Icebreaker – My journey to masters

My name is Joe, I’m in my final year of study for my masters of architecture, since I was young I was always interested in humanitarian subjects like art and history but also analytical pursuits such as math and physics. I come from an area in the north-west of England called Brindle, it is a small village mostly filled with agriculture, because of this whenever I would visit a city it was a big deal, I was inspired by the huge grand buildings and the dense urban fabric. As I grew older, and the subjects narrowed at school, architecture eventually emerged as a middle ground for all my combined interests.

I completed by undergraduate studies at Coventry university, finishing in 2019, I then decided to go travelling for a few months and by the time I had finished a portfolio and was ready to apply for jobs Covid happened, quickly putting a stop to those plans. In early 2021 I landed a job as an assistant site manager on a large scale construction project, although this didn’t work out in the end it did give me the motivation to return to architecture. Shortly after I got a job at a medium sized architecture practice close to my parents home, I worked there for around 18 months, specializing in technical drawings for large scale residential developments. In early 2023 I moved to another practice and found myself doing everything I hadn’t been able to do in my previous role. I was able to actually design for a change.

Why I’m doing an Urban design module:

I began my March studies in September 2023, and was immediately asked to choose an additional module to study. I choose Urban Design because I believe that the surrounding context a building inhabits on the outside is just as important it’s inside. One of the core criticisms of the modernist movement is that architecture of the international style no longer has any connection with its environment, which is something I personally want to avoid in my career. A quote by Norman Foster, sums this up nicely “everything we design is a response to the specific climate and culture of a particular place”, however unfortunately this isn’t the case most of the time. So by choosing this elective the hope is that it will give me a better understanding of the discipline.

In-between my first and second year of masters, I completed an international exchange year at the university of Lisbon in Portugal. Living in the city for a year was a truly amazing experience, and allowed me to explore a completely different urban fabric, with a different history and a different rhythm to life. I was amazed by the densely packed streets of the old town, the grand avenues and squares of the city centre near the river, the sprawling new areas that spread in all directions across the steep terrain and the complex system of public transport that link them all. My time had a very profound effect on me, and will no doubt effect my view of both architecture and urban design going forward.