Greetings from Melbourne =)

Hey wassup people. I bet most of you guys don't know who am I. Well I'm Daniel and Mr Ian asked me to pen down some stuffs here to encourage you guys/girls since it's like the final moments of studio.

I'm currently in Melbourne University, doing my Bachelors of Environment. I'm in fact having my final presentation for studio this coming Tuesday! Studying abroad in Melbourne Uni taught me a lot of things, whether in living skills, social skills, and also not forgetting things in the 'architecture package' (construction, design, history, blah blah).

It's autumn right now in Melbourne and it's freeezing cold!

Now I know everyone will be busy completing their design schemes, especially doing their 3D, making physical models and drawings. Time flies by, you'll camp in digilab and not know the hour of the day. The only time you know when to eat is when the sun goes missing and when the sunlight pierce through your eyelids as you're sleeping on the bench.

Here's a quick tip for the 'final hour' preparation.

1. Don't waste time doing real looking renders. I think this would be the biggest and best tip anyone could give out. Hahahaha...seriously..don't! It's really time consuming. Instead spend more time on doing diagrams and your presentation board that can clearly illustrate your thoughts and ideas, and especially your developement since day one. I've learnt from my tutor over here that a good 3D image for presentation should always be detail enough to show your ideas and spaces, and not too detail to allow room for people to imagine. Remember that we're always suppose to sell our ideas, not our 'already-built-building-and-this-is-how-it's-suppose-to-look-like". A physical model properly litted up sells better than a real looking 3D!

This is something I did for my tutor during tutorial. Believe it or not, it's just a 20minute work. He like it and it made me feel stupid for spending hours on renders last time

2. Know when to freeze your design. I know we always criticise our own work while working on it and think it isn't good enough. Well nothing is ever good enough. We always have a better solutions and ideas when we're designing our studio scheme. We always want to give our best and showcase our best work to the external crits. Even once completing our presentation board or design, there's the devil in you that goes "Aikkss..I've should have done this" or "AhhH! This isn't resolve quite properly" or "I think if I do it this way it would be better"

The best way to solve this is to sketch out the problem and solution on a butter paper..and bring it along with you during your crit. Talk about your scheme..and do point out that you've notice a problem with your design while doing up your presentation board. Talk about it and show your crit how you've solve those problems in your butter paper. I personally think crits will appreciate you for doing so and it shows how critical you are. It's a whole new level.

This was what a few of us faced during our final studio 4. We were so busy changing this and that, we didn't had time to finish up our presentation board, hence we missed our final crit. Isn't it such a waste?

3. Talk to your tutor and make sure they know what your scheme is about inside out! Whether your design is 'geng' or not 'geng', I think showing and letting them know your progressive work for your studio is very important. They'll be the one giving you the final grade at the end of the day. Make sure all your progressive work is on your presentation board as well! Your external crit won't know what your scheme is all about. Showing them how you begin in Stage A and ended up in Stage B is important. How you get to the end isn't everything, it's the journey that is equally important!

Okay thats all for now. I can't anymore! Pulling an all nighter again! =)