Architect Workshop

Designing Space: Emergency Architecture

Workshop Description

What is most essential when someone loses their home? How does one build a simple house? Using a kit of parts, we will work in teams to design and construct a shelter for displaced people in a hypothetical disaster area.

Leader's Job Description

The architect’s role is to design buildings and spaces for people within their environment. This means designing places that consider public health, safety and welfare, expressing spatial aesthetics, and considering the environmental impacts of the building design. Architects often work with engineers and other specialists during the design and construction processes.

Designing a building involves many steps. When I begin a new project, I study the site’s characteristics. These characteristics include topography, the surrounding neighborhood, the site’s orientation relative to sun and wind and many other aspects. This way, I can better predict the impact a new building design might have on its surroundings. Most days I draft, or make technical drawings that describe what the spaces might be like and how it gets built. When drawing is not enough to understand space or structure, I make 3D models in the computer (or sometimes physical models as well) in order to better understand many of the qualities and/or complications of a given design.  

Advice for Career Path

Recognize what subjects and activities you have enjoyed learning and doing so far. It is also helpful to learn new things and expose oneself to a variety of activities and subjects. Perhaps think about what professions might utilize the enjoyable skills or activities and learn more about them.  As I kid, I always knew that I liked making things with my hands so I made an effort to learn about more ways of making.

I started to thinking about different professions in order to prioritize which subjects I would work hardest in when my homework load became difficult to handle.  I prioritized my subjects according to those I enjoyed and those I was good at. At the time, these included art, math, history and science.  So I looked for a profession that might include those subjects, which was architecture, engineering or something related.  I made sure to take physics since it’s related to both architecture and engineering. Though I was by no means naturally gifted at physics, I kept at it, and eventually did well. I made sure to enroll in the hardest classes for each subject important for architects. That meant taking IB Physics, AP Calculus, and IB Art. While I took other challenging classes as well, I gave those classes a priority when managing my time.