Third Year of Architecture School: A Zine

Hello once again! This is a lil comic to encapsulate my third year of architecture school. It’s optional but if you’d like to read in order, here is my 2020 Second Year of Architecture School zine, 2019 First Year of Architecture School zine, and prior to that I tested the waters with my 2018 Senior Year (of high school) zine.

Now for some reflection on both the zine and the school year:

• I used the same workflow as last year- sketching page by page, taking photos when needed (I bypassed the scanner this year), arranging the panels on InDesign, making canvases on FireAlpaca to fit in those panels, and then drawing and importing back into InDesign.
• For some reason my computer, which has always been touch screen but also has a pen, finally allowed me to draw with my finger for the first time. I think it must have been the program that updated. So I ditched the pen this year and just used my finger. Is that I good or bad thing, I’m not sure, but it brought me back to my public-school-issued-iPad roots.
• Due to the lack of physical pin-ups, I tried something new with the cover which instead features a collage of a few Miro boards.

Third year Design was a good progression from the first two years. We brought in more consideration of the community we were serving (through designing multigenerational housing and a community center) and the environment (transformation into a flood shelter). We also played around with different concepts and materials, though I’m definitely missing the space and resources that I have in the studio. Consultants for façade, MEP, and structure came in after midterms and provided us feedback which brought our buildings closer and closer to reality. The inclusion of consultants was really informative but it could be rough at times balancing the required systems and design progression.

The third year is the end of the ‘core’ curriculum in which all of our classes kind of work on top of or alongside one another (for instance Building Services has us integrate things like fire sprinklers, calculate the number of light fixtures, that type of thing into our building which we were creating in Design class. Construction Documents has us redraw our Rhino file from Design into Revit. The list goes on). I haven’t heard much about the next two years (beyond the Rome study abroad program) and how design will be.

As it stands, I’m supposed to be in person for the Fall, still with some online classes, and once again living in the dorms. Vaccinations are required and I’m hopeful that we can remain in person. There is such a stark contrast between New York (where my school just lifted the mask requirement for outdoor spaces) and the things I’m seeing down here in South Carolina (which has never once had a state-issued mask mandate and now it’s banned to require masks).

I’m looking forward to being in the city again, and seeing fellow classmates for the first time in over a year. It’s very weird to think it’s been so long and all of the upperclassmen I knew have now graduated (minus the fifth year architecture people).

As always thanks for reading and let me know what you think in the comments or on Instagram!