A Letter to My Students

Dear my students,

Hi, everyone.

First of all, I am sorry for the late completion of the coursebook publishing. I had unexpected family affairs during the winter break, and now I can finish making this book by entering this spring semester. How was your winter break? I hope you enjoyed your time and are ready to tackle this semester.

How was this course? I wish you had learned something well and enjoyed it. Since this class was my last design studio at UT, I might have made too many requests to you because I wanted to teach you as much as possible. Even after this class, I am writing this letter because I have more guides I want to give you.

First, experience a lot. If you don’t experience anything yourself, you don’t know what you like or dislike yourself and why you like or dislike the thing. As a result, your design intent might easily become unclear. In other words, if you design something you haven’t experienced, it is extremely difficult to avoid designing a superficial outcome. Second, Improve your sense of scale. Reviewers couldn’t point out your design’s details because they should give you overall feedback in a limited time. Just because the reviewers didn’t point out the problem doesn’t mean that the design is great. If you make a portfolio like this, and if your readers have enough time to take a look, some problems emerge, especially related to the sense of scale. Considering that, we are not making decorative art but making space for people to use with no problem with real people’s usability. It is our role to properly set the widths of the passages where people come and go or the spaces where people interact with each other. The best way to identify this problem is to build a physical study model by hand. You can easily find errors in your design in the process of building walls and stairs. If you can’t figure out the errors, the errors will be projected on your drawings and perspectives.

Third, verify your design through Visualization. There is a clear difference between thinking an idea in your head and physically visualizing it. By visualizing, your ideas become more concrete, and you can see if your design intentions can be realized through the concrete ideas. The more you present an abstract idea without specifying it, the more your audience intends to understand it by embodying it in their own way, so your design intent and understanding of the audience start to differ. When the differences are piled up, your design is not accurately communicated to the audience. Also, your ideas that have not been accurately conveyed are difficult to accept. All of this is the root cause of feedback from reviewers and me.

Fourth, improve your 3D visualization skill. If the four things mentioned above were for your design authority, 3D Visualization is for your design persuasion. No matter how good a design is, if you don’t convince your client, your design cannot be realized in the world. The principle of my 3D Visualization is that the quality of my 3D perspectives should be equal to or higher than the quality of the reference images I use. For example, if your design doesn’t look better than the Pinterest image you referenced, your client might say make it more like your Pinterest image than your design. You can use any program, but the essential capacity of 3D Visualization is Modeling. The lack of capacity in Lighting and Material can be complemented with Photoshop, but it is difficult to cover the lack of capacity in Modeling by Photoshop. And if you have the chance, it would be good to learn the Unreal Engine for your advanced presentation. Fifth, design is a journey, not a moment. People make similar mistakes, just like everyone thinks similarly. The advantage of a design studio is that it expands your learning by seeing and referencing your friends’ mistakes. If you see and reference your peers’ mistakes and absorb their strengths into your design, you are utilizing design studio classes well. In addition, the design is not completed with a single point of a flashing idea but is realized through a long journey from idea to implementation. Considering this, always review and remind your previous outcomes, and iterate the process you have completed one by one. Every moment, the results you achieve will later be chained together and determine your design’s quality.

Finally, all the time I was with you was so special and thankful to me. This class may be my last design studio with you, but contact me whenever you need me. I will gladly respond to your request. Thank you for being with me the last semester.

Have a great spring semester.

Sincerely, Jinoh Park

ARCH 171 Design Fund. I ARCH 172 Design Fund. II

IARC 275 People, Spaces, Experiences & Politics IARC 276 Context, Concept, Input & Interaction IARC 375 Experimenta -tion & Innovation IARC 376 Design Development & Construction Detailing IARC 475 Comprehensive Capstone Studio

IARC 476 Elective Studio IARC 475 Comprehensive Capstone Studio

IARC 476 Elective Studio

ARCH 121 Representation I ARCH 122 Representation II ARCH 221 Representation III IARC 321 Representation IV

IARC 101/107 Intro to Built Environ

IARC 221 Theory of Color IARC 200/207 Human Environ- ment Relations ARCH 211/217 History/Theory I

IARC 211/217 History of Interior Design ARCH 212/218 History/Theory II

IARC 261 Materials, Resour ces and Textiles IARC 460 Lighting

IARC 331 Construction Docs IARC 480 Furniture Design

IARC 360 Business Princi ples and Practice Prof Design Elective (IARC, LAR, ARCH, INDS)

(Summer) IARC 420 Practicum or IARC 491 International Study Prof Design Elective (IARC, LAR, ARCH, INDS)

Prof Design Elective (IARC, LAR, ARCH, INDS)

My students in IARC 275 PEOPLE, SPACES, EXPERIENCES & POLITICS demonstrate the ability to build abstract relationships and explore and develop original ideas with their imagination. They understand the impact of design based on applied research and analysis of multiple theoretical, social, political, economic, cultural, and environmental contexts to the creation of built environments.