In the Trenches with Yale Architecture Students Week After Week

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We recently spent some time talking about the big numbers of applicants trying to get into the Yale School of Architecture and now we return to the scene to take a look at those lucky few who made it. Our friends over at Metropolis have just launched a great new online feature called The Yale Building Project, wherein a different student each Monday will report in on what they’ve been working on, how Robert A.M. Stern likes his coffee, and so on. The weekly blogging will continue out through August, giving you plenty of time to glean enough information and insider discussions to start telling people you went to Yale yourself and following up by saying you’ve just been working at the Red Lobster for all these years by choice. Here’s a bit from week one’s participant, Matthew Zych in his entry, “Chaos and Trust”:

No longer students yet not quite professionals, we are in a wonderfully chaotic middle zone between education and practice. Our class is responsible for the construction documents and permit sets to be submitted to the city zoning board and all shop drawings that will be used on the construction site. This presented the responsibility — a first for many of us — to resolve with complete certainty the grey areas of the building process we often try to ignore in school. (A vague response to questions about codes, building systems, and budget will not fly anymore.)

Breaking into Editorial Photography 101

photo scrutiny.jpgAre your photos worth thousands of words? Thousands of dollars? Thousands more photos? Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer will help you get the picture (and figure out where to sell it) at mediabistro.com’s one-night Breaking into Editorial Photography seminar on Thursday, May 7 in New York City. Students will learn practical information and insider tips (the best kind!) on how to get coveted magazine jobs and build a career as an editorial freelancer. Here’s your chance to learn how to create a dynamic portfolio, what photo editors at top magazines and newspapers are looking for, and when it pays to join an agency or get representation; registration is just a click away.

A Trip Through the Perils of Architecture School

We’ve been talking a lot about architecture schools lately, what with the news of huge increases in applications and the decline in financial aid and general program funding. So despite all the odds of getting in and staying in, before you succumb to that growing desire to head back to school, we turn to this short video/slideshow by Peter Hess, found by way of Archinect, chronicling The Life of an Architecture Student, in particular, one at the University of California, Berkeley:

Strathclyde University Asks Architecture Students to Skip School for a Year

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We reported late last week about Yale and Princeton‘s architecture schools sorting with a glut of applicants and working with them on their financial aid once a select few got in. Seemed like a lot to deal with, but after receiving a tip from our pal Kristen Richards over at the wonderful ArchNewsNow, we see that it’s nothing compared to what’s going on at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. In a city within a country already dealing with a gigantic loss of architecture jobs, the university is asking its students not to come back after their summer break. “Do anything,” they said, just “don’t come back here.” Faced with too many students, too few available jobs to naturally snatch some away from the school, and slimmer resources, Strathclyde says it just isn’t capable of keeping everyone and are asking many to take some time away for a while. Here’s a bit:

Head of Strathclyde University’s school of architecture Gordon Murray felt that the actions were justified and that taking time out would ‘better equip’ students for their fourth year. He said: ‘We advised against returning in the case of year three.’

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Studying ethically responsible innovation in France

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“Life expectancy growing longer, need to maintain the coherence of crumbling social ties, emergency situations – disasters, poverty – arising all over the world : many great challenges are looming over our modern-day societies.
Design must strive to provide collectively thought-up responsible answers to these emerging issues by making use of its global and systemic vision of the world.”

The Master’s Program in Ethically Responsible Innovation at the L’Ecole de Design in Nantes France “trains designers to find their voice in a context of ever-changing habits”.

This unusual design school also offers degrees in Cross Cultural Design, New Eating Habits, Mutations of the Built Environment, Tangible Interfaces, and New Mobility.

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A crash course in emerging technologies

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The Financial Times has published a feature story on the brand new Singularity University.

“In a spare one-room office at Nasa’s Silicon Valley campus, a small band of futurists is plotting to save the world. The means are not a revolutionary technology or a new world order (though both may be byproducts). Rather, a new, pseudo-academic institution called Singularity University is going to solve our grand challenges: poverty, hunger, energy scarcity and climate change. Among others. Through a combination of techno-optimism, wide-eyed idealism and belief in the perfectibility of human beings, these well-connected geeks are creating an institution meant to legitimise their most extreme thinking.”

>> Read article

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Material Stories Newsletter: Growth

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Aart van Bezooyen’s site, Material Stories, has just published its first newsletter (as a PDF). The theme is “growth,” and it’s filled with great links and info. Here’s the pitch:

Welcome to the first issue of Material Stories quarterly newsletter! This first edition is all about Growth. Growth in nature has always been a great source of inspiration for the design of the human environment. Not only for its precious resources such as its water, oil, woods, etc. – nature also shows us how diverse worlds of flora and fauna can be in balance with itself, something which inspires many sustainability thinkers.

Read the whole thing here.

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Yale School of Architecture Gets Huge Rise in Applications, But Robert Stern Still Has to Make Calls, Asking Students to Come

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Speaking of the business of buildings, you’ll recall that we learned early last month of the big, big upswing in un- or underemployed architects deciding to forgo looking for a new job in a struggling industry and instead head back to school. Nowhere could that be seen more prevalently than at Robert Stern‘s stomping grounds, the Yale School of Architecture, which took on a massive 23% increase in applications, 989 in total. Unfortunately, the school was only able to take in around 14% of all those who applied, leaving a great many looking for what to try next (things were slightly better at Princeton‘s architecture program, which also saw a big bump in applications, but let more students enroll). Also, even if you get in, you’ll be looking at some hefty tuition bills you might start to reconsider once you learn about the program’s financial aid packages:

“The School of Architecture can’t compare to Yale College in its ability to offer generous financial aid,” Stern said. “We do our very best, but students still graduate with too much debt. Princeton can offer much more aid to students, and so it creates the most havoc for us.”

Part of that havoc ensues immediately after the deadline for enrollment — which was last Wednesday — when the School of Architecture tried to convince some applicants to reconsider their decision to turn down Yale’s offer. Stern himself called recently admitted students, and the School of Architecture declined to release admissions statistics until their negotiations with potential students were finalized.

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Jonathan Ive, Betty Woodman Among RISD Honorary Degree Recipients

RISD 09.jpgAs if proximity to Rhode Island School of Design president John Maeda wasn’t reason enough to visit Providence, RISD has announced who will receive honorary degrees at its 2009 commencement on Saturday, May 30. This year’s crop of “exceptional individuals who have made groundbreaking contributions to the world of art and design” are entrepreneur/Flickr co-founder Caterina Fake, Apple designer Jonathan Ive, former RISD president Roger Mandle, writer and creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson, and sculptor Betty Woodman. Held outdoors, RISD’s always festive commencement ceremony is open to the public, which means that anyone is welcome to soak up Robinson’s commencement address and admire the graduates’ unique twist on traditional caps, gowns, pomp, and circumstance. It’s also customary for the honorary degree recipients to give a speech, and who knows, Ive just might shower the crowd in free iPod nanos. (Hey, with Maeda presiding, anything can happen.)

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media

Take a Closer Look at Editorial Photography

photo scrutiny.jpgAre your photos worth thousands of words? Thousands of dollars? Thousands more photos? Pulitzer Prize-winning photo editor Stella Kramer will help you get the picture (and figure out where to sell it) at mediabistro.com’s one-night Breaking into Editorial Photography seminar on Thursday, May 7 in New York City. Students will learn practical information and insider tips (the best kind!) on how to get coveted magazine jobs and build a career as an editorial freelancer. Here’s your chance to learn how to create a dynamic portfolio, what photo editors at top magazines and newspapers are looking for, and when it pays to join an agency or get representation; registration is just a click away.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media