What kind of portfolio can win the AA offer? What kind of works can get UCL offer? What kind of ability can be valued by both colleges? "Landscape", "architecture" and "space", the "architectural space system" dominated by these three key words, seems to be "alien" in art study abroad. What should be displayed in the collection of architectural space? What kind of architectural space works collection can be offered by AA and UCL at the same time? Now natural light is analyzed with AA and UCL cases.

Many students' impression of the architectural space department is that it is difficult to carry out creative diffusion; It is difficult to cross disciplines; It is difficult to make "unrealistic" assumptions; It emphasizes the high level of logic and rational thinking of the creator. All these impressions make the major of Architectural Space Department become a legend - "only Xueba can choose the major of art design". This "traditional" impression even makes many students ask me this question when choosing a major: "If I am a very emotional person, is it not particularly suitable for me to learn architectural landscape?"; "My science is not very good, is it impossible for me to become an architecture major?"; "I can't study well, can't I choose architecture? Architecture seems very difficult."

What should be displayed in the collection of architectural space?

Today, with natural light AA Architectural Alliance College UCL University College London offers students from two universities as an example. Let's take a look at the commonalities and characteristics of these students who have received offers from multiple universities or even countries in their study and creation of the architectural space works collection, so that they can win multiple offers at one time.

01. Social topics integrating cultural characteristics

First of all, let's break the students' concern that "the major of architectural space is very suitable for you who are sensitive and delicate". As people have higher and higher requirements for landscape design of living environment, human emotion is the most important factor that designers should not ignore. For an excellent design work, it not only needs to reflect our excellent professional level, but also needs to reflect our unique perspective of observation and thinking through historical and humanistic knowledge.

Social and cultural topics and unique personal style creation have always been the most important thing in foreign art colleges, which has always been one of the focuses of natural light in the teaching process. How to find social topics?

Zhang told us from his own case that we should start from "around". Zhang, a student who received offers from six schools including AA and UCL, comes from Chengdu. His works focus on four projects. The projects include small bookstores, residences, kindergartens, art museum design, and large high-rise buildings. Both site selection and problem solving methods come from the life he knows best. (Click for details: Apply for studying in British architecture and be admitted by the first university in the world! ）

His first project base is located in the airport campus of Southwest University for Nationalities, which is a resettlement area for relocated farmers. At present, the district has become an important living service supporting place for teachers and students of Southwest University for Nationalities and nearby residents. He chose one of the buildings to transform the residential part into an independent small house, the ground floor is still a commercial house, and the upper part is a residence. However, due to the harsh environment and the lack of certain public space, the area cannot meet the daily communication and interaction needs of residents, resulting in apathy of neighborhood relations.

Through research, he found that most of the residents are tenants, who spend a lot of time at home, and mainly pass the time through their hobbies. Therefore, Zhang's design scheme is embedded in a large number of public spaces in the form of codes O and 1. Public spaces and private spaces are combined in different forms, while retaining the existing community buildings. Stimulate the new vitality of the community by implanting different public spaces.

At the same time, the height of a single building is also controlled at 4-5 floors, so that the block combination presented by the new building can be better hidden in the busy street. The first floor corresponds to the business and surrounding environment, while the other floors use the combination of public space and private space to strengthen the communication and interaction between neighbors and further solve the interpersonal problems of the existing community.

Liao also pays close attention to the living problems of the poor. His project theme is a series of transformation of local slums when he went to Africa to teach as a volunteer. In order to help local residents, Liao not only transformed their living space, but also considered how to improve their lives from the perspective of humanistic care. (Click for details: His experience of teaching in Africa helped him win the Grand Slam Award for Landscape Design ）

His design revolves around a series of discussions on social problems, including how to provide them with some employment opportunities and medical services through social assistance, hoping to fundamentally solve the survival problems of residents.

The two cases of Zhang and Liao both selected the problems concerned by the society and the public, but they solved the problems from their own personal experience and understanding of the residents, and explored the value of architectural design to the society through their own design.

02. Interdisciplinary experimental projects

We constantly emphasize that "interdisciplinary" is the trend of the development of all art majors and the teaching focus of overseas art colleges. Of course, "architectural landscape" is no exception. Students should also jump out of the category of "architecture" when choosing portfolio projects and try to combine multiple materials and disciplines.

Lee gained the favor of AA and UCL through a variety of "interdisciplinary" attempts in themes and materials in the creation of the portfolio project. One of her project works was inspired by the expression in the book Folding Beijing by Hao Jingfang, a writer, "Beijing with different spaces and different strata can be built like a 'Transformers folded city', but also 'has a more solemn sense of reality'". （ She is Cool Girl who won the offer of AA Architecture Alliance and UCL University College London ）

Lee took this as the theme and clue to explore the creation, so as to build a dystopian fantasy world. In this project, the social structure is endowed with class level logic - society is divided into the upper class, the middle class and the bottom class, and the urban landscape and social resources enjoyed by each class are separated by different "gateways".

When the society is divided into different classes, there will naturally be various contradictions. These contradictions are discussed in the works: social resources at different levels, contradictions within the class, resource distribution problems

In the process of creating the collection of works of the Architectural Space Department, Lee expressed an anti Utopian abstract city concept with a concrete landscape plan. She used this form to interpret her idea of "folding city".

This is a huge experimental project. The project itself has certain difficulties: "three layers of society" and "three layers of class". These relationships are intertwined. How to sort out these relationships and express them in a coherent and closely connected way with specific landscape architecture schemes is actually very difficult.

In terms of theme creation, Lee has a broad dimension that most students do not have. In model making, Lee The students also showed her extremely meticulous side, never letting go of any detail, and constantly considered each link of creation, especially in the use of materials, they were more cautious, and repeatedly conducted many material experiments to explore the creative effects of different materials.

The following pictures may be taken as live pictures, but they are not! These are the details of the model that Lee and the students majoring in illustration have completed through cross-border cooperation. Every detail has achieved an amazing degree.

Such a rich and multi-layered theme, of course, also needs the same rich and organized visual creation to show. Materials are the media and carrier of creation, which can make your creation more layered and deep, especially the use of some special materials and comprehensive materials, which can highlight the characteristics of the work.

Different materials have different personalities. They have different emotions and characteristics. The combination of various materials can make the model more specific and realistic. Therefore, in the process of Lee's project creation, the teacher not only guided her to explore the theme and sort out the scheme, but also constantly emphasized the exploration and application of various materials in the expression of the scheme. The application of comprehensive materials can not only broaden artistic inspiration and conceptual thinking, but also broaden creative direction and expression forms.

03. Practice from scratch

It is generally believed that one of the reasons for the great difficulty of the architectural space collection is that the project is difficult to land. For one thing, due to the limitation of time and space, there is no way to conduct large-scale project site selection and more detailed field research. For another thing, the "architectural space" professional collection projects are generally large and need to refer to many factors, It is often difficult to really implement.

The students' cases have brought us solutions to participate in competitions or practice projects. There are many international competitions under each branch of the design category. They have prepared many practical projects for students, including detailed background and project research, and even the opportunity of field visits;

In addition, sometimes it may not be an individual competition, and it needs to be completed together with the team. Such experience can not only improve cooperation ability, but also provide a good opportunity for interdisciplinary attempts. In addition, if you have the experience of competing and winning prizes, it can also make the school more sure of your professional ability.

Natural light has been actively providing students with competition opportunities and competition information, such as the First International Art Student Global Design Award ArtOne Awards, Natural light × One Show, Natural light tasting cup, and so on.

Xiaoxiong's works include many competition projects. One of them is a city reconstruction design around the river. The site of this project is the St. Charles River in Quebec. There are many residential areas, schools, historic sites and supporting commercial areas nearby. （ An exclusive interview with urban design art students from AA Architectural Alliance College. How can urban design works get an AA offer? ）

But there are many problems here, such as the aging and backward infrastructure, which cannot meet the basic needs of people's lives; The design of the river bank is too rigid, resulting in a clear separation between the river bank and the city; There are not enough parking spaces around, so there is not enough traffic around.

Xiaoxiong's design mainly focuses on green space, parking spaces, activities and other areas. He hopes to bring about the biggest changes with the smallest changes, so as to integrate the river bank and the city. He also considered the economic cost in his design. Only by transforming the green plants along the river, the landscape can bring different visual feelings with the changes of the four seasons. He also hoped that citizens can use the river bank to stimulate the vitality of the river bank.

In addition to the works of the competition can be included in the collection, natural light also provides students with a variety of landscape practice projects. For example, in the summer design and construction workshop for three consecutive years, from the shelter 1.0 and the shelter 2.0 to this year's STUDIO DOOO, natural light has always led students to challenge public welfare building projects based on natural and rural contexts with the wisdom of different disciplines.

Now the achievements of the shelter 1.0 and the shelter 2.0 have become the most practical place for local herdsmen to rest. The students who participated in the project also experienced a practical process of implementing the ideal design on the drawings, and gained satisfaction and satisfaction after giving back the society with the design. And these personally experienced projects can also let the admissions officer see our unique creativity when they are put into the work collection.

04. Replace design renderings with research reports

The architectural space department requires students to have rigorous logic and rational thinking. In order to reflect this feature in our works, we can not only pass the complete design scheme, but also through Research. As we all know, research is of great importance in architectural space, and as a work collection project, research needs us to carry out specific questions and thinking throughout the whole process.

The third project in Xiaoxiong's work collection is a research similar to the research report. The research direction is about ethnic minorities' living tribes. The whole project is a demonstration of the research method of a site. The project site is located in the Stone City in the north of Lijiang, a primitive tribe of the Naxi nationality. The whole city is built on a very steep rock. This cultural feature and uniqueness particularly attract students majoring in landscape architecture.

During the research, Xiao Xiong also brought some questions, such as how did the ancestors here find this place and how did they settle here? Why is Stone City divided into inner city and outer city? Why is there only one exit and one entrance in the inner city?

In addition, Xiaoxiong felt that the first impression of the site was the most accurate and true, so he recorded a lot of sketches at the same time of his research, and recorded all the places of interest with sketches, which can also help people quickly understand the site.

Xiao Xiong is not an example. Liao's works also include a complete project of research. He analyzes the geographical factors behind the current situation of ethnic migration. He analyzes the reasons for its formation, as well as historical and cultural elements that affect architecture based on the complex terrain and environment in southern China.

　　 Today's summary:

In the cases of the above students, we summarized four commonalities in their work collections and learning process:

　　 Social topics with cultural characteristics

Social topics highly integrated with cultural characteristics have always been the focus of art schools, not only AA Architectural Alliance College or UCL University College London Many art schools also pay attention to this type of topic all the year round.

　　 Interdisciplinary experimental projects

Many students will ask me this question in the process of consultation and learning: Is it difficult for the major of architectural space department to achieve interdisciplinary? Is it difficult to combine my alley renovation project with clothing design? Or do you want to integrate my space layout into pure art?

First of all, from the cases of the above students, the major of architectural space is not interdisciplinary. Even when you are skillfully interdisciplinary, the project will be more glorious. However, as we have always stressed, we should not force interdisciplinary for the sake of interdisciplinary. We must admit that the major of Architectural Space Department does emphasize logic and rational thinking. Compared with other forms of art design, the research conducted by the architectural space department is often highly "cyclical". A seemingly simple landscape or building sometimes has a service life of several years or even decades behind it.

Therefore, the architectural space department needs careful logic and rational thinking first, and then interdisciplinary. For example, we saw the case of Lee today. She used Folding in Beijing as the blueprint for creative creation. When we encounter such creative projects, we can properly combine other disciplines to achieve interdisciplinary, Lee has combined modeling with pure art sculpture.

　　 Practice from scratch

The projects of the architectural space department are often "grand", so compared with other disciplines, we will encounter such a problem for a long time - it is difficult for the project to be implemented, and it is difficult to carry out the real realization. However, this does not mean that your project can "act recklessly". In the portfolio projects of the above students, we can see "difficult projects", but each student has also used highly professional data or models for "real restoration".

　　 Replace design renderings with research reports

For the architectural space department, there is no doubt about the importance of research. When we create disciplines that emphasize rational thinking, we need to conduct in-depth research on social issues, human relations, modern society and art history. Only works of art based on strong knowledge reserves can stand the scrutiny and test. In addition, the research report, as a complete set of project works, is different from the research of other projects. It is not only based on the records of the cultural background, geographical conditions and other backgrounds of the project site, but also reflects the process of doing experiments with thinking questions. In the process, visual expression is also essential, The final result is a valuable human geography report.

What should be displayed in the collection of architectural space? Today, natural light has analyzed and summarized AA and UCL cases for everyone, hoping to help you create your architectural space works collection. In addition, if you want to know more details about colleges and universities and majors, please come to natural light for free consultation.

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