Group Work in Architecture School
Hey ArchiDabblers! It’s Linda here, with the last blog post of March. Today, I’ll be sharing a mix of my experiences, thoughts and take-aways from this year working with other people in my projects and doing group work in general.
Whether we like it or not, group work is a fundamental part of our future careers as architects. Usually, at university, we have to do every part of our projects because of the individual nature of our work. In reality, however, when you go into practice, most of the work is done by teams of people working on specific tasks before handing it over to the next team. Whilst this work-load distribution varies across different types of firms, most of the time there is some sort of outsourcing or delegating work to specialists or other co-workers depending on how the company operates. Throughout this year (my second year at architecture school), unlike that of Sude and Elif, a large portion of my design projects have been group work. Despite all the challenges that I faced working in a team, I’m really grateful for the experience I had, not only carrying out research and analysis with my studio mates (which was as much group work as we had in first-year), but also designing together with my colleagues. Let me take you through the highs and lows I faced these past few months, as well as my general thoughts and what I’ve learnt working together with others. I’ll start with a short summary of what I had to do this year for context.
For my studio’s first brief, we were required to undertake a detailed site analysis of our chosen site for the semester in groups. For those of you who don’t already know, I study Architecture and Environmental Design, so a large part of our analysis consisted of detailed environmental testing using specialist equipment, measuring parameters such as pollution, wind speed and air temperature. Instinctively, we delegated tasks amongst group members and all produced deliverables. Despite the uncertainty of lockdown measures, we also managed to pull together and create a physical site model. Then, after we drew conclusions about the site, we had to establish a common narrative from which we would derive our own individual urban intervention designs for our site. The following brief for the first semester was a separate individual design project based on the same site and analysis we did previously, so the first brief of the second semester was where I next encountered group work. This time, it was much more intense with tighter deadlines and new design challenges. We had to analyse a high rise student accommodation and design a new building envelope to go over the existing facade, which responds to predicted changes in the climate for the site by 2050. This was the first time I had ever designed in a group, as opposed to just completing set deliverables assigned to me to deliver to the rest of the team members.
Designing with other people required a whole different skill set than what I was previously used to. Essentially, it entails trying to agree on the same design approach which requires a lot of discussion, compromising and understanding each other’s points of view. Different people have different ideas on how to solve problems, which you have to learn to live with. Deciding when to defend your ideas and when to go with the majority decision is something that gets better with experience, and it’s something that I’ve still got a lot to learn about. You have to get the balance right between spending time formulating your own approach to bring to the table for debate, and then discussing possible design solutions together as a group. The way we were recommended to go about it was to allocate some time for all group members to go off and work on some ideas that can help solve the design problem, then reconvene and decide on the best parts to take from different people’s contributions. Sometimes barely any of your approaches get included in the design, but that’s okay. The same way you shouldn’t get attached to your individual design work which is subject to change throughout the development process, you have to remember that you’re working towards the best design solution for the problems you’re tackling in the project. Because we were designing as a group, our project had to be cohesive. It couldn’t be blatantly obvious that X amount of group members all worked on a different part of the building, for example. It was so important that our design language was consistent throughout the proposal. This required making certain decisions that the whole group had to commit to. Even if you might believe your idea is the best approach for a particular part of the design, but it lacks solving other problems and isn’t compatible with the greater design approach the group is taking, sometimes you have to let go of it and accept that from a holistic approach, it may not be the best decision to commit to.
One of the most important things that especially benefits group work dynamics is knowing your strengths and weaknesses inside out, and playing to them during the design process. At the start of second-year, during our first studio session when we were choosing our groups for the first brief, our tutor asked each of us in the class to state our strengths and weaknesses. The idea was to team up with people who complemented our strengths and weaknesses. For example, if someone wasn’t good at model-making but strong with their drawing skills, then they’d search for someone who was crafty and good with their hands. This won’t always be possible if you don’t have the freedom to choose who you work with, but knowing what you’re good at will help you decide what roles to take charge of in the project so you can contribute quality work to the team. Not only does knowing what you’re good at help to produce good work, but can also help your team work more effectively. Again, with experience, you realise which tasks it’s best for everyone to contribute to and work on, and which are best for one person to take charge of. Things like maps or final drawings can be done by one person, then shared with the whole team to tweak, amend or suggest changes. For our physical site model, everyone made a couple of buildings from the same material, and we all came together to give the pieces to one person to assemble. It comes down to deciding when to delegate and when to collaborate. These were decisions we felt were best to take at the time, and might change from group to group. Once you understand what works best to deliver project tasks on time and to a good standard, you’ll be more effective with group task management but this is something else that improves with experience.
Communication is so important when it comes to group work, this is something that I cannot stress enough. I noticed there was a direct correlation between the quality and quantity of the work each group member produced, as well as confidence in what we were all producing; and the level of communication we maintained at different stages of the project. In other words, the more we communicated, the more cohesive and better quality work we produced. When we regrouped after not having spoken for a few days, there was a bigger disconnect between what we were working on and the results we were coming out with. Setting up regular meetings with your group, and knowing what you want to get out of each call by perhaps setting an agenda really makes a difference and sets a direction for the group to continue working in. If there’s one thing that I’d recommend to anyone doing group work, it’s that communication is absolutely key. At the very least, get everyone on the same page when you’re stuck on a joint project. Sometimes you can help each other out when you’re struggling, and just talking about where everyone is at with the work can make it seem less daunting when you’ve been stuck in a rut for a while and need to get out of your head. The last point I want to address when it comes to is then things don't go to plan during group projects. Inevitable, things are going to go wrong or take longer than anticipated, you're going to disagree on some things and certain people aren't going to pull their weight as much as others. Unforeseen circumstances that are out of your control can hold your team back as well, and sometimes you have to accept it and roll with the punches. Remember that you can only do so much with the time, resources and energy on your hands. The same way that you can always do better if you had more time on individual projects, you have to know when to stop and move on from certain parts of the project in order to meet deadlines, and agree on this as a group as different people might have different ideas of when to do this.
All in all, group work truly is such an enriching learning experience and will set you up for your future careers, no matter what you choose to pursue after university. If you're proactive, communicate well and truly push to do your best, you'll realise that you'll gain so much from working with others no matter the outcome of the project. That's it for today's post! If you're yet to experience group work in architecture school yourself, hopefully this post gave you an insight and a heads up as to what to expect in your own group projects.
If you have any questions or want to share your experiences and advice relating to group work, get in touch with us through our email dabbleenquiries@gmail.com, or DM us on our Instagram @archidabble. See you next week!
