Here is how the crit went:
You're always going to take a bit of stick in a crit, that's part and parcel of studying architecture and if you don't like it, you know where the door is. No project is perfect. There are crits and then there are bad crits - I've seen people reduced to tears before. Problem is, it takes up an awful lot of your time, does this subject, with an inevitable series of late nights leading up to the deadline making for tired, battered, but not yet quite defeated people having to stand up on the actual day and present their work. You submit the last months of your life for consideration, which proceeds either acceptance or rejection. And when I say 'acceptance', I do not mean 'praise'.
The most you can reasonably hope for is for the 3 or 4 people dissecting your project to not say anything bad. If it goes the other way, however, then it's really quite unpleasant.
What was galling about yesterdays performance was not just how badly it went, though. I got that t-shirt years back. I'm not a 5-year-old, I can cope with it. What was difficult to take was the suggestion that I should NOT masterplan the site, but focus on one intervention, do that, take as much space as I need, and basically say 'other projects could happen around this one'.
The reason why it was difficult to take is because that is what I was originally going to do. I was told to masterplan the site by tutors. Plural. If you scroll down to the first Interim post, it's there. Foxes and hedgehogs. I was always planning on being a fox, and they turned me into a hedgehog before telling me that I should have been foxy after all. So for the last x weeks I have, in fact, been completely wasting my time. I could have been doing something useful. I could have been designing a building, instead of arsing around trying to conjure up city from thin air. Now what I have is no masterplan, no building, and 18 days during which to pull a project out of my arse, when I should have had 18 days to fine tune and detail a building which should be basically there already.
I keep trying to take stock here; at the end of the day this is my project and I have to take some responsibility for the decisions that are made during it. But the tutors are meant to be there to help, and to A) persuade me into attempting the masterplan in the first place, and to B) let me get on with and not suggest this sooner, is not the best bit of teaching I've ever had.
Anyway, life goes on. I'm off to design a building.
You're always going to take a bit of stick in a crit, that's part and parcel of studying architecture and if you don't like it, you know where the door is. No project is perfect. There are crits and then there are bad crits - I've seen people reduced to tears before. Problem is, it takes up an awful lot of your time, does this subject, with an inevitable series of late nights leading up to the deadline making for tired, battered, but not yet quite defeated people having to stand up on the actual day and present their work. You submit the last months of your life for consideration, which proceeds either acceptance or rejection. And when I say 'acceptance', I do not mean 'praise'.
The most you can reasonably hope for is for the 3 or 4 people dissecting your project to not say anything bad. If it goes the other way, however, then it's really quite unpleasant.
What was galling about yesterdays performance was not just how badly it went, though. I got that t-shirt years back. I'm not a 5-year-old, I can cope with it. What was difficult to take was the suggestion that I should NOT masterplan the site, but focus on one intervention, do that, take as much space as I need, and basically say 'other projects could happen around this one'.
The reason why it was difficult to take is because that is what I was originally going to do. I was told to masterplan the site by tutors. Plural. If you scroll down to the first Interim post, it's there. Foxes and hedgehogs. I was always planning on being a fox, and they turned me into a hedgehog before telling me that I should have been foxy after all. So for the last x weeks I have, in fact, been completely wasting my time. I could have been doing something useful. I could have been designing a building, instead of arsing around trying to conjure up city from thin air. Now what I have is no masterplan, no building, and 18 days during which to pull a project out of my arse, when I should have had 18 days to fine tune and detail a building which should be basically there already.
I keep trying to take stock here; at the end of the day this is my project and I have to take some responsibility for the decisions that are made during it. But the tutors are meant to be there to help, and to A) persuade me into attempting the masterplan in the first place, and to B) let me get on with and not suggest this sooner, is not the best bit of teaching I've ever had.
Anyway, life goes on. I'm off to design a building.
Now that made me giggle. Great summary!
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