UM School of Architecture Story

Walking out of the studio at 6 a.m. bleary eyed and barely beating exhaustion every single day is what many students think of architecture kids.
That’s a myth. It doesn’t happen all the time.

Architecture students have late nights but so do other college students. In architecture, those late nights just happen all together in the studio versus Club Richter.

“The worst project was last semester when I had 7 hours of sleep in 5days,” said junior Ashley Drake. “And only one of those hours were on a real bed. The rest were either on one of our studio tables or in between two stools.”

Sleep deprivation is the most extreme the week before the project is due. The architecture program is based on long-term assignments. These projects are usually done with a partner and are based on real life scenarios.

“Right now, the third year is working on a maritime museum at Bicentennial Park,” said junior Lauren Toribio. “I think that creating a museum is an interesting program and very exciting to work on.”

Each year works on a different real world project. Other grades are working cafes in South Beach and a Children's Hospital in Richmond, VA. Almost all of the work is done in studio and they get assigned a workspace for the year. The atmosphere lends itself well to bonding and having fun to blow off steam late nights.

“We all do weird things to make our workspace to make it our own,” said freshman Derek Naddaff. “Everyone's space seems to get plastered in the several weird inside jokes we come up with during the late nights in the studio.”

The projects themselves are done in stages and they accrue many professor critiques before the final pin-up. During the early stages of the project is when most of the students get the most sleep.

“We start by designing shape ideas for the overall project, called a parti,” said freshman Ally Findeiss. “Beginning of a project I don't spend much time, more towards the end it speeds up with corrections and changing the design.”

Every college student pulls off all-nighters at one point in their college careers. Architecture students just have them with a higher frequency than most. So, when you see a mass of tired kids walking around in pj bottoms, with messy hair, and the architecture shirt, then you know it has to be close to the due date.


This story was written for the 2011 Ibis Yearbook, the yearbook will be printed and distributed in the Fall 2011 semester.