Adventures in Architecture School

The march to my BArch

Getting a bachelor’s degree in architecture (a BArch) takes 5 years, and unlike many other majors, you jump right in. I had a 3-hour design studio, Monday-Friday, all 5 years. My first semester we were divided into three groups that rotated through three different professors, each for 5 weeks. I happened to be assigned to the most unconventional professor first. I confess, I rejected several adjectives to avoid even a hint of libel before settling on unconventional.

Scattered in with normal little design projects, we received assignments from him like “The school of music has a violin concerto tonight. I want you to go and draw the music.” We were told quite specifically what size and type of paper to use, and what to draw with, but not one word on what in the world drawing music meant. We all sat together because at least you look slightly less crazy when you’re part of a group doing something odd. We were all struggling with large and unwieldy pads of paper in our tiny auditorium seats, and we were using Sharpie markers. I recall one part of the concert where the music had built up dramatically and then suddenly stopped. We didn’t know that was coming, so for a second or two, the only sound in the space was the intense squeaking of 45 markers.

Whenever we presented drawings for this professor’s review, he had a specific way we were to hang them. We were to use exactly two pins, one in the upper left corner and one in the upper right corner. He would walk along the presentation wall and if he saw something he didn’t like, he would remove the upper right pin and the drawing would swing. It was a swing of shame. You knew his feedback was not going to be favorable. I’m here to tell you, my music drawings swung. He was disappointed I hadn’t made better use of the corners.

Next up, we had to make a collage of flesh. We were to use magazines, rip out images of skin in squares no smaller than 3/4” and glue them together in an interesting way. Guess what? There’s not as much flesh as you might think in Ladies Home Journal. So off we all went to buy porn, in bulk. I can’t explain that assignment either, so don’t ask me to try.

I was in the eighth grade when it was explained to me what architects do, and from that exact moment, I knew that’s what I wanted to do, so when I had my first 5-week assessment from this man it was a blow. Based on the results of my music drawing, flesh gluing endeavors, he told me I was cold and insensitive and would never make it as an architect. UNLESS - here came the glimmer of hope and second chances - unless I started doing pottery while listening to African tribal music. Say what now? I really was concerned by his assessment of me, but that solution sounded so, well, dumb. And I didn’t really think I wanted to do interpretive illustrations of music in the future so not being good at it wasn’t a problem I felt needed solving. I brushed off my dreams and ego and pressed on to the next professor.

This rotation focused on more architectural types of assignments, so that was a relief, but what started innocently snowballed into a different problem. It was Halloween night, and our professor felt bad knowing we had a big assignment and would be working through any possible festivities, so he came to the design studio at 10:00 pm and brought us ginger snaps, cider, and yes, beer. He even came around to some of our desks and gave suggestions for improving our projects. Lovely. Except he started doing that night after night, coming in later and later and, here’s where it took a dark turn, assigning brand new work he wanted to see by 9:00 am the next morning. For example, one time he came in at midnight, and decided he wanted some of us to make a new model overnight. Well great. Problem number one was we didn’t have enough cardboard and no stores were open, so we had to start searching the alleyways and dumpsters of State College, PA looking for boxes that weren’t dumpster disgusting to make the models with. You’d be surprised how much of the cardboard you find at 1:00 am has been rained on, peed on, or had beer spilled on it.

Because of these night visits, I went for three days with no sleep. I learned it’s possible to fall asleep on the toilet because it’s the first time you’ve been able to sit down. I learned that if enough of you go into Wendy’s when they open, if you have the scary look in your eyes that we did, they will turn the Frosty machine on at 6:00am even though they say they can’t, and I learned that that the wallpaper in Wendy’s looks like it’s moving once you start hallucinating on day three. It turned out our professor didn’t realize we had other classes and couldn’t sleep during the day. Why he thought we should be nocturnal, I don’t know.

Happily, when I had my end-of-the-rotation review with that professor, he had very positive feedback. I’m embarrassed to say I had a little emotion in my voice when I asked, “You don’t think I’m cold and insensitive?” Of course, I had to explain why I was asking such a ridiculous question and he laughed and said that first professor I’d had was mostly there to weed people out. Well, phew. Glad I didn’t let him crush me.

Onto professor number three with a new spring in my step! This involved a longer-term project. Finding an open spot of land in town and designing a house that would fit there. What I didn’t know was that this professor had been doing this project for years and when I went to him with my site selection, he informed me that some other student had chosen that same site several years earlier. I had to find a different location. Mind you, I had no access to this master list of previous selections, I just had to hope I’d get lucky.

Once we had our location approved, we were to go out and accurately measure the land so we could draw it and make models of it. That sounded like a weird conversation to have with the existing owners, why I was measuring their extra-large yard, and it was a miserable cold, rainy November day. That’s when I took advantage of knowledge gained from my summer job, bought a tax map with all the information I needed for less than a dollar, and had my first afternoon off of the semester. I told my roommate about it at dinner she said, “I thought there was a special glow about you.”

In addition to design studio, we had other architecture-related classes. The best by far was with a man in his eighties who’d had a successful architectural practice in Pittsburgh for many years. If he was still telling a story when class time was up, no one moved, which was not at all the case for any of my other classes. We were rapt. Before ADA was implemented and ramps had clear design regulations, he built a zoo with numerous long ramps. Wondering what different slopes might be like for someone in a wheelchair, but not having a wheelchair, he got in a shopping cart and had his partner set him loose to see what it was like. He determined optimum ramp configurations from that. Careening down slopes in a shopping cart without brakes or steering sounds dangerous, like maybe he drew the short straw, but I think his partner was the unlucky one. His partner was concerned about the stress level of the animals being shipped overseas to the zoo so he flew to Africa, had himself placed in the same sort of crate the animals used, and was shipped by boat back to America.

This instructor also said he had a pet peeve about toilets not being firmly mounted to the wall and when he walked through his newly constructed buildings, he would always squat down, grab each toilet in a bear hug and pull on it to verify it was solidly attached. He was right to be concerned. He managed to rip one clean off the wall and flooded multiple floors of a high rise.

I mentioned he was in his eighties, and I knew him to be widowed with grown children. It was an unspoken rule that if you were sitting next to him at a long project critique and he was nodding off and swaying, you were to prop him up if he started to fall off his chair. One day we were having a long project review session when a school secretary interrupted and said his wife needed to speak with him. In walked his gorgeous young wife and toddler son. You take as many naps here as you need, sir. Good for you, that’s awesome.

The architecture school was the only building on campus that was never locked. Students worked there day and night. Lack of sleep led to some interesting situations:

• My friend worked on her presentation drawings until the wee small hours of the morning and decided it was better to grab a nap at the design studio than to go home and come back. With that decision made she put her head down on her desk and caught some shuteye. She woke up to the unhappy realization that she had drooled all over her drawings. I don’t think they were fully dry when she presented them.

• A fellow student was working on a model late at night and was pulling an X-acto knife towards him across the cardboard. He calmly turned around and asked “Does anyone have a car? I think I may need to go to the emergency room.” The X-acto knife was sticking straight out of his stomach.

• After working all night, I went to my room to change for my morning PE class, and instead of walking out my dorm door, I walked into my closet. I suddenly realized a nap would be a better and safer use of my time than tennis.

• My colleague spent several hours tracing a drawing, only to realize he’d never put down a new piece of paper, he was just drawing again directly onto the original document.

• Another student was using all of her desk surface for drawings, so made more space by pulling out her desk drawer and built her model there. I was a little surprised when she presented her model still in the drawer over in the project review space. Our instructor was also surprised and asked her to remove it. Turns out she couldn’t. She had somehow glued it into place and the model was now one with the drawer.

• Our design studio was on an upper floor and one spring night, several of us were building models and someone asked for a large bottle of Elmer’s glue to be handed to them. Instead, someone tossed it and we all watched with horror as it sailed out the open window. A few seconds later we heard from the walkway below “God damned architects!”

As I write these memories, I can see how, to the untrained eye, some of this could seem bad. But I assure you this was a fabulous time of my life, and I loved every second of it! And after a 30-plus year career in architecture, not one supervisor has suggested I need to take up pottery.