Today, the natural light brings you the share of students applying for British architecture, Sunmeng Students, spent 6 months creating a collection of overseas works of architectural design, completed a magnificent transformation of people and works, and received offers from 7 universities, including Edinburgh University, Sheffield University, Nottingham University, Liverpool University, Manchester University, Bath University and Cardiff University.
Sunmeng's high level of self-awareness and self-discipline enabled her to start planning for the "future" as soon as possible, which was really the determination to pursue the dream school. Instead of stopping at the status quo, she chose to work with natural light to bridge the "gap" between Chinese and Western art education. In this "heavy" transcript, we can also see the rigorous design logic and preliminary planning, How to connect the rich design achievements of four years, and how to cause the qualitative change of "beauty" finally!
Sunmeng's overseas works collection of architectural design:
01. Start with love and not end with the gap with dreams
Sunmeng is a very well planned student. She majored in architecture as her undergraduate. Soon after she entered the university, she made clear her love for architecture and made up her mind early Studying abroad in architectural design Determination.
Because the goal was set early, during the four years of study, Sunmeng carefully completed each course task, accumulated a solid professional foundation, and also gained a set of rich architectural works.
At the same time, she has also selected a target school for herself. She believes that architecture is a very integrated major, and she is more willing to study in comprehensive universities. And because she likes the UK, she has finally set her goal at several famous comprehensive schools in the UK.
However, as the research gradually deepened, she also gradually found that because of the differences between the Chinese and Western art education systems, her investigation points for many target universities were relatively weak, and her current collection of works was not enough to meet the requirements of the universities, so she needed to seek more professional help.
The rigorous Sunmeng student finally chose natural light after several selections, and then asked Sunmeng why she chose natural light so firmly, because she understood that the course system of natural light directly linked to the overseas art education model, and the teacher could clearly point out the problems in her original works during the first consultation, This also strengthened her determination to pursue the dream school.

02. The process of pursuing dream school is to defeat "weakness" one by one
Before coming to the natural light, Sunmeng knew that there was a gap between the original collection of works and the goal, but it was not clear where the gap was and how to change it. I believe that many DIY students share this feeling - we know where the end of our efforts is, but the road to the goal is very tortuous.

Fortunately, the professional teacher pointed out the problem for Sunmeng with her years of coaching experience. After carefully evaluating her portfolio, the professional teacher listed the following three points:
1. Serious disconnection between design concept and design results;
2. The design logic is not clear enough;
3. The beauty of project renderings is poor;
Knowing the problem, the next step is to develop a curriculum plan based on how to overcome "weaknesses". Because Sunmeng's professional foundation is very solid, that is, hand drawing ability, software skills and art theory foundation, our curriculum plan directly skips this part, starting from the design thinking that overseas colleges and universities attach most importance to.
03. Take the preliminary investigation and analysis chart of each project seriously
In response to the first question, the reason why Sunmeng's architectural design overseas works show the current situation of inconsistent design concepts and results is that, like many students receiving art education in China, she did not realize the importance of research, so she would first complete the design drawings and then go back and "put together" the research and analysis drawings, The final result is inconsistent.
As we constantly emphasize, architecture is a very rigorous discipline, and true and comprehensive research and analysis are indispensable, which will directly affect the rationality and completion of the final design results. Therefore, according to the current situation of Sunmeng students, the professional teacher put forward a "strict" requirement. She needs to complete no less than 20 different analysis charts for each set of works.

At first, Sunmeng had some complaints. She thought that so much research and analysis could not be used in the collection of works. But later, she was very grateful to the professional teacher who proposed this task, because in the follow-up process, she constantly felt that a good early analysis had a strong positive impact on the later design deepening.
The training advantage can be best reflected in her collection of architectural design works going abroad is her first work. This set of works is a course assignment she completed in her junior year. The goal of the project is to rebuild an old building located in Xingning District, Nanning, Guangxi, China.

This site is close to the railway station. It is a densely populated area, and it is very old. Old and crowded are all the information Sunmeng learned before. But later, in the process of her re investigation, she learned another important clue. Because of historical problems, these buildings are not owned by the government but also by local residents. So if the area needs to be renovated, the most important thing is to obtain the consent of residents first.
In the subsequent design process, Sunmeng students continued to go to the project site, survey the terrain and understand the needs of local residents. Finally, she combined them into the form of "stack" according to the three directions of residents, green space and public space. At the same time, she created a connection between the combination according to the current situation to realize the real circulation of people and resources.
04. Design logic is the basis for connecting all efforts
The design logic is not clear enough. The most obvious point in Sunmeng's works is that the typesetting process is chaotic and people cannot clearly understand the project intent. This is actually a very "fatal" weakness for the review process of overseas art schools.
The approach taken by professional teachers to solve this problem is to first ask her to make a list of all design ideas and concepts in words. Through her record results, the teacher helps her to do the first round of screening together and extract effective information.

Finally, these extracted points are used for one-to-one visual language conversion. Although the workload increased a lot, it helped Sunmeng establish a very clear design process, and directly improved the problem of "incomprehension" of her portfolio.
The second project in Sunmeng's work collection is a renovation project of a large site, which is a 100 meter high, 25 storey high-rise building. Because of its large scale, it involves many links and design priorities, which is a process that tests the logic of designers.
This commercial residential building is also one of the representative landmarks of Nanning. Many companies and government departments have chosen this area as their workplace, and a large number of residents live here. It was also because of the large number of people that accelerated the aging of the building. At that time, the harmony with the overall environment was not taken into account when building, which led to some incompatibility with the large square in front of the building.
Therefore, even people who work and live here do not really integrate into this natural environment. So in this project, Sunmeng first divided the floors. The ground floor area is mainly connected with the urban green space through the external square and street corners.
In the high-rise area, she selected three floors, the 8th floor, the 14th floor and the top floor, to design three vertical landscape spaces respectively, and in the overall architectural appearance, she selected high reflection black glass and transparent glass to enhance the visual contrast.
05. Take each small step seriously and finally lead to qualitative change of "beauty"
In fact, how to improve the beauty of the third point is a problem that Sunmeng realized at the beginning, but Portfolio Coaching The professional teacher told her that no matter the renderings and typesetting, they did not use too many tricks, and we need to slowly improve according to the process of the project itself.
In the follow-up process, the teacher led Sunmeng students to discuss the form of expression for many times and consult a large number of reference materials. The final method is to highlight the style and personality of each design project by using color and layout, and finally grasp the coordination on the whole to develop the most suitable style.
There is a project in Sunmeng's work collection, and even for the sake of overall harmony, many original detailed design drawings are deleted, focusing on the depiction of the overall effect drawings.
This project is a theater on Sunmeng's undergraduate campus. Sunmeng formed a band when she was at school. This theater is her usual place for road shows. Because this place is more emotional sustenance for Sunmeng students, the teacher also suggested that this project should start from the emotional point of view and appropriately reduce the functional transformation.
In the final design plan, Sunmeng extended an outdoor stage according to the original space of the theater, and designed two ponds around the stage as the main landscape, corresponding to the lake.
There are not many parts of the whole project for building reconstruction, but the key point is how to present Sunmeng's emotional factors through the renderings. As we said above, Sunmeng's hand painting and software foundation are very solid, so it just magnifies her advantages in this aspect in this project.
Today, the natural light brings you Sunmeng's overseas works collection of architectural design. In six months, we received seven offers from British universities. In the process of Sunmeng's study, the key to the beginning and the final outcome of everything is to develop a plan "and" establish logic ". It is no doubt Sunmeng has set a firm goal for himself, It was the teacher of natural light who helped her rebuild the learning process of "planning" and "logic". It was precisely because of this highly trusted partner relationship that Sunmeng students walked so firmly in the learning process step by step. Finally, six months of hard work led Sunmeng and her collection to experience a magnificent transformation!
Natural light shares more topics for you:
What are the requirements for the portfolio of British architectural schools?
This article belongs to the original article of Natural Light International Art Education Team. Without permission, it cannot be reproduced commercially in any form. If it is found, it must be investigated for legal responsibility.