■ STUDENTS' PLATES SHOW ARCHITECTURAL SENSITIVITY TO ADAPT TO TOPOGRAPHY
A student plate in Architectural Design 3 class was a scale model of house for an elderly couple. Supposedly located on a slightly sloping lot, the design showed deep respect for the existing topography.
It’s the semestral break, yey! By now, you’re probably out with family or friends for an outing, catching up on some missed episodes of your favorite TV series, or just chilling out at home.
The past few weeks were “hell” as university students would call it. Project deadlines, reports, examinations and other academic requirements seem to yell at you all at the same time, demanding your full attention.
In the School of Architecture, Fine Arts and Design of the University of San Carlos, times like these in the school calendar are always filled with excitement, drama, and yes, some sleepless nights. As training for a future career in architecture and design profession, outputs are rarely in the form of text-loaded paper submissions. Projects usually burst with a lot of creativity and color, and when done with utmost gusto, these become artistic masterpieces.
For instance, architecture students present design proposals through a set of presentation drawings called plates. And since these guys are visual in terms of expressing their creative ideas, they are usually required to come up with scaled models of their proposals. These are miniature versions of the proposed buildings that they had just designed. This further enhances the visualization process of the person trying to understand the design of the proposed building.
In one of the recent plate submissions of the Architectural Design 3 classes composed of second year architecture students, the future architects came up with a scaled model of their proposed residence for an elderly couple. The building was to be situated in a slightly sloping lot and the scaled models showed how the designer was able to design the building with respect to its existing topography. This is one of the aspects of the design problem where one’s capability of adopting their design to the site is tested. They are taught that architects must build with minimal disturbance to the natural site conditions and the environment.
Building form is always crucial in architecture. A lot of factors, like topography, climate and planning of the rooms inside the building, affect form. Architects have to have a concept to come up with a practical and relevant building form and making scaled models usually help in making this possible.
For sure, the architecture students who accomplished one of their academic missions last semester are giving themselves a pat in the back. Family and friends, too, who know very well about the sleepless nights that they went through squeezing their creative juices to complete their design project are also proud of them. Seeing their work completed is one sure reason for them to flash a smile on this much-awaited break from school.