Week in the life of a 20-year old Architecture Student living in Christchurch, New Zealand
Written by Anonymous, Edited by Aliya @archistudentnotes
This week we have a week in the life submission from an anonymous Architecture Student living and studying in Christchurch, New Zealand working towards a deadline this week and presentation next week. Definitely worth a read for anyone curious about what needs to be done and the decisions to be made before a hand in!
Would you have tackled the week any differently?
Monday
I was going to wake up and get some work done before class, but I spent the morning scrolling through TikTok 😂 still however got to class 2hrs early to get a start on the busy week ahead (it’s hand next week for a 3 week project so I wanted to make sure I got things done).
During class the tutors were going around giving some feedback, making sure people were up to date and see who was struggling a bit. So when my tutor got to me, I got some really good feedback for my floorplans and how I could improve them (frustrating because I needed to change it on ArchiCAD but very useful and made it better overall, so I’m very thankful). I worked on that for the rest of the class.
Then went home and continued it as I wanted to make sure I was fully on track for hand in. (I’m trying to get better with my time management as up until now I’ve gotten really stressed near hand in, causing multiple crying sessions)
Note from Aliya @archistudentnotes: We have all been here but this architecture student is doing the right thing by looking ahead and doing the work now to avoid the emotional panic at towards the end of the project.
Tuesday
I woke up to a text from my tech tutor saying he wasn’t well and needed to cancel class that morning so I stayed in bed until about 9am-ish and then got up and worked more on my design during the morning.
I procrastinated more in the afternoon, but managed to get a bit more done that evening to make sure I didn’t fall behind.
Note from Writer: Once again, time management could get better, but I think I spent the morning really well, so I didn’t get too frustrated with myself for procrastinating all afternoon as I still got stuff done that I wouldn’t have done if class hadn’t been canceled.
Also note, I didn’t have anything for tech to do as it would’ve just been a lecture but he didn’t tell us what it was meant to be and we haven’t been given the assignment yet, so I’m not behind on that.
I spent my time working on the floorplans a bit more, making sure they worked again and had decent sized rooms, and later started on the exterior which has been lacking.
Wednesday
Woke up and went into class for the morning. I worked on getting the exterior done, played around with different materials, and window placements, thinking about some of the feedback I had gotten the week before about either doing windows that looked really light, or really big, heavy looking windows. Basically, not just placing the windows anywhere but really thinking about it looks on my building and what it adds to the building. I spent most of the day on this, and screaming at ArchiCAD when things wouldn’t work 😂 you know, the normal stuff 😂 but got a good amount of work done.
Mid Week Plug
Enjoying this weeks ArchiWeek? Interested in sharing your own week?
Thursday
Full day of classes for Thursdays.
In the morning I had my urban design class where we are doing a group project, researching a city and the urban design of it, going all the way from settlement to contemporary, which I think is actually quite interesting.
One of my group’s members didn’t show up again (we have had 3 classes and she hasn’t come to 2 of them) which was a bit frustrating as she hasn’t done much on the presentation so we had to finish her slide cause the rest of us really want a good grade for this.
Note from Aliya: Group projects can be more of a struggle when certain members are not pulling their weight and doing their share of the work. In this situation the writer and their group did the right thing by picking up the slack to get the grade, but in addition to this, make sure you report the student so that they don’t get credit for your work.
But anyway…
We started the class with a lecture where the tutor was talking about Mexico City and pretty much giving us an example of what kind of things we may put into the presentations. During the lecture we saw it was snowing outside so we got excited 😂 (the joys of being the middle of winter at the moment - but also very rare for where I am) and we spent the rest of the morning working on the presentation before the hand in next week.
In the afternoon we had design again, so I got working on the exterior of my houses again, doing touchups and starting on the renders. When I finally finished that and was happy with it, I started working on the presentation (while low quality renders were going in the background so I could double check how it looked), making sure I had all the slides I needed, and that the slideshow looked good. I decided to stay after class for another hour, but after 45mins of the wifi making PowerPoint disconnect every 2 secs (not even joking, I would sit there for like 2-5mins of it saying disconnected, it would connect for 2secs and then disconnect again and continue like that…) I gave up and went home and continued to work on it there (with better wifi this time). By 1am I had pretty much everything done, and I was very happy with it, so I went to bed cause I needed some sleep before I could edit things.
Friday
I don’t have classes on a Friday, so I woke up around 10am and got started on editing and proofreading, and went through the brief again to see if I had missed anything. This was when I realised I had forgotten car parks and planting, which meant having to put those in and redo all my renders (yes I do my renders on ArchiCAD instead of Twinmotion as I find it easier - not necessarily quicker just less frustrating because I don’t have to try and transfer it over and have it not work or showing the wrong materials or something). But I knew it would be a quick-ish fix so I just got on with it.
I managed to finish that about 12:30ish, so I took a quick break to have food and then put the new renders on the presentation, and finished editing
Note from the Writer: I could have done better editing but I was also rushing a little because I needed to leave the house at 2:30pm and knew I most likely wouldn’t have been home before 5pm to hand in then, so I wanted to make sure I handed in earlier)
But I managed to hand in and I feel good about what I’ve handed in (hopefully I can pull off the presentation next week though)
Final note from the writer
For once I was not really stressed on a hand in day so it’s a win for me!
And that’s the week!
Thank you so much to our anonymous Architecture Student this week, it was really varied week following the trials and tribulations of group work and of working towards a deadline. If you enjoyed this week, please leave a comment below and if you’re interested in sharing your own ArchiWeek, your own reflection - click here!
