Manchester school of Architecture application portfolio

I'm currently in year 12 and am planning on applying to Manchester university for architecture (Manchester school of architecture), and they require a portfolio of both your independent art work and a set of work produced from a brief they give you.
Can anyone who has gone through this process at Manchester or another uni give me advice around the types of drawings they put in their portfolio, and if i should start preparing for it in year 12?

Reply 1

Anonymous #1

Original post by george06

I got an offer from MSA for 2023 entry and they asked me for a portfolio and a small writing task. Most other top unis for Architecture will want a portfolio as well.

In the portfolio you can use both independent and school/college work. A lot of unis like to see your thought process and your ability to express yourself in different media, so a final portfolio can have a huge range of different things in them. It would definitely be smart to start a few art pieces or projects in Year 12 so that you have a strong foundation of high quality work to show.

If you still want to know more, a few unis will have guides on what makes a good portfolio (I definitely know that UCL has one here: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/bartlett/architecture/how-apply-undergraduate-study). There are also a few Manchester portfolios published online that you can look at as well.

Reply 2

sunanon

Since Manchester ask for a portfolio in the form of a blogpost, there are loads of existing blogs still floating around the internet that you can find.
My advice is to create a folder on your PC of well-photographed/scanned/edited pieces that you are confident about, then use these images for each of the portfolios you are asked to create. Include your best pieces in all of them, at the start. Universities ask for drastically different sizes of portfolios (Cambridge asked for 5 as opposed to Cardiff's 10) so put less confident pieces in those longer portfolios towards the end. Overall I would aim to show an eye for proportion (particularly drawing from life), an interest in architecture/urbanism, a varied range of mediums (3D, painting, sketching, collage etc.) and different themes.