. As Ainslie Murray emphasised in her lectures, the three most important ideas in Architecture are precision, spatiality and fluidity. I believe that through these workshops, I have gained more knowledge and understanding of these three ideas as they were actually put to practise in the execution of our final projects.
In relation to these three factors, precision was most evidently learnt from the Material Modelling and Drawing workshops. In Architecture, one of the most important skills is precision. Models and drawings must be executed with high-level precision, which I gained more practise through these workshops.
In contrast, the Fluid workshop was much different to the other two workshops, as it was more concerned with spatiality and fluidity. It focused on communicating expressively through the medium of charcoal, leaving behind the details and looking at a larger scale in respect to space and volume. Like its name, this workshop concentrated on creating works so that we were able to express drawings fluidly through light and dark tones.

Architectural Communications has significantly helped me to gain and experience new skills, while developing my current skills and extending my knowledge. Communications is an inevitable skill in Architecture, where one needs to vividly and fluidly express their ideas and concepts through means of an individual’s developed language. And, this subject has helped me to shape my own language in communicating my thoughts and processes.

All in all, I have thoroughly and enthusiastically enjoyed learning and working in each workshop, experimenting with different techniques, ideas and materials, and producing final projects that I am very pleased with. It has been a very exciting, interesting and yet an intense course.