The Second Studio (formerly The Midnight Charette) is an explicit podcast about design, architecture, and the everyday. Hosted by Architects David Bruce Lee and Marina Bourderonnet, it features different creative professionals in unscripted conversations that allow for thoughtful takes and personal discussions.
A variety of subjects are covered with honesty and humor: some episodes are interviews, while others are tips for fellow designers, reviews of buildings and other projects, or casual explorations of everyday life and design. The Second Studio is also available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.
This week David and Marina answer two questions from listeners: How to cope with the feeling of failure in architecture school and whether or not architecture is hard and stressful. The two cover why freshmen often have false expectations of success, embracing failure, not seeking approval from teachers or clients, dealing with ‘dumb’ design assignments, overcoming paralysis, the main reasons why being an architect is challenging, and more!
Highlights & Timestamps
Why freshmen university students have false expectations of success. (00:00)
In high school, you are taught the material and then you are quizzed on that material. That is the direction of behavior… you are given the content, you are given the thing you have to study. This way of learning is imbued in people because and so is the expectation that you will get a very high grade also. […] There’s this assumption that we are all going to ‘A’s all the time. We expect to be educated a certain way and expect to achieve success based on the directions we’ve been given. […] Architecture school for the most part is not that way… especially the first year. (04:47)
Becoming a successful architecture student and learning from design classmates. (09:35)
The concern a lot of students have during their first year [undergraduate school] is more with the technical skills. [But] it doesn’t really matter what your skillset is in the first year. That is not going to dictate whether or not you’re a good architect in the long term. It’s also not going to dictate whether or not you’re a successful student by the time you get to the third or fourth year. Fairly often, the students who are the most gifted in the first year are not the best students at the end. It’s not to say that having a good skillset is a detriment… of course not, it’s an advantage. But the success of the architecture student is more determined by their being persistent, not giving up, and working really hard. If you do those things you’ll be a successful student. (09:46)
Embracing failure, the iterative process, and thinking beyond the project/assignment brief. (23:40)
Your goal in a weird way should be to fail, in the sense that if you’re failing, it means you are pushing and trying to do something that you are not sure you can do. If you find a method [of working] that is successful…Successful why? Successful because your teacher and peers praise it…then I encourage you to abandon it as soon as you find out that it works. Use those skills but don’t repeat it. Do something different. Do something you know you won’t be good at, but you are going to try. It’s not about being successful all the time. It’s about failing nine-out-of-ten times and being successful that tenth time. (24:12)
Not seeking approval from the teacher or the client. Learning to think critically. (36:30)
Part of being an architect is being able to have a good night’s sleep knowing you’ve not entirely figured out the perfect answer and knowing that even if you complete the project, there’s still some aspect of the project that you could’ve done differently. […] We are in a continual state of process and nothing is ever truly completed. There’s a little bit of accepting and embracing that. There’s a freedom that comes with that if you can learn it. (49:30)
Not burning out. When students disagree with their design teacher’s approach. (52:18)
One of the ways to understand school is more as a time acquire these different power-packs, skills, and upgrades to oneself, and the more I can gather the better. In some ways that’s the point of architecture school. I think sometimes when achieving success is the primary focus, we forget that other perspective of just trying to acquire knowledge. School is also for learning about oneself and what things one is drawn to—one’s path. However, finding your own path can lead to a mindset that is the opposite of gathering as much as possible. Because carving your own path can mean excluding things and thinking, “I don’t believe in this teacher. I’m not going to do any work for their studio.” That is not the mentality of building up strength and gathering knowledge. (59:19)
Overcoming design paralysis. (01:08:45)
Is architecture hard and stressful? (01:10:08)
