Reflection

By Drew Baldwin

Since this is the last blog of the semester, I think I will take some time to reflect on my grad school experience thus far.

            After graduation, I knew that I would be starting summer studio in a mere two weeks, I can’t say I was totally thrilled to be spending my summer in class, but I was more interested in what was in what we would be doing and how the studio would go. The course was very rigorous being as we were packing 16 week’s worth of studio work into half that time. It was difficult to adjust to the work load the first few days, but after that things began to run a bit more smoothly. The project went well and I think my final product was one to be proud of. In all, the summer studio was a great learning experience and preparation for the coming three semesters.

            As the summer drew to a close, thoughts then moved to the fall semester and what we would be doing in our studio class as well as beginning to formulate ideas for a thesis. For the longest time, I had no idea what I wanted to do or where to start in selecting a thesis. I tried to think of what I am interested in how that could possibly lead me to an idea, but nothing. It wasn’t until we started working on our studio project, the Rio Legacy proposal that I began to realize what I liked and how that could influence my thesis ideas. In starting the project, we began with the master planning of our site, which took a particular liking to, determining the layouts of building space to green space and circulation through a site. As the project progressed I chose to design garden apartments in our site, for a couple reasons: I’ve never took on the challenge of designing apartment style living and I wanted to create an interesting connection between living spaces and green spaces.

            Sitting here, with our project due in about 18 hours, I am satisfied with what I have produced for my studio project as both a group and individual (I hope the presentation goes well). I am also excited to start researching more and working on my thesis the next two semesters and am very curious as to what may happen in the future.