I want to
study architecture because I have always been creative and drawing has been my
passion since I was very young – I usually carry a sketchpad and pencil. I also
enjoy logic, maths, business and understanding things and how they work. I looked
for a balance between the two and chatted to friends’ parents who are successful
architects. Later I took Design as a subject in school, which helped develop my
drawing and software skills and gain greater understanding of architectural
principles, elements and history and gain inspiration from great historical
designers. I am keen to attend MSA after visiting the university in February. I
like your approach of close links with working architects, including in
teaching. I believe the course structure will work well for me, with emphasis
on studio and practical skills as the foundation for improving thinking and
processes and eventually my own design solutions.
I was
excited to see the textbooks come to life at the Design Museum, including the
Lounge Chair by Charles and Ray Eames, the Valentine typewriter by Ettore Sottsass
and Corradino D’Ascanio’s Vespa. The building is well laid out, leading the
visitor into a spiralling progress through the exhibits. The lighting is bright
and the format exciting, showcasing talented designers wide range of output. I
visited the Terence Conran exhibition, from hand-tools for woodcarving and photographs
of his vegetable gardens, to restaurant furniture, crockery, Habitat graphics and
modern furniture for sale. It will be interesting to see how the Museum will
use its new space.
If I have
to choose one out of hundreds of favourite architectural works, it is Villa
Savoye by Le Corbusier, the basis of almost all contemporary housing systems, designed
by the father of modernist design. The house displays all
seven characteristics of modernist architecture, contains no added
ornamentation or décor and was not designed to be aesthetic but to maintain its
functional purpose as a “machine for living”, as Le Corbusier described
buildings or, as Louis Sullivan put it: “form ever follows function”. Regardless
of its intentional lack of added ornamentation the building still has a very
elegant and humble quality making it aesthetic which is how I believe true
design should be: Simple yet beautiful.
I would
love to visit the building “Falling Waters” by Frank Lloyd Wright, also built
using modernist principles. What makes this building unique is its breath-taking
unity between technology and nature and the way it truly integrates its
surrounding environment.
Architecture
is a career I am certain I will excel at, partly because of my natural drawing skill
but also because I aim to push limits and break boundaries in the way to which
we approach these “machines for living”.
