This project has been, in truth, a struggle, with issues including defining a suitable scope, let alone an anchor of interest. Despite that, we’re here, at the final critical review of the second year of the masters course, and quite possibly the last academic critical review that I’ll be facing (as a student). Frankly, if the last project of the M.Arch didn’t try to break you, as my classmates in undergrad would say (with perhaps an admittedly sardonic undertone) “are you even trying?”.

On Friday we had our interim crit for our final project. It may sound odd to say, but its all feeling very real at this point, that we only have 7 weeks until our final review, and we submit our portfolio the following week. There is still a lot of work to be done, but the guidance I received on Friday was incredibly helpful and helped me focus on what next steps need to be taken. Also, apologies if anyone at the pub last night was taken aback by my sudden silent departure - once my fatigue hits a certain level, my mood shifts like a circuit breaker and I just need to get the hell out.

Yesterday we had the final crit for our semester one project, and it was great to see more guest critics again, as well as several projects pinned up (concern regarding printing costs not withstanding). Fortunately, the feedback I received for the project thus far was incredibly positive, although the overriding advice at this stage was to hone in more on the micro level, the personal interactions that users of this particular infrastructure may experience at all levels (incorporating thoughts regarding greater accessibility as well).

We had the interim crit for the first phase of our year-long project on Friday, and whilst the tutors and guest were happy enough with what I presented, one of the main (and wholly understandable) points they raised was that the body of work so far is incredibly dry: throw in some collage, or something!

We had our first crit of the year on Friday 15th, which was the culmination of the introductory group project (myself, Keerthigan Thavaseelan and Rebecca Alexander). This year the project centred around the idea of relocating the Herbert Reed Gallery (currently re-purposed as a teaching studio) to somewhere within Canterbury.

And just like that, we’re nearly at the end of the first year of the Master’s programme. We have our final crit of the year today, followed by two weeks to polish and finalise our portfolios prior to submission.

We had our interim crit for Project 02 (which is more like Project 01 Part 2) on Friday 16th. Having watched another tutor group’s presentations the day before, I realised that I was rusty when it came to project presentations (as I’d only WIP drawings to show, no visuals etc). In part, it is because I learnt the hard way in undergraduate that it is far quicker, and as I’ve found, more useful to rapidly iterate in 2D first, moving to 3D modelling after.

We had our final crit of the first phase of the project today, and my feedback was predominantly as expected (to sum - still missing some of my workings, oh how maths teachers of old would be rolling their eyes). However, these are missing due to my continued troubleshooting of how best to diagrammatically represent them, rather than because I’m being lazy!

We have our first critical review tomorrow for the project, and my biggest concern is whether I have managed to string together a coherent argument for my research direction. I’ve been pulling at a lot of threads over the past 4 weeks, my brain is fried, and I worry that I’ve overstretched and still have a too abstract approach to it. I’ve uploaded what I plan to present tomorrow, and it is shown below.