Namirah's reflection

Taking this course, Architectural Communications had been one of the most challenging courses throughout the semester. Personally, I have to say that I am an International student, thus my English skill is lacking. Therefore I faced a few challenges in ‘communication’ especially at the beginning of the course. At the end, this course certainly encourages me to do a lot of researches and at the end to talk about our work or give a brief presentation about them. This course slowly teaches me to be more confident when speaking and build up self-confident with the result of my work. Other than that, I am obliged to be more hardworking. I am not a really consistent with work and lack of motivation.
At the beginning, I chose Atlas of Color and I had been really inconsistent and less motivated. I wanted to do Architectural Drawing for the first rotation because I can then learn to draw axonometric, sections and plans properly but that workshop was full and I chose Atlas. However, I tried taking it positively because I don’t have good knowledge on paints. I was never an artsty fartsy person and since high school, we don’t have design class and I studied sciences subjects, therefore, these painting and drawing thing is really new to me. I was glad that I was in Atlas though because at the end, I enjoyed painting. I may not be good but at least I was given an opportunity to do it. I learn a few skills in the workshop especially the facts about color and their effects on a building.
Another thing worth highlighting in this course is that we are allowed to choose which workshop we are interested in instead of being forced to choose a specific one.
In the second rotation, I thought hard on which workshop I should choose. I had done colors and I was thinking fluids would be good in developing my observations and interpretations if I want to be an architect. That workshop has been so fun and drawing using charcoal was so new to me. I liked the idea of getting my hands dirty and not bothering how neat my ‘sketch’ could be. In a nutshell, we aren’t being constraint in this workshop. Moreover, everyone’s drawing was beautiful and it is obvious how well they interpret their work and transforming them inside a drawing paper.
In the third rotation, I was in the lecture when Ainslie showed us the skills we developed in each of the workshop and noticed the percentage of development in my modeling skill is the lowest. Moreover, knowing that my modeling skills aren’t so good, I chose Material Modeling. We were taught on how to cut materials properly and neatly and showed slides of buildings being transformed. Anyway, this workshop was very interesting and I had fun trying to build my interpretation of a house, designing and trying to put the materials together. It took awhile and sometimes taking risk didn’t work but the guts I had put on my work showed my courage. I didn’t want to appear too mundane and used the easy way on the modeling. I had used to take the safe route before this. I hope that some other time whenever I take risk, I can make it work. Anyway, material modeling helped me a lot in my design workshop as wel.
Honestly, I am very impressed with all my tutors. They have been very, very concerned with the student’s progress. Each of them always walked around to talk to every student, helping us to move forward when we are stuck and their willingness to assist the students to produce more quality work are appreciated.
In my opinion, this course is really important and suitable for the freshie architecture students in developing their abilities and skills.