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TSR Architecture Society Thread

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can't remember who was the one who has an interview at oxford brookes on 18th but can you send me the email address on the letter please, i've gone and lost it! have decided to withdraw my application but there's a deadline so mucho appreciated

x

Reply 421

tiny_nina

i think some of these courses may be to arty for me??? well any way i finally got my manchester letter..... i have 3 weeks (same time 1 AS retake and an A2 exam, driving test and my F1 competition final) as you may see im stressed.....

The things it asks for is random.. well not random but i need ideas?
- Emotional/aesthetic response to the subjecy
- DIsplay understanding of form

i am not the best drawer im more of a computer graphics person :s-smilie:

hmm any ideas?

Reply 422

mrcheese

tiny_nina

hmm any ideas?

Eesh, you sound busy...

If you have time, you could do a short project studying how a certain type of architecture uses form and aethetics to create an emotional responce.

I suppose you could do classical architecture, as they use mathamatical proportionality in their forms to create a certain responce. Things like murals, statues and ornate decorations also create responces, as well as certain awe inspiring forms like the large dome hall. Church forms in this sense might be interesting...

I dunno if this is what they're after, just some ideas :smile:

Reply 423

larchitecturel

Its ridiculous how uni's expect you to do a whole project for them at this time of year... btw what does your project ask you to do? Make a model ? or can you take it whichever way you like ie. drawings, paintings ?

Someone i know has applied for an arts foundation at manchester and they asked them to do a project, its on a word of their choosing about the weather ie. hot and the do a project on that.

Manchester seems to like giving extra workloads.

Reply 424

ru88erduckee

eh? i got the exact same letter and all i did was send off three pieces for each category
for emotional response i sent off:
a photo of a collage i had done on dogs being skinned alive
monoprint manipulated using photoshop on loneliness in a crowd
a blue square in the middle of the page and said that it represented my family hahah

and for form:
primary photo of a corridor
a watercolour of a woman with her legs apart displaying everything haha
and a primary photo of waitrose =P

and if i can get an offer a week later with that, then i'm pretty sure you can get away with anythin :wink:

good luck with it ! x

Reply 425

mrcheese

hey,

Have been reading an architecture course costs handbook, which i assume is applicable to most unis.

It says an average annual materials costs of around £300, which is ok. It also says, however, that a lap top will be required to run design and architectural programmes, and that in order to cope with these programmes, a price range of around £1500 is suggested...

Is this accurate? cus it seems a lot to me, though i know nothing about computor specs and ram and hardrives and all that. Worst comes to worst i can sell my car ( :bawling:

worked hard for that) to get most of the money.

Can any current archi students recommend a good lap top for architectural purposes? What ones do you have,how much were they?

Any help would be great thanks :biggrin:

Reply 426

larchitecturel

Where did you read this mr cheese ?

Reply 427

mrcheese

the cambridge course website

link

Reply 428

jrhartley

mrcheese

I reckon in the first term alone I've spent around £500+ on materials and probably another couple of hundred+ on books. Materials cost of £300 sounds very light - in our last project, one group spent £80 on balsa wood alone. Bear in mind your drawing board will cost around £100 straight away.

Laptop is pretty important, and you'll want to get something that will go the course with you, which means buying something pretty much top end as of now - I would have thought £1000-£1300 should be fine. Dell Outlet is always a good place to look - I got a Dell Inspiron 9200 widescreen with 2gb RAM there for an OK price. Bear in mind you'll start off using things like SketchUp, Photoshop which require some memory and a good graphics card, but then over time you'll be using Autocad, vectorworks, allplan, the like which are very RAM hungry. We were told that a laptop wasn't necessary in the first year here, but I'd have been sunk if I didn't have one - manipulating large A1 photoshop boards on one of the dept. pcs would have been too much for my patience I think. Hard drive is also important, but you can always buy large usb2.0 external 2.5" drives at around £100 for 100gb, so its less important than the ram spec which always costs a fortune to upgrade and the graphics card. widescreen is obviously useful as you will be working with images.

my advice would be not to buy one yet - wait until August, just before you start, and then have a look at the outlet stores and for the bargains. that way you've got something right up to date as you start. Make sure you give yourself enough time to install all the graphics software that you might need before you get to uni though, as you'll probably find that the firewalls block p2p software, if you were thinking of going down that route....

Reply 429

larchitecturel

I was thinking of getting an average laptop... maybe second hand for say the first year or two and then get a top end one after... my reason for this is coz I'll probably wont use it to its full potential, in the first year anyway ie. getting used to programs etc. and we all know how fast technology progresses ... What do you peeps think ?

Reply 430

The Albatross

laptops are really slow for doing graphics stuff like photoshop. some of my friends have them and they find it a real issue for graphics processing. I have a desktop and its sooo quick i love it!

Reply 431

Praddles

Get a good laptop/desktop with pretty high specs - you're going to need it right from the start.

Also, I have a desktop too. Makes life much easier when it comes to upgrading, etc..

Reply 432

jrhartley

scarlet ibis

laptops are really slow for doing graphics stuff like photoshop. some of my friends have them and they find it a real issue for graphics processing. I have a desktop and its sooo quick i love it!

mine ain't! kicks ass, faster than any of the desktops we've got at the department. radeon 9700 graphics, 2gb RAM, centrino m, 2.0ghz. best thing is to be able to take it to studio to work and with me on holidays without needing a truck to move it.

Reply 433

mrcheese

Thanks everyone and thanks JR Hartley :smile:

Will hold off for a while then. So I'm looking for something with good Ram and graphics card and big screen, as opposed to disk space, which i can get more separately if i run out...

Reply 434

Absinthe

scarlet ibis

laptops are really slow for doing graphics stuff like photoshop. some of my friends have them and they find it a real issue for graphics processing. I have a desktop and its sooo quick i love it!

I have a Mac laptop (a basic PowerBook which set me back £1,500 but the latest models are much faster now for the same price...just upgraded the memory) it's absolutely brilliant at dealing with programs such as Photoshop.

Problem with Macs though is their software compatibility - I dunno if there's a SketchUp for Mac or AutoCAD (though I've not really looked).

tiny_nina: for my Manchester app I sent off two pieces of life drawing, a digital painting of a blue jay, an inked Escher-type symmetrical piece, a vectored poster done in Illustrator, and a couple of random drawings of buildings in different media. I can't remember which groups I placed them in, though. I'm better at computer-type stuff as well.

I got a conditional offer today (just checked Track, huzzah!) from Manchester so I don't think you will find it too difficult, and good luck!

Reply 435

Praddles

jrhartley

That's because you splashed out on a top line laptop.. :p:

--------------

Absinthe

Half the people on my course have a Mac. You can get Sketchup 5 for the Mac too :smile:

Reply 436

Absinthe

Prad

Half the people on my course have a Mac. You can get Sketchup 5 for the Mac too :smile:

Yay! that's good to hear. I bought it because I do a lot of graphics work anyway, and it's perfect for that. :biggrin:

Reply 437

larchitecturel

We have a few macs in college and i can stand the single buttoned mouse, drives me insane... but saying that the are so aesthetically pleasing...

What are the pros and cons of having a mac ?

Reply 438

jrhartley

larchitecturel

We have a few macs in college and i can stand the single buttoned mouse, drives me insane... but saying that the are so aesthetically pleasing...

What are the pros and cons of having a mac ?

cons - every single apple component is made by apple - apple don't do "open-source" components. it breaks - apple has to fix it. you want to upgrade, you have to buy apple parts. in other words $$$.

software - less widely available for mac over pc. different in capability between pc and mac now virtually 0 for cad and graphics. apple moving to intel chips soon, so if you do want to buy a mac, wait a year and you'll be able to run xp on it if you want as well as os x.

i don't want to get into the pc vs. apple debate here as everyone has their own rationale for buying one or the other. my personal opinion is that they historically were strong in the graphics department, ad agencies, med-ya, and so people associate them with cool. plus they make a lot of effort with the ergonomics and their advertising. you need to decide how important image is vs. the higher cost for similar spec and difficulties with upgrades. i once, to my mind, made the mistake of buying an apple cube. it was delivered and didn't even work out the box. i called apple and said i wanted my money back, they said no, were generally v. unhelpful and only gave me a refund when i threatened legal proceedings in earnest. not the sort of co i want to deal with. a friend who is massively computer savvy in hk constantly wants to get into apple, has bought about 3 in his life, but keeps going back to pc. our it staff at cardiff are very reluctant to support mac, you are encouraged to go pc if you're coming here.

Reply 439

adpowis1

Hi I'm new to the forum, year 13 and going to uni for Architecture later this year. Thought I'd better give the other side of the Mac/PC discussion.

I have a 14" iBook G4 1.42GHz (processor speeds are not comparable with PCs, by the way, because they are so different); I switched from a PC last year. It's great because of all the things that it just does straight out of the OS, simple things like disc burning or dashboard, and all the useful hardware that's there, like bluetooth or the scrolling trackpad. From a design point of view they look cool but that's not what they're about, I think they're about acheiving the best possible, most innovative, ergonomic interface. Apple just aren't scared to do something different, because it's what people know them for.

The OS seems, to me, infinitely superior to Windows for the user interface/features/speed etc. and is also very well designed. The iLife software is a definite highlight - great programs for photo, movie editing, sound production, dvd authoring etc. all free with your system. The Mac platform overall seems better suited to working with mutimedia. And I also use iWork (Pages and Keynote) - an alternative to Office for word processing and presentations with far more style than MS and better for when you want to use media in your documents. Pages is more of a hybrid of Word and Publisher - great program.

I've never had a problem with not being able to run software I wanted, and in fact there's a lot of stuff I have (free stuff) that my PC-using friends are jealous they can't have. For Architecture it seems like the Mac programs to use are Photoshop, SketchUp and Vectorworks - which all run natively.

I've also never had a problem with compatability - because the Apple programs import and export nearly anything, including MS Office files/PDFs/photoshop etc.

As for price, yeah the hardware is not cheap but compared with other high-end equipment it is all quite similar. You should all check out the NUS Apple store via the NUS website for hefty student discounts (got ~£150 off my iBook). And when buying software the prices drop - iWork for example is £35, waaay below MS office.

I have yet to see how it will cope with next year, but I can't see myself going back and I can't imagine why anyone would. Apple released a whole load of new stuff today so go check that out if your interested. The new MacBook Pro looks aaaaawwweesssoooommmee. I want one.

And sorry to hear about your troubles with your cube - I've only ever had great service from Apple.

Oh the single button thing - you just hold ctrl and click, or buy a mighty mouse, which are now standard for iMacs and have plently of buttons.

Wow big long post, sorry, I have lots of opinions.

-Anthony