Survival Guide for Architecture School

YEM Yayın has published its new book, A Survival Guide to Architecture School, which aims to assist architecture students throughout their education.

Every year, new architecture students make similar mistakes during the design process, forgetting to include important elements in their projects. This concise guide offers the most important and fundamental tips to help students, accompanied by the author's witty and beautiful hand-drawn illustrations.

Iain Jackson, the author of A Survival Guide to Architecture School, translated into Turkish by Prof. Dr. Özlem Erdoğdu Erkarslan, prepared the book to serve as a basic reference for architecture students. His thoughts on the book are as follows:

“The Survival Guide to Architecture School you hold in your hands will help you express yourself more effectively and present your designs in a more remarkable and accurate way.

Each page contains important advice on the fundamentals of architecture. Use the tips, principles, and guiding information provided here to make your designs more effective. Architecture students often spend too much time conveying their thoughts or correcting misunderstandings during critiques (or juries). This steals time that is essential for them to explain the architectural values they present and the true components of their ideas. Do not let simple drawing errors and oversights diminish the quality of good designs.

The main purpose of the book is to help you in your design work and to develop the skills you need to convey your thoughts accurately to others. What you read and observe here are topics discussed almost every day in architecture schools around the world. Use these as reminder notes before attending lectures and critiques (juries) to make your designs more enjoyable and daring, and to convey what you want to say accurately.”

TABLE OF CONTENTS
THE WORLD AROUND US 8
Be an explorer/urban traveler
Keep a notebook or diary
Site visits: be a traveler
A photograph of a building is not the building itself
Sketching
Reading
Traditional
Density
Street
Contours and slope
Case study
Turning a corner
100 corners
Drawing for fun
Site plan
The everyday
Sum of the parts

THINKING ABOUT SCALE 42
Street width - building height ratio
Surface area - volume ratio
Scaled drawing
Scale is everything
Scaling a cube

BUILDING COMPONENTS AND DESIGN CRITERIA
Column, beam and wall
Column placement
Questions for form
Building envelope
Wall
Window
Roof
Stairs
Circulation and wet areas
Building orientation
Insulation
Door
Cantilever
Sometimes we are asked to touch, sometimes not!
Materials
Sustainability
Digital heritage

COMMUNICATION 90
Who are you drawing for?
Line weights
Name your drawings
Font
Axonometry
Plan
North arrow
Section
Elevation
Draw the main idea of the building in 20 seconds
People
Grid system
Grid disruption

PROCESS 116
Context
Great pleasure
Ceremony, myth and ritual
Don't reduce architecture to mere space, form and light
Front-back / public-private
Focus
Intermediate spaces
Chronological drawing
Serial view
Threshold
From within space - towards space
Plinth
Form, technology and program
Cost, construction time and quality

MAKING PROGRESS 142
Oral presentation
Dress and style
Architecture is for people
However, don't work with these types of people...
Planning your workload, key objectives and lifestyle
What is your vision?