Studying in the Midst of COVID-19
Hello ArchiDabblers! Now that’s a new introduction. It’s Sude! In this week’s post all three of us have gathered for a discussion on a relevant topic. Studying architecture during the ongoing pandemic. We experienced what it was like studying during lockdown at the end of our first year studying architecture and thought it would be beneficial to share our experiences to give you a better understanding of what it’s like for students who could be facing a possible lockdown in the near future (only a possibility). Let’s get started!
Sude: Today we will be covering COVID-19 and architecture and how one has affected the other. So, how was it guys… studying architecture during lockdown?
Elif: I’ll start. It was definitely a... new experience. It was really unusual because I was someone who was coming into university 5-7 times a week since it’s easier to work in that environment rather than at home. It was a crucial time period too since it was leading up to our final submission. We were working however many hours a day and I soon came to realise in my household full of 6 people, it would not be possible for me to work as efficiently. I spent the first week at home working and then I moved to my cousin’s house for two weeks until I submitted my work.
Sude: Linda, what about you?
Linda: Well. Studying under COVID was odd. Especially the transition between studying normally at uni, everything’s fine and then suddenly having to pack and go home and set up remotely so you can finish the first year of your degree. There were parts that kind of made studying easier when we moved to online learning like my commute and I saved time. But there were alot of things that we missed out on because of the virus.
Sude: Yh, I agree. With the commute, it didn’t affect me much because I was taking 30 minutes to get to uni and then 30 minutes back. The main thing that stood out the most besides the transition phase was I remember all 3 of us at the lab shop buying materials straight away on the last day of uni because we didn’t know when we would be back. We didn’t know how university would be functioning after we had been sent home. It was hectic, a mess if I’m honest only because everything happened so quickly. I liked working at home. Although it wasn't as appealing or satisfactory giving your portfolio over a virtual platform, I prefer making my models at home unless I have to use equipment which would be better to do it at university. I enjoyed making models in my own environment knowing that I have my personal space without any interference.
Elif: I think I agree in terms of the model-making. That was always something that the 3 of us focused on doing in our own time at home so from that outlook it kind of stayed the same for me. I was still doing my models at home for the final submission but it would have been nice to have used some resources that we had just learnt from the start of that semester, like Rhino. So, it would have been nice to have used those skills and become more advanced in them and be able to use the laser lab for our final model instead of handcrafting it. I would have liked to have had that as an option.
Sude: I think we all had plans to use the laser lab and the workshop especially once we had figured out Rhino. Knowing that our lives could be so much easier with those skills. Although in my case, I wouldn’t have been able to use the Rhino operated laser lab because of the pieces but I’m sure in general maybe you two and everybody else in the year could have taken advantage of it.
Elif: I can’t say for sure whether or not I would have used the laser lab, but I would've liked to have the option to make the decision myself. Now that I look back it kind of turned out beneficial for me making a makeshift model at home and then using digital software to perfect it and add details to it. I was able to exhibit my concepts efficiently so looking back now I don't know whether I would have taken that opportunity and I do think this was more beneficial but at the time I wouldn’t have known that and I would have liked the option to use the laser lab.
Linda: It would have also been nice to finish off first year developing skills not just drawing and designing but also craft skills and working with metal and wood so you kind of connect with materials on a smaller scale. You can then take that knowledge on to when you actually use those materials in your designs and that's something that we can’t benefit from.
Sude: We weren’t able to see the full potential of things that were surrounding us especially in our Material Studies module. We weren’t able to fulfil its main purpose because of COVID.
Elif: That’s probably the biggest disadvantage that we had with going into lockdown. We missed out on the way a whole module was originally formatted. Under normal circumstances, we were going to be interacting with new materials and like Linda said getting those skills, we had to completely change it up and use a research approach, which did teach us other skills, but it would have been nice to get that practical element out the way during first year so we had a strong foundation for the rest of our journey.
Sude: I think when you compare research skills and experimenting to obtain knowledge about materials, I’m sure most people had some sort of idea on how to do research online since we had to do so for our history essay and just typing a question into google could give you so much. I would have preferred to have our practical hands on experimenting skills developed instead of research when trying to understand materials and their properties. It would have been more beneficial.
Linda: I think something good has come out of this. If we look at how we were being limited to certain skills on a wider scale it makes you think what kind of knowledge can we take from studying under COVID because of the restrictions we have and use a different set of skills that aren't typically kind of developed in architecture as much as they were and apply them to a world that nobody could of anticipated and how the world has changed like how can the skills that we are left to develop now contribute to that.
Sude: It is pretty balanced. It’s just, what would have happened if COVID hadn’t struck? I agree with what you are saying, things that we wouldn't have focussed as much on like researching, we were able to focus on.
Elif: Yeah, I think that also goes much further than just the course. Where we did lose out on skill learning and workshops through our Material Studies module, we did gain the new skills as Linda said in both the architecture world and also personally for me I feel like I've gained a lot of skills having to work a lot more independently and try to organise myself day to day where I'm not coming into uni. I’ve had to create that working environment that exists in uni, within my own home. So it did teach me skills outside of the course to do with my everyday life too.
Sude: I think most people can agree that we all became more independent. There’s that stigma about how studying at university level is very independent which is primarily true, you need to be punctual, you need to be engaging with your course to get the most out of it but now we were in our homes, in our natural environment which you would usually come back to, to unwind and rest but now it has a larger attachment with our studies. You are now using that same environment to study as well, I saw myself setting out guidelines about how I was spending time at home due to the additional responsibility of continuing our studies. I could easily imagine how many people could drift into lounging around, procrastinating especially now that they are in their own space and it's not studios. If you’re in studios with your tutors around you couldn't just sit there and not do anything.
Elif: You’ve also made that effort to commute to come into uni. Putting yourself into that study environment and people around you are studying so you are more likely to work whereas at home that's not the case. That's why I think it's really important to have a routine. I mean it’s good to have a routine regardless of COVID, but especially now that we are home for longer hours, it's so easy to lose focus and become distracted due to the nature of short attention spans and technology. It’s so important to have a routine and know when your work hours and your breaks are.
Linda: Discipline is a big thing that’s come out of this as well. We were able to finish our first year of architecture having adapted to new circumstances and working in our comfort zone. This is a skill we can take forward with us and apply to both our working and personal lives. We now know we can prioritize our workloads efficiently and follow through with our commitments in other areas of our life once we leave university.
Sude: So we’ve spoken about what it’s like studying architecture during lockdown. What’s something that sticks out to you the most as something that you struggled with, perhaps something that you didn’t expect?
Elif: At this point, I was still hand-drawing my orthographic’s. I realised as the days went by and I found myself redrawing the same thing multiple times, I started to struggle with keeping myself motivated. Not keeping myself motivated to work, but to produce the best quality work I could do. There were a few days where I had to take a break from drawing orthographic’s and focus on something completely different because it became really difficult and it started to affect my wellbeing. That’s something you need to be aware of and take into consideration when you’re working. That was probably my biggest struggle - persevering to finish those orthographic’s to the best quality, but it is something you can overcome.
Linda: For me, it wasn’t so much the practical things I struggled with. Even though I said I saved a lot of time on my commute, it brought another set of challenges I had to face. I found myself overthinking a lot more when lockdown started. Because I didn’t have this physical break from looking at my drawings and models or the ability to see them with fresh eyes, I ended up disliking my project and setting overly high expectations of myself to the point where it was counterproductive. For example, I knew how long a model would typically take me to produce before quarantine, so I thought that because I’m now sitting at home, I’m not commuting, I have all this extra time, I have to make my work perfect. My models have to be the best thing I can ever make, my orthographic’s have to be the best quality. But I was still in first year, I was still learning how to draw effectively and building upon my modelling skills. I didn’t give myself time to adapt to these lifestyle changes and the struggles that online learning would bring. The mental pressure I put on myself and the overthinking was what I struggled with the most.
Elif: I think we all felt a little bit of that, at different intensities. We already had the stress of thinking about what’s going to happen health-wise in terms of our locations, the people around us, and on top of that, all this ‘free time’. There’s only so much you can think about and when everyone’s talking about the same thing in terms of what’s happening in the world and COVID-19, and when you’re focused on your final submissions, they become the two main things you can really concentrate on. It becomes very easy to overthink and add to your existing stress.
Sude: Two things stick out the most to me, one was communication with my tutors and studio peers. You’d hit a mind block, and you hadn’t had the whole day with your tutors in studio, which was the case a lot of the time when we went virtual. We would only have about fifteen minutes to half an hour of a tutorial online. That change made me realise how much the tutors mean and how important it is to have new work for every tutorial, because when else could you get a hold of them during lockdown, especially with COVID. They have their new lifestyles to adapt to. Yeah, getting a hold of people and feedback was something I struggled with. The other thing was missing university in general. Again, hitting a mind block then being able to go to another studio to see what someone else was doing, and trying to get some sort of input and inspiration from what they were doing. It was motivating to be surrounded by a constant flow of creativity around you. You can’t really turn to someone to see that once we went online. Attending other people’s virtual tutorials made me feel guilty for not working on my own feedback, which was something I didn’t feel in studio. We were there to collaborate, that’s the reason why our university had open studios and not individual desks facing a wall. We couldn’t have this online.
Elif: I agree, we took that environment for granted, being able to work on your own project but then turn to someone and have a five-minute discussion, sometimes about stuff that’s not even work related. I noticed when I was working at home, it became harder to cope with the stress of completing good quality work by the deadline. I realised that a part of that was because I didn’t have anyone who was doing the same thing as me to talk to, apart from you two. Even at the start of lockdown, we didn’t really talk on FaceTime and other online platforms as much as we do now, it was only a couple of weeks later when we really started calling each other and it made it easier to cope.
Sude: Physically seeing everyone in the same boat as you made you realise that you shouldn’t be as stressed as you were because you were all going through the same thing and you were all going to make it. We’re here to study and we’re here to produce work, it’s going to be fine. But at home, you don’t see what everyone’s up to, and you start to question things like “what if everyone’s ahead of me and I’m far behind in my work?”, or “is my work good enough?” and you don’t have the answer to that because you can’t see what other people are up to. Personally, I would have judged that by comparing myself to others which some people might not like. It was a good indicator that would signify where I’m at and whether I needed to hurry up or not. That was hard to cope with when we went virtual.
Linda: Even though there were group chats and there was kind of crossovers during tutorials where you kind of hear people talking about their projects whilst you were waiting for your slot. It definitely became more isolated and the connection between all of us architecture students became weaker as a whole. As you said, it’s difficult to kind of assess yourself and your project. Obviously, a part of that is maybe down to us being first years and we still are learning what it means to be productive, be ahead, be behind at our current project stage but it definitely did feel more isolated. You just kind of had to know yourself and trust that you would get things done in time and make sure it happened. That was definitely hard.
Elif: For a lot of us it varied from student to student but it became a subtle continuous cycle of being motivated so starting on a piece of work and then you start overthinking because you haven’t got anyone to talk to. It’s self doubt. Usually, someone who wouldn’t doubt themselves that much in the year within that studio environment, as soon as it becomes just you it becomes easier to question whether you can do it. You start questioning, “can I do it?”, “can I do it to the best quality?” or like Sude said “am i at the right place with my work?”. Once you have that self doubt, you get another burst of motivation where you want to start working and do the best you can. It just continues.
Sude: So we’ve talked about the sad things and the things we struggled with, what were the good things that came out of studying during lockdown and alongside COVID? Could I start with this one actually?
Linda: Yeah, go for it.
Elif: Yep.
Sude: I think even though we’ve just spoken about how isolating it was to be working at home without people around us, I definitely did see that I can be much more productive whilst constantly being at home compared to having to commute to university knowing that there are specific things like model making that I know I do better at home. Basically, I liked being at home the whole time when it came to model making. If COVID was to have hit the point where we were developing our designs (a/n: this is currently the case for second year) which is the area I wasn’t making much models besides concept models, I think I would have struggled much more. Luckily, this wasn’t the case at the end of first year. Model-making wise I liked being at home. The other benefits… I don’t know to be honest. I think that’s about it. I guess like Elif said, appreciating what we had before that we don’t have now. We learnt the difficult way of how grateful we should be for the things we had at the start of the academic year and during the midpoint. We have been humbled.
Elif: I think the most obvious benefit was that I saved money by not having to commute to uni. That wasn’t a big deal but it was a nice plus. The 2 biggest benefits that I saw was one, I could work with friends from different studios. In my case during the year, I realised that I’m someone that just likes to sit down and get on with their own work. I only like conversing with a few people. I don’t necessarily need to talk to loads of people and that's fine by me, whereas some people are more social. Working from home meant that I could just call people from other studios. In our case, we would just FaceTime each other despite the fact that you two were in a different studio to me. I could work with you even though we weren’t doing the same brief, it was nice to converse about what we were doing that day or something architecture related not necessarily my brief. The second benefit was that I said that previously it was quite stressful and it was, but it was nice being able to decide when I would work on something and when I could take a break. Whereas when I’m at uni I think to myself that I have to work during my whole time in university and only take quick little lunch breaks but now that I was working at home it went like, “I’ll work on this set of drawing and when I finish this I’ll take a half an hour break and then I’ll work on a different piece”. So without realising I also let myself work on different types of work. So I’ll be doing some material studies and then design on the same day. I was giving myself more of a variety so I could think about different things. However If I was to be in the studio, I would be thinking of design the whole day and just focusing on that. It helped me switch between different pieces of work and I was able to occupy myself in a better way without overly stressing myself.
Linda: Yeah. Going on from that, like having the freedom to work on different tasks when you know you’ll be more productive at them was a bonus. For example, where we were coming into university you were restricted to what you could do in a day because you had to take into account commuting, a lecture, designated tutorial times but if you know that you’re better at research based tasks in the morning during lockdown you could just wake up earlier and do material studies and if you’re more creative in the evening then you could choose to do a render at night. Even though it’s kind of the opposite of having a routine, flexibility is also a positive if that’s how you work best. You can kind of vary your day to what works best for you.
Sude: Yeah.
Elif: I think it’s also nice to incorporate that flexibility into your routine. You can still maintain it so you know, you’ll still be waking up at the same time and you’ll have a set time for when you’d like to have lunch. I mean your breaks can vary but the biggest parts of your days having them in a routine just helps you stay on track which is what I realised. Obviously, bearing in mind you are being realistic with the choices you’re making. If you tell me that you’re going to finish your whole model in one day, that’s not realistic. It’ll only just add to your stress. Having that flexibility in your routine is also a skill that you need to learn. We were able to develop that in lockdown.
Sude: I think as well when you complete a productive day and you didn’t get to university and achieved everything in your own home, in your own bubble, your working environment, that feeling of accomplishment was really nice as well. Maybe you doubted yourself during the transition. I know I doubted myself thinking I wasn’t going to be as productive at home just because I have my distractions. I can easily say, “Oh, let me grab some food”, “I have something to watch” all because you are in your own environment. You can easily get up and fulfil those excuses. The feeling of accomplishment was really nice at the end of the day. You could look back and say, “I’ve done all of this work in just one day. I should be proud of myself”.
Elif: So now, we are just going to discuss how the teaching format worked. If it worked well for us during lockdown. Personally for me, I really liked the teaching format just because the only thing we had left at this point was design tutorials, an online crit and material studies. The thing I enjoyed and also think improved was the tutorials. Simply because the platform we used, which was Blackboard Collaborate, allowed my tutor to annotate my work which is what would have happened face-to-face anyways and also we had a specific time slot for our tutorial. I know this depends on your tutor but usually, if we were in the studio, my tutor would make a list of people to see and then you’d go by that. We were organised really well in the studio but then to carry that on through to an online teaching format was really beneficial for me just as someone who likes to be organised, I like to know when I’m going to be spoken to so it was nice to have a certain time slot and when you turn up to your assigned time [elif cut out] tutorial, which was still one-to-one but there were 3-4 people on the call which I didn’t mind. I say with material studies I don’t have much to say because I don’t have much to compare it to. I think having it online was nice since fewer people were on the call. Originally if the module was to be face-to-face there would have been a much larger group. It would be difficult to speak to everybody. So I think we benefited from that sort of aspect but the only thing that I didn't like was the crit. Having a crit was already a difficult concept in terms of having to concentrate for such a long period of time going through everybody’s portfolios when we were attending university. People would lose focus and some people didn’t stay around for the whole crit. Having it online did mean that everybody had to stay there but it is a case of you don't know if people are actually at their computers or doing something else and also having to stare at a screen for so many hours of the day really tired me out. So, I do prefer crits to be in person and on campus but I’d say the teaching format was pretty good in terms of how they coped with the situation. If this was the case from the start of the year I think my opinion would be completely different because we didn’t have that much knowledge on what we had to do at the beginning but at this point, we already knew how to navigate ourselves around the project. It was a lot easier.
Sude: Linda?
Linda: Just to add to what you said about material studies, I remember we had our first tutorial in the fablab. I remember it being crowded and noisy. Even though it was a lively bustling atmosphere, it was still nice to have contrasting tutorial experiences at home to talk through your work for material studies. I think we finished most of our modules before lockdown so obviously we haven’t felt the full force of having all our modules being taught online. I still had my lectures for TES1. These were pretty much like video calls where guest speakers or tutors would present presentations online. We’d all just sit there and watch it. This was a bit more of a diluted lecture experience. I remember our lectures before COVID, we did have workshops and we engaged more with the content. We tried things out like making sun roses, testing our helio-domes and site visits which applied for other modules too. It was kind of distant teaching experience. There wasn’t much of an interaction between the tutors during lectures when things were online besides when someone had a question during or after a talk. Yeah, you don’t have the experience in terms of site visits of going and experiencing a place free to understand buildings.
Sude: We don’t really know if the tutors felt this way but I feel like they may have. I feel like most people including myself lost a bit of enthusiasm when it came to tutorials and sessions. I know that I, by the end of the project, started to get sick and tired of my design. I wasn’t enjoying it as much. I loved making my model but I lost that enthusiasm and I might even go as far as saying that I lost some of my passion towards the subject at one point. It didn’t feel like I was studying architecture. It felt like just bog-standard studying if that makes sense. I almost lost the subject of the content we were learning. It just felt like a task that I had to complete like I had to attend my tutorials whereas before when we went to university it never felt like university it was more like an occasion. I liked going to university a lot. Although tutorials virtually, felt like they were something that I forced myself to go to which isn’t the best thing to conclude on but there was no other way of doing the teaching. Our only choice was for it all to go virtual. We couldn’t do face-to-face tutorials due to health and safety reasons and I can’t think of a better alternative to replace physical on campus tutorials. So, I can't really criticise the way the university handled it since we were really limited to what we could do. Something else about teaching-wise that comes to mind is that me and Linda’s studio group tutors supposedly had time slots. This was the case and our tutors did try and stick to the assigned time slots but there were times where I could see that the tutorial day went to waste. Reason for this is because I could be waiting for my tutorial past my slot since the previous tutorial is overrunning mine because it took longer than expected. Maybe if that was handled better then those tutorial days could have been more productive. Now that I look back on it, it wasn’t too different from how my tutorials went when we actually commuted to university. I had a negative connotation with virtual tutorials just because I knew I preferred in person tutorials than ones over the screen. I also had technical problems with my orthographic drawings because the platform Blackboard Collaborate, as much as it is really good and gives different features when it came to me for some reason I had a problem with my line weights on my orthographic drawings which was due to a technical issue rather than me or the tutors. This wouldn’t have ever happened if things were not virtual.
Elif: I think you’ve brought up a really important point about the quality of orthographic drawings. So, you were doing digitally right?
Sude: Yep.
Elif: Yeah so, at that point some people were doing it virtually and some hand drawn. No matter which method you used they both had their own problems about quality. I know you had quite a bit of problems during your tutorials but were you fine for submission?
Sude: I asked my tutors to view the file via their own desktop to see the correct line weights which was something that solved the Blackboard issue.
Elif: That’s a good point to mention. Even though this is past the teaching point, it’s more to do with how our submission worked online. You had problems doing it digitally with your orthographic drawings and I personally had problems with the quality of scans of my orthographic drawings. Whereas neither of us would have had this problem if it was a hardcopy hand-in. We would have printed it out and handed it. They would have seen it in person rather than on a computer screen. When it was digital, there's a lot of other factors that affected it.
Sude: Yeah. You need to consider more things like technical issues, even something like pixels would play a role in it. You look at a screen and if the pixels are not displaying something correctly on their screen but it’s fine on yours, essentially it is your fault. It’s just such a hassle to explain the issue. In my case, I was held largely accountable for a technical issue in the sense that my line weights were not displaying correctly on our sharing platform so I was receiving feedback on something that primarily didn’t actually look like what was being seen. I think another significant thing that changed with the teaching and marking of our submissions was that COVID-19 was considered. They all understood that everybody was limited whether it be that they don't have a laptop or the materials to make models. We all tried to produce the best possible work. It was nice of them to consider the situation while they were marking because it’s not something that is in our control. Who knows if the virus didn’t exist, we may have created even better quality work. We just won’t be able to find out.
Elif: And I think with teaching format we were lucky in the sense that COVID only really affected the last month or two of uni, whereas if the pandemic had occurred earlier on during the year, where we had group projects, it could have been even more difficult simply because groups are a different sort of effort and contribution you provide that affects not only your mark but it affects everyone in that group. We saw from first year that this can be a difficult situation as some people might not contribute, hand stuff on time or even take the work as seriously as you and where this was a huge problem, I think it would be even more difficult in a pandemic where the only communication is through a digital format, meaning people might not reply. So, going into second year and knowing me to have group work, I think the dynamic will definitely be different.
Sude: Yeah and it's an even bigger commitment than it was going into tutorials and going into uni because you would see those people and you can have a quick chat to catch up on what they're doing and what they need to still get done, but now trying to get a hold of people is going to be difficult. So I think everyone needs to consider an even bigger commitment because not only could you be wasting my time, as I try to get into contact with you but you're also wasting time from improving your grade.
Linda: Yeah and the fact that you're kind of relying on people in your group more than ever, it's going to matter so much to make sure you can get everyone together to collate and distribute the roles for tasks you might need. I think it's kind of down to everyone to be responsible and to be on top of things. I mean this goes for group work in general, but because it's harder now to bring people together for joint tasks it poses as more of an intense challenge.
Sude: Okay cool. The next topic of discussion is what saved us during lockdown? You know what resources did we resort to that we may have never used, or anything we started using more?
Linda: I don't think there have been resources that I would not have used before COVID, but more that my dependence on the resources has increased. For example, online magazines and the detail inspiration where we can look at site drawings but also a factor that played a big part of getting us through the pandemic was the architecture student community. I think knowing how everyone else was coping with these challenges, whether it was other students in your course or even people who have their own entity and are using content to help people, it was good to have that sort of advice and reassurance knowing that everyone is in the same boat.
Elif: I definitely agree that the resources I used were things that I was already using, it's just that my dependency on it increased. So the resources kind of split into two categories for me, so firstly stuff I needed for my project, so online software, I ended up using software like Adobe Photoshop where I usually wouldn't. The other form of resources being the architecture community content providers (as mentioned by linda) that really took into consideration students who were studying in their first year. It did provide an extra layer of comfort knowing you're not alone and it gave reassurance and use for their content to be put into practice. Like I said before we were coming to the end of our projects as we went into lockdown so if it had been earlier I would be more dependent on online resources libraries such as the uni library and the RIBA online catalogue.
Sude: The resources we ended up using were resources that we had and were already using. But the one thing which I didn't do before but considered using was making use of interactions between the people in the architecture community. So as you guys said the architecture community is out there, but it's not something I took advantage of when we were coming into uni. I remember considering and even messaging people who are out there who have finished their part 1 asking them to see if they could review my project. The reason being the only person that would see my project at this point was my tutors and there wasn't that much perspective into the project. I realised I could easily send a pdf and someone can look at it and give new feedback that my tutors might have skipped over. Even though I didn't end up using this resource, it is something I considered and something I will most likely use in the second year.
That brings us to the end of our architecture and COVID-19 discussion. We hope that you guys were able to take something away from our experiences. Next week we’ll have a part 2, a continuation from this post which will cover what sort of advice and tips we would give you guys whilst studying architecture during the times of COVID-19. We’d also like to mention that we hope you guys take good care of yourselves in these difficult periods that we are facing. Please do follow the guidelines set out by the government. By doing this, we’ll be able to get through the pandemic quickly and by the end of it hopefully we’ll be able to re-join with our normal lives.
Follow us @archidabble on Instagram, our DMs are open for questions and suggestions. Our email, dabbleenquiries@gmail.com is also available for you guys to get in contact with us.
Come back next week for part 2!
