HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF YOUR HOLIDAYS AS AN ARCHITECTURE STUDENT

Abstract

As a student returning from a year out of school, having been fortunate enough to have had the chance to design and build several unconventional projects, I realized that my four years in the university receiving formal architectural education thus far had left me with a distinct lack of practical, first-hand experience in the world of architecture.

As such, my dissertation will be structured like a manual for new students who are interested in becoming architects, to encourage them to make the most of their holidays to do internships (unlike myself, who apart from the year out only did but one internship) as I feel that internships are extremely important to supplement the knowledge that we learn from formal education in the universities.

Let me be clear that this paper is not a critique of my four years of formal education thus far; but rather aimed at expounding the virtues of internships to prospective young students as a way to supplement what I feel is lacking in formal architectural education in the universities today.

I will discuss the different types of internships that a student can choose to take up during his or her holidays and how they can benefit them, as well as discuss some forms of alternative architectural education that I feel is a way to move forward in the future.