So, architecture at Dundee. Damn. We're in week 3 now, somehow. I'm pretty much settled in and getting a feel for the course and it's all fairly ace so far.
I get a good sense of having actually achieved quite a lot of stuff already which I think is one of the main reasons I'm enjoying it so much.
The Tentsmuir beach project in week 1 was a simple but satisfying excercise in creating something from nothing. It was all a little bit surreal to begin with, mainly because nobody knew anyone else. There was a really fun sort of awkward tension, even though we were getting stuck in hauling timber around the place and building things - everyone was fairly friendly by the end of the session and we had something very much tangible to show for our efforts. It felt good! I didn't get many decent pictures which is a bit disappointing but I blame the slightly awkward tension...
Week 2 was the Inspiring Place project - an analytical project which was a really good opportunity to get out and about in Dundee. I spent a lot of Freshers' week getting out and about in Dundee to find my feet but with this project I was looking at it in a different way and it was a really interesting experience. I ended up presenting my take on an allotment on the Dundee Law. The presentation was quite daunting , partly because presentations always are, partly because I didn't really know any of the people I was presenting to but mainly because I had no real idea what was expected of me. I did that awful thing of looking at everyone else's pinned up work and thinking 'this is loads better than mine'.
In the end, the presentation went pretty well and I learned a lot from it. Again, there was a sense of satisfaction from having got a 'proper' project out of the way.
Last week was the mapping entrance project which was a pretty daunting proposition - just how exactly does one map out a doorway in 1:1 scale? The project was a great opportunity to get to know the people in the tutor group - by the end of the week there was a really good team spirit to the whole thing and after a good deal of hard work from everyone we ended up with a really impressive end result. Again, there was a real sense of satisfaction at having created such an impressive thing from very little. It wasn't until the very final stages that we could get a proper impression of what had been done - this only made the end result more satisfying.
The current Analysis Of Precedent project is a bit more involved - again, it feels really good to have something to really get your teeth into without it being an A - Level style coursework type thing.
I'm really looking forward to continuing to move forward with this course - it is a lot of work but so involving, so multi layered and so satisfying - I genuinely can't get enough. I'm sure I'll look back on that statement with some degree of contempt in the future but that's for another blog post...
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