Area of Expertise Findings

Through my six blog posts of “how to learn futuristic architecture in 6 weeks” I have made progress knowing the basic principles and fundamentals of architecture. I have also earned good knowledge about Futurism movement, and how architects used their own interpretation to express their thoughts about this Italian movement. I have explored other interesting types of architecture like Blob architecture and organic architecture. Moreover, I have also encountered the idea of “Sociocyberneering” or social engineering which I became very interested in. I am also excited to start reading and learning more about this idea of building the Utopian city and comply with people’s problems. I found some exciting books like “looking backwards” by Edward Bellamy and the Republic by Plato that will help me develop my own thought or interpretation of this idea. I am also planning on interpreting this interesting idea in the form of digital arts or graphic design in the near future. I was thinking of an idea that would put all people of a certain society or culture together to build their own dream city. I can have a website with Kinect interactivity that will let every person to design only one thing and have a combination of many people’s design insights on one canvas.

I have learned more about futuristic architects like Tadao Ando and Zaha Hadid. I have learned some principles of architecture from Vitruvius. I have learned that there are some variables that any architect need to consider like lines, geometric shapes, shadows, light, and environment. I explored some of the most interesting CAD programs used for architecture besides SketchUp, like AutoCAD and Revit. These programs’ complicated interfaces made me curious to learn and explore them even more in the future.

I have accomplished my goal of starting my first architecture drawing. This design is not professional or ready for building but it is important to me because it broke my barrier to learn architecture. I have always thought I would never do any architectural work because I am not an architecture student. But just by surveying other great architects like Tadao Ando, I have noticed that it is not necessary to be enrolled in an architecture school to be an architect. Some of these famous architects taught themselves and have influenced the whole field of architecture. Studying architecture became very possible for me also when I found that amount of open source courses and communities I can use for learning.

In the future I am intending to read about architecture even more. Through my research, I have gathered some useful resources that I can use to be a professional architect. I have the programs already. I have some books that are recommended by architect reviews and forums. I can look for books that teach architecture from scratch. I know that this may sound funny to have professional architecture knowledge from reading books like “architecture for dummies”, but it’s a good start for now. Later I can build on that and learn more. But for now I am going to start a little by little, since I find architecture books are kind of hard to understand for now.

I found a master in architecture for people with no architecture background in The City College of New York. It is affordable and it is a three year program. So instead of studying architecture bachelor for five years, I can do it in only three as a master program. I am sincerely thinking about this program now since I am a senior and I am expected to graduate next fall.

I would be very enlightened if they accepted me, because it was my dream to transfer to an architecture major. But when I applied for architecture schools, they did not accept me because I am a transfer student with no previous architecture education and work.

Below are all the references and the resources I have used for my research and analysis:

http://plusmood.com/category/architecture/education/

http://architizer.com/

http://io9.com/search?q=architecture

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blob_architecture

http://www.thevenusproject.com/

http://www.wfs.org/futurist

http://library.thinkquest.org/22866/English/Architecture/fundament.html

http://architecture.about.com/

http://archinect.com/

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/architecture/

http://documents.weber.edu/catalog/0910/pages/c~CDGT.htm