B.Arch. 2015
Although I have spent most of my life challenging myself in various studies of art, the concept of architecture did not strike me until 2009 when I attended the architecture summer program at Cornell.
Under a friend’s suggestion, I came to the university but with little idea of what lay ahead of me. That summer we were asked to make cubes, document an artifact, make a vessel for the artifact, and design a dwelling with some previously made cubes, all within six weeks. I was not sure if any of that meant a thing to me.
Nevertheless, I came back again the following academic year. Passionate to pursue more technical skills, I did not realize how confounded I was in understanding the notion of space. The course introduced this concept with points, lines, surfaces, volumes, movement, constructions, and conceptual development. A simple decision transforms into a core perception; limitations of the reality affect different resolutions. Involving studies of site, precedents, and circulation, the ideals in each design demonstrate more than what they appear to be.
Architecture needs no fancy rhetoric to prove its value; it speaks for the intricacy of many local, historical, political, cultural, and societal backgrounds with its predestined existence. The creation of architecture, a more thoughtful and complex form than art, is the spatial and expressional translation of people’s feelings, and I experienced it all in my final project.
Compared to all the drawing, model making skills and fundamental knowledge I have learned in the studio, Architecture has most importantly impacted my perspective of the world I live in. “We can live without art, but we can’t live without architecture." After a year at Cornell, I have begun to understand.
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