UAL
Bachelor’s — Architecture
2010 — 2013 Lisbon, Portugal
After finishing my High School I decided to continue my studies and apply for University. And I know that Photography has anything related with Architecture, but at that time I was still unsure what I really wanted to do. I could choose design instead, but I always felt some inspiration from those contemporary building designs that we usually see in photographs… or perhaps in reality I have been told that I would only had a future if I study Architecture.
So I felt very confident and believed that was going to start projecting awesome buildings, I was one of those students that didn’t know what was coming… How could I imagine that it was going to be so tough, so tiring, so painful? This was the hardest challenge I ever been through so far.
However, I thought I would be studying for 5 years – Bachelors and Masters – but I only graduated on Bachelor’s. And believe me, today I still have friends finishing this course!!
I found my self thinking that this wasn’t what I wanted to do for the rest of my professional life. I won’t deny that I haven’t learnt anything, it’s quite the opposite because I learned so much in this three years and I totally do not regret.
I created a lot of projects, I studied various subjects, I lost countless nights ending models and architectural plans to deliver in the next day. I did theoretical presentations, practical assignments, had to do a several projects at the same time and most important thing I had to learn how to council everything. I almost had no personal life, always at the university working, eating and even sleeping in desks and chairs (I couldn’t return home at late hours! No ferries)
I had great teachers even though. Some of them were very severe to us, they were angry and always putting us under pressure. But I’m glad they did it and I thank them all for that. They made us open our eyes, made us stronger and made us able to face all the difficulties and impossible things.
Even after all this hard-work and meaningful learning I realized that I wanted to switch, however I decided that at least I had to finish the bachelor’s degree. I realized that what I wanted to do the most wasn’t the architectural plans nor the models but finishing the project’s presentation layouts. I only felt comfortable editing those pages and making photo editings, mixing renders with real places. Hum.. Is this what I think it is? Creating layouts… editing pages and images…?
As time passed by I discovered that it was possible to follow a design course without having to apply for a Bachelor’s degree again.
I can say that Photography was always present here too. In the first year of this course our teachers organized an educational trip to the northwest of Portugal and told us that we were automatically participating on a photography contest to win another trip for the next year. I promised myself that this was my time to shine! So I applied with a few photos of this trip and incredibly won the 1st, 2nd and 3rd places at the same time! This happened because the photos only had a reference number on they’re back and the courts had no way of knowing who the photos belonged to, also the photos were all very different from each other. Well when they found out that the photos belonged to the same person they had to choose 2 more participants so that it would be fair to have other winners.
During the second year we did a huge and awesome project at human scale, all the classmates were divided in 5 teams in order to build a small thematic chamber in our class room. We had to think about a concept and use recycled materials or useless things that we found all over the University. All teams created different and interesting chambers using wooden pallets from supermarkets, wooden baskets from fruits, plywood, isolation styrofoam, filling foam, fabrics, cork, paperboard, newspapers etc. Anything you can imagine.
We chose the concept of Ying&Yang and transformed our cabinet in two distinct spaces. A light and a dark spaces connected to each other. We used recycled water bottles, cardboard boxes, styrofoam, alveolar polypropylene, fabrics, etc… We used hot glue, ink, sprays and other materials to produce and create this project called “Curiosity Cabinet”.
Along the constructive work we took some photographs and at the end teachers ordered us to create a video with all the proceeding phases. It is a kind of messy and silly video but nobody in our team had video producing skills or edition programs so I made this with Windows Movie Maker… Please don’t blame me! I show you the video below…
The divided wall in an S shape just like the Ying&Yang symbol was made from plastic bottles to create some kind of texture. Creating a window directly from the white chamber to the classroom was one of our purposes because we wanted to build a circular entrance to sort some full water bottles but we figured out that it was quite impossible with the materials we got so we has to choose instead a hexagonal shape. At the black chamber we coated the passage with a black fabric curtain, we reduced the ceiling to create a claustrophobic space and covered up the plastic bottles with black ink. Well everything had to be dark except one thing – we cut a hole in the ceiling and placed a plastic bottle full with bleach. Bleach makes the water more brighter. It represents the white dot in the dark side of the symbol.
It was a very exhaustive project to accomplish but it ended up getting very interesting and interactive with visitors. There was also some background music in the black chamber. Awesome!
Go to previous Photography or to next Communication Design.
Carolina Cravinho 