After ten weeks of my independent learning experience, I've reached what seems like a fair stopping point for my design project. The objective was to create a design for the rehabilitation of the building located at 3325 6th Avenue in Troy, New York. There are still a lot of things that aren't developed, but I've done the work that I think is reasonable for an independent designer.
Ultimately, I'm happy with the amount of work I've been able to complete, especially without any consultation from other students or a design professor. This has been the first major architectural design project that I've worked on alone in a whole year, and I had some difficulty with making design decisions and producing deliverables while being the only person to hold myself accountable. At the same time, it's been a bit of a relief, after a year of uploading files to digital drives accessible by my peers, to not have to wait for others to be able to get done with their work in order to do mine.
When I had my first opportunity to conceptualize a re-design of this building during the summer of 2020, I went in with not much vision for what to do with the space, and a lot of guiding influence from my professor and a studio design partner. We completed the project in only about 6 weeks, and what we ended up with likely stretched the limit of what we could do with the space. In my opinion, we tried to do too much with it. This time around, I did my best to make more measured design decisions that didn't put the building's structure and foundation at risk.
Since my last update about the design of this project, I've learned a lot about how to work in Revit. The majority of my practice has been working with designing new component families and editing structures in preset Revit wall types. I've had to make a lot of custom windows for this project, which has resulted in me wishing I knew a lot more about window construction than I do now.
I started using Revit in high school, and was taught how to use it again during college, but I've learned so much more working on my own over the past few months than I have through school. Giving myself the time to explore the tools provided in that program, with plenty of assistance from online tutorials and forums, helped me to actually start to develop understanding on top of basic ability. I'm sure that I still have plenty more to learn, and I hope to continue using Revit in a way that I can keep developing skill. In particular, I'd like to get better with setting up renderings. I've spent years relying on a combination of V-Ray for Rhino and photoshop, and I know that those tools won't always be available to me in the future.
I think it's been beneficial for me to use my "free time" (read: time that I was required to be mentally active and focused) to learn new skills that are going to benefit me once I enter the workplace in the future. I took a break at the end of the fall semester from doing anything architecturally driven, and if I'm being honest, the off-time left me extremely bored. I'm glad that I gave myself the task of working through an architectural design project. This past year was the first time that I didn't have a summer break, and at this point, I'm not sure how to go more than a few weeks without either exercising my creativity or falling into a slump. While the past ten weeks haven't felt completely like a creative exercise, I definitely feel like I haven't been mentally sedentary, even though some weeks have proven difficult to get through.
For other students at RPI who intend to do an ILE, I'd recommend designing a project that both benefits you in the future and that you enjoy. I definitely wouldn't have felt motivated to do this project if it wasn't something that I was interested in doing. I also recommend starting early, setting a good pace for yourself, and taking time to document everything you've been working on by keeping a log of how much you do each day. Setting yourself up for success by working whenever you feel capable and keeping track of your progress are both good ways to make sure that the later parts of the semester are easier for you. Personally, I intend to spend the next few weeks applying for jobs, not worrying about my reflection that's due at the end of the semester, and trying to keep myself busy so that my mom stops asking me to redesign the house as compensation for my degree.
In order to avoid using language that alters the standard hypothetical of care, I'm not going to say that my project is completed. Instead, I find it appropriate to say that I've reached what seems like a reasonable conclusion for the purposes of my educational pursuits with the design of 3325 6th Avenue. To see how the project is turned out, see the document attached.