An Architecture School Applicant’s Guide to Portfolio Design

12) PAUSING vs PRESENTING:

Graphic representation is key to a successful architecture school portfolio, and “Pausing” is key to a good graphic representation. 

How you visually synthesize your portfolio can mean the difference between a successful and a failed portfolio. Your presentation demonstrates your understanding of your ability to express things graphically. Good graphic representation of your projects allows you to mask the weaknesses of any project, while unsuccessful graphic representation can ruin the impression of an otherwise great project. There are a few rules of thumb that one needs to follow in order to avoid unpleasant and unexpected surprises, and one of the most fundamental ones is that you cannot have substance without absence.

By absence, we mean offering the reviewer’s eye space to understand the arrangement of images, synthesize some kind of perception, and react. It is important to allow your pages ‘the benefit of the pause’. This means that the various images on each of your architecture school portfolio pages should have enough space to breathe, and allow the reviewer’s eye to understand the narrative of the page without getting overwhelmed. It is recommended that you avoid overstuffing your architecture school portfolio with too much information just so it seems like it contains more work.

Your ability to synthesize your book is a reflection of your ability to synthesize spatial sequences as well. You would not want to create overstuffed spaces, would you? Think the same way about your portfolio, and your projects will shine!

13) GRAPHIC INTEGRITY:

Graphic Integrity is essential and begins with order, clarity and flexibility.

The integrity of your presentation is based on a combination of four factors:

Factor 1. Clarity and Accuracy

How easy is it for you to get all your points across as efficiently, effectively, clearly and accurately as possible.

Clarity is essential because it establishes trust in the mind of the reviewers, but most importantly communicates the exact ideas that your portfolio is supposed to represent, based on your architecture school admissions strategy. By making sure that the portfolio is clear enough and accurate enough, you ensure order, which is essential in the first few moments of one reviewing your portfolio. These first few moments are when the architecture school admissions reviewer’s first impressions on your portfolio will be established, so it is important to communicate that you are trustworthy and you have something important to say.

Then, as the architecture school reviewer progresses through the pages of your portfolio, clarity and accuracy will allow her to understand why and how you are approaching your designs, and how these ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ connect to the overall strategy of your architecture school portfolio. This is a very important foundation for establishing trust, but also for creating positive labels that will help you stand out from the crowd.

Factor 2. Cohesion and Unity

Being able to pull together all the ideas in your architecture school portfolio under the umbrella of a unifying theme that itself has lots to communicate about you and your personal brand.

Integrity is also established when you do your best to pull the many layers of ideas associated with you, under a unifying umbrella, that will help the architecture school portfolio reviewer to understand how to relate all these ideas to you. You have to remember that the portfolio is nothing but a branding tool, and its sole purpose in this architecture school admissions game is to help you win by persuading the architecture school admissions reviewers to pick you over someone else. Therefore, the more you are able to explain to the reviewers how all the ideas that appear in your architecture school portfolio relate to your own mission and strategy, the more successful you will be in establishing your message and persuading the architecture school portfolio reviewers.

Factor 3: Graphic Harmony

Establishing graphic harmony is all about getting a general sense of cohesion in your portfolio. The best way to achieve this, is by looking at all the different graphic approaches that you have used (literally print stuff out and put them on your wall and then look at them), and build a strategy for bringing them together. Sometimes all it takes are minor changes, as well as adjustments to the placement of projects and images and perhaps some adjustments in the story-telling aspect of your graphics.

Create a set of very simple rules for your whole book and follow them throughout it. A simple and commonly used solution is to use diagrams, sketches and other analytical and conceptual sketches. You will notice how easier it becomes to flip through your portfolio when things are ordered. >>>

Factor 4. Open-endedness and Flexibility

Allowing space for the mind of the architecture school portfolio reviewer to breathe, think, imagine, envision and absorb.

This is a tricky one! On the one hand, you are supposed to be accurate, that’s true, and on the other hand you have to make sure that the reviewers are engaged enough to appreciate your work and remember it until the last round of the admissions process. It is a tricky factor, because the best way of allowing open-endedness, is by choosing to let the design of your projects stay unresolved. By doing so, you invite the reviewer to participate in this game of piecing ideas together, trying to figure out what the final result should / could be. Your reviewers, in most architecture school admissions committees, will be either architecture school faculty, or architecture students, which means that their brains are calibrated for this exact process of seeing something that is unresolved, and immediately envisioning ways to fix it. By engaging them in this game, they feel more fulfilled by the process of reviewing your portfolio, and in most cases they do not know why, or they think that it is because of your brilliance.

This simple set of ideas will make a very significant difference to your portfolio almost immediately, and will allow you to think creatively and widely, while maintaining order in the development of your portfolio, preserving the integrity of your presentation.

Now, wherever there are rules, there are occasions when it is good to break them. In the case of architecture school portfolios, these moments are many, and offer the designer multiple opportunities for creative design thinking. However, breaking the rules and creating moments of excitement while still preserving the graphical integrity of the architecture school portfolio presentation, is not possible unless a context of order has been established. The aforementioned three rules will help you establish that context.

14) STORY-TELLING:

Organize the overall narrative of your portfolio

One of the issues that an architecture school applicant has to deal with is that they cannot be present when their portfolio is being reviewed. This means that a project may end up being misinterpreted, and under-appreciated, simply due to the lack of a proper presentation and story. 

Presenting a project that is part of a portfolio for architecture school admissions is different from presenting a project in a portfolio at an interview, or presenting a project at a studio critique. The reason is that the creator of the project is present at the interview and the critique, and is able to make a proper presentation of all ideas, taking the reviewer through the different images on a wall or on a page, without having to invest too much time into the story-telling aspect of the portfolio. When the creator is present, she can also respond to any questions that the reviewer might have, which means that she does not even need to cover everything during her basic presentation, because if something remains unanswered, the reviewer will ask about it. 

On the other hand, in the case of a portfolio for architecture school admissions, the applicant cannot be present at the review of the portfolio, and therefore the only way for the applicant to communicate the details and complexities of her thinking process is by using the design and development process of each project, in a way that will cover all bases of the project, and answer all anticipated questions of the reviewer. This is the primary reason, why an architecture school applicant has to see his or her architecture school portfolio as a project in itself, and possibly the most important project of all, because it can amplify the message of the projects it contains, celebrating the strengths of each project, or it can mute this message, to the extent that a set of well-executed projects come across as dull and unsophisticated.

The primary way in which successful architecture school applicants are able to optimize their use their architecture school admissions portfolios, is by using them as story-telling devices. Telling stories is essential, because they tend to stick in the minds of the reviewers much more efficiently than dry facts about technical and programmatic aspects of the project. The best way to narrate a story about an architectural project is by narrating the story of the development of the ideas related to the project. One can do it by emphasizing their process-related fundamental work, which through sketches, diagrams and text is narrated at a slow pace of one idea at a time, eventually leading to the subtleties of the design and development of the central concept of the project into a construct of some sort (a building, a product, a vision or a strategy). 

The real issue of course is trying to bring all the projects in the architecture school portfolio together in a way that they produce a cohesive story. The quality of the story that the portfolio tells, has to do with narrative, strategy, mission, graphics, layout and the overall organization of the entire book. If you manage to work and develop those, you will improve your portfolio’s overall sense of cohesion as well.

By making sure that each project that is included in the architecture school portfolio has its own character, and also by making sure that the characters of all segments are clearly communicating between themselves and place themselves under an overall “umbrella theme” (which was discussed earlier), the creator of the portfolio is able to cover a wide array of various issues, each discussed in a different project, yet manages to actually communicate the most essential pieces of information to the reviewer thanks to the overall story of the architecture school portfolio.

15) SHORT & PRECISE TEXT

When it comes to text, less is more.

Every discipline has its own means of communicating ideas. Architecture has the portfolio.

It is important to grasp the game you are playing. Using a portfolio is an opportunity to show that you are able to communicate your ideas through images of a variety of different media, which is an essential skill to have. Even if you are not that great at it, you will at least let the reviewers know that you are placing a lot of effort into communicating your ideas.

Text is almost never read in portfolios. It is unlikely that admissions reviewers will go over the written text in your portfolio. Part of the reason for that is that designers often tend to use text just to fill in gaps, to add a level of prestige to a project. In rare occasions, and when the reviewer is truly engaged by the graphic narrative of a project, she may read parts of the text in order to learn a bit more about the project. Do not forget that the examiners will not spend more than a few minutes on your portfolio (at least in the first and toughest phase of the selection process). Replace the extensive text with short references to the design and graphic material that clearly describes the concept. Work on a few quick napkin sketches (so-called “Corbusian” sketches) and try to locate them in key places and in a sequence that tells the story of what your project is about and how it developed as a design.

If you are invited to go to an interview at an architecture school, keep in mind that architecture school interviews take about 30 minutes. These 30 minutes, are usually spent going through the visual material of your architecture school portfolio, and discussing it with the interviewer. During these interviews, interviewers will most likely not read any of your text. The reason for this is that interviewers probably go through hundreds of different portfolios per season, so over time they try to understand someone’s work as quickly and efficiently as possible.

One thing to do is control the length of the descriptions and also the way that they are displayed on the page. Do not necessarily place the text of a page in a single block. As mentioned earlier, text is also a good way to graphically fill up space on your pages where there does not seem to be anything else that could fit. However, if there is graphic material that could say what the text says, use it and remove the text from your architecture school portfolio.

16) PROJECT APPEAL:

The eye-catching quality of each project in a portfolio for architecture colleges and universities

We have already mentioned about a dozen times that you should begin with the development of an excellent strategy and mission in order to avoid wasting time by designing work that does not serve its purpose. After that, try selecting a project, preferably your favorite one of the projects you have already developed, and try to discover how to tell its story. Following your decision on the various aspects of the project, define the kind of story that you would like to tell about it. After you define the story and become aware of how your project fits in it and how the story fits in the overall synthesis of the portfolio, you need to begin redeveloping the project. Create the missing pieces according to earlier instructions, and insert them into the story in a way that allows the project to be presented cogently and in a fun, exciting way. 

After you are done developing the drawings and models, take some beautiful pictures of them. Do not worry about the quality of the photos, and you certainly do not need a professional photo camera. You can just use your cell-phone to take the photos and then try to bring out your own point of view as a designer. In fact, if necessary, adjust the pictures on Photoshop.

To develop appealing projects, you have to do your best to communicate your process through your design work. Anything you are bringing to the table has to be present in your process, otherwise the examiners will not buy it. It is through the intriguing subtleties of this process that you will win the hearts of the examiners.

17) PORTFOLIO FORMAT:

The Portfolio Format is the Masterplan of your Architecture School Portfolio

Just like a city’s character can be defined by the organization of it’s urban blocks (see difference between NY and Paris for example), an architecture school portfolio can be defined by the organization of its images on pages. I am not suggesting that a square format or a grid format will define you as a good architecture school applicant, versus someone else who will be defined as a “bad” architecture school applicant.  What I am saying is that the format will create a rhythm, and will have some rules that may/ may not be appropriate for some projects or some target audiences. It is a very important factor to consider and try to determine early on.

18) EXCITING RESUME:

Celebrate your strengths by making your resume more exciting

Many people wonder why there is a Resume page in the portfolio. The answer is that you need to remind the architecture school admissions reviewers of your strengths any chance you get, and the purpose of a well-composed resume is to do exactly that. Obviously it is not as important as your graphic work, but it helps establish a background and a context so that you can be judged fairly.

Developing an exciting resume is therefore important, and there are many ways to do it. For starters, do not limit yourself to your education, experience and activities, but expand a bit, by including categories like ‘languages’, software, and others. Do not hesitate to see your resume as a a tiny piece of graphics – a pamphlet – which is supposed to encapsulate the essence of you, your background and your capabilities.

23) TIME MANAGEMENT:

How to develop a plan and a schedule for the design and assembly of your architecture school portfolio

When you embark on your journey  to architecture school, there are many issues to consider, and the most important one is time management. Your time is extremely valuable, and should be spent on the item of your architecture school application that carries the most value, and that is your architecture school portfolio.

The average architecture school applicant budgets less than 6 months for the full development of their application, and this usually includes GRE prep, and everything else required, so initially the applicant feels like she has plenty of time, until she does not, which is when she begins to panic. This is usually at about 3 to 2 months from the deadlines.

If your portfolio is not completed by December 1, you might as well not even think about beginning, unless you are planning to fail. On December 1, your portfolio should be ready, and you should only be adding final touches. These final touches usually take at least a month, and they often make the difference between a good portfolio and a great portfolio that can get you into top architecture schools.

The best way to make sure that you do not waste your time is by calculating exactly how much time you have that you are willing and able to commit towards the development of your application.

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Let’s say for example that you have 3 months until December 1. This gives you about 12 weeks. Each week has 7 days, and each day has 24 hours, out of which you sleep for 8  hours. So, you have about 16×7 hours per week. This gives you a total of 112 hours per week, and then you start deducting hours that you are can’t commit to developing your portfolio – for example:

• you have to work for 40 hours, so that brings us down to 72.
• You have to commute for 2 hrs per workday (5 total), so that brings it down to 62.
• You have to eat for 2 hours per day, and that brings it down to 48.
• You have to go out for 10 hours a week, so that brings it down to 38.
• You have to spend time with your mom for 8 hours per week, so that brings it down to 30.
• You have to shop, clean, cook and tidy up for a total of 5 hours per week, so that brings it down to 25.
• You have to deal with your online social endeavors for 8 hours a week, so that brings it down to 17, and
• you have to waste a few hours doing nothing, so that brings it down to 10.

10 hours per week, for 12 weeks, is a staggering total of 120 hours. All of a sudden it looks like you have plenty of time to develop the portfolio for your architecture school application. All you have to do at that point, is focus on making sure that you put in these 10 hours weekly, and try to occasionally steal an hour or two from your other endeavors, starting with the endeavor of ‘doing nothing’.

Following your decision to commit to building your architecture school portfolio for 10 hours a week, you need to figure out how to allocate your available time.

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24) TIME ALLOCATION:

How to maximize the value that you bring to your architecture school portfolio by hierarchizing tasks

Time allocation is not easy to tackle, primarily because of what is required to properly allocate time.

It is virtually impossible to create a time allocation plan for the design of your architecture school portfolio or the development of your architecture school application if you do not understand the details of your work in relation to their impact on the overall picture of your application. For example, on the surface I may look at my work and assume that one of my biggest problems as an applicant is that I cannot draw as well as some other applicants that I know, so naturally, I set out to learn how to draw better. I spend a minimum of 10 hours a week, for 3 months, trying to learn how to draw well, while producing some interesting drawings. However, had I known that demonstrating an ability to draw well is by far not a great value-generator, I would have at least limited my allocation, and would have instead used a more targeted learning approach that would minimize time spent and maximize my ability to draw well enough so I can put together a great set of projects for my architecture school portfolio.

This example discusses just one of the many areas that matter when someone is applying to architecture school. It is essential for the applicant to understand these areas, weigh different options, and develop a plan that is based on what would bring the most value to the portfolio.

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