_WEEK XX: REFLECTIONS _What have we covered in this Subject? What have you got out of it? We covered a myriad of topics in this subject that delves into allowing us to increase awareness of our own personal design tactics, as well as compare this to others to see how we can better improve or benefit from changing some parts of our approaches and decisions made. As for what I got out of it, this subject helped with my other design subjects as we focus more on reflective thinking, so this acted as a supplement/ support journal to other subjects. I also learnt a lot more design philosophies and awareness (verbal and written awareness) to design components I previously did not quite have enough conscious awareness of, previously, such as the factors of influence sometime in week 7+. Another thing that was interesting was where one of the weekly tasks required us to look at narrative structures and the graphics provided in the readings and subject links helped with mostly studio, but I believe this particular week could benefit my storytelling compositions in a future career, as I’m the type of person who actually needs some kind of ‘proven’ or graphed, quantifiable information in order to fully feel confident that a quality-based product can do well/be authenticated on its own. Also the comparative analysis part was quite interesting to research on, although I was confused on how to approach it. Some guidelines aside from the grading rubric could have helped with this. I’m also quite grateful for the fact we didn’t need to reflect on grasshopper-related ‘design decisions’ and approaches like we did in the bachelor’s equivalent of this subject, because at the time it was quite difficult for me to justify why a 3D program, does what it does.
_How will you do your final assessments? More reflective thinking, last-minute research to consolidate the project and bring the presentation to a cohesive whole. Since the semester is mostly running online, I have started preparing for studio presentation using a pre-recorded voice, this is more to keep with the time limit in consideration to others, and also because I dislike verbal repetition. For interim presentation, some of the content remains the same or similar, and personally I dislike repeating myself for the same kind of content. So a pre-recorded voice prevents my getting internally annoyed (and possibly hindering) my presentation within a constrained time limit. Because the studio I am in focuses on atmospheres, I will also keep plugging along with what I learnt on the narrative structured topics and also on integrating interior atmospheric art. It is more efficient for me to continue hand drawing everything using a drawing tablet, than to 3D model, actually... because 3D modelling requires ‘perfection’, there is no beauty in mistakes being made, whereas this idea is more tolerated in concept art and design. I often find these mistakes makes the presented pieces potentially more empathetic to the viewer. There could be some psychological aspect to it. On that note, maybe it would be interesting to have more topics diving into the psychology of designers, not just in tips and advice for us to work toward developing our psyche as designers but also feedback from others who have case studies on them. In my free time I would often read up on why there is a trend of negative, self-destructive self-perception in many artists. It is not uncommon to hear people, especially visual artists, say or put things in their profile like, “Follow me for bad art” or “I draw trash” or “Just another crap page to fulfill my trash needs”. (Not that I’ve ever done this, it’s not very professional if you’re trying to grow a business...) But I have had such thoughts myself, very often, that I’m actually a very mediocre and boring person maybe. Looking on the rational side of things, this is due to a high level of neuroticism that is often found in the brain function of some artists. Supposedly, it is incredibly pessimistic but can cause different outcomes: a) the artist throws themselves into an even deeper state of mental self-destruction and cannot benefit from it (may fall into depression or disorders), or b) the artist continues this cycle, is considered turbulent in nature, but strives to improve from it or may seek validation, which causes a spike in work and improvement. I am probably the latter...that aside it would be very interesting for us to be exposed to case studies that delve into these kinds of more serious topics, things that can affect the design psyche, that isn’t always a positive kind of topic. I read up more on this just because I thought it would be helpful for the comparative analysis but would have loved to have had more time and opportunity to see it in the subject (so we students don’t have to waste time scouring the internet for these resources (personal knowledge and management filtering!)) All that being said, thank you for allowing this subject to exist in the MC-ARCH stream. I honestly would have gone insane if there weren’t such modules like these and only main studio/construction stuff were in the stream. It’s a memorable experience and I feel I learn more from this kind of reflective subjects than studio (not saying studio is bad, please don’t come after me <3).
_What could be improved? What do you think ought to have been covered that wasn’t? As a masters subject delving into the design rationality component, I feel that the subject would also benefit from maybe one of the final two weeks to focus on both personal knowledge management and also ways to develop ‘externalised’ skills such as marketing for oneself or having a small introduction to what a individual can ‘design’ their way through to being more accomplished in either a studio or by themselves. The semester was interrupted by the pandemic and I thought the shift online didn’t really affect the learning quality but could potentially have missed some topics if we weren’t careful. I think other things that could have been covered are acknowledging the impact of other design roles, because the subject wholly gave me this impression the whole semester that it was ‘dangling on the edge’ of trying to appear very supportive of other design roles aside from architecture but the end ultimate focus was still architecture and then, in the DYD evidence reading, this touched on other variety of design roles but this would be considered quite brief. I felt this could have used more expansion on, to enrich the subject further (not just looking at architecture/ interior/landscape architecture but also graphic design, UI design, film and animation etc). I also would have liked to learn more foci on the philosophy behind small yet significant design decisions, which is something I try to delve into the comparative analysis, particularly regarding concept art, which I am more comfortable with because many concept artists in the industry think deeply about the philosophies of life that drive every component they place in their concept designs and iterations.
Thank you!
_What do you think was NOT required? I think most of the subject topics was beneficial to gain an understanding of, but I think more individual tasks rather than group-related tasks would have helped speed the workflow a bit. Especially since this is a reflective subject, it seems very personal and having to do a lot of groupwork made me inclined to pick design case studies that I was less self-conscious of, because other people would see it. I think this part can be detrimental as it hinders the ability for me to be completely 120% honest with what I prefer to have studied. I think introverted students in the future would benefit from having less group work toward the later part of the semester, where topics become more philosophical. Sometimes it is better to leave the student to discover for themselves how they operate their own heart of design, without the influence of their peers. Overall though, this is one of my favorite subjects by far throughout the architecture degree mostly because it focuses on design thinking, which I feel is a more valuable skillset to have since this is a quality-type of learning, it is harder to grow these skills than learning how to use a program, which is more often readily available through internet (explicit knowledge rather than tacit).
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