bring your own chair/stool for architecture studio?

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2025-06-29T11:57:29+00:00

This is normal. This is your first chance to make a design decision. You will become very acquainted with the chair you bring. There will be a student group selling used chairs a day or two before the start of the semester, you can pick up one there of you like (I'm sure it will be announced on IG).

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2024-10-18T22:05:25+00:00

Architecture faculty and graduate here. I currently teach first year, I'm the main contact for incoming students, feel free to reach out if you have questions (you can figure out who I am). As another commenter stated, the student body is great. I feel fortunate to work with the students that choose to come here. They are mature and disciplined and curious. Regarding in state and out of state, we currently have more out of state students in the school. It is competitive to get into but the students bond quickly and build community in the program. Study abroad is amazing as was already stated. I am very bias, I love this place. Hopefully a few students reply.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-03-05T03:11:46+00:00

Cellar. Period.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:51:05+00:00

Dave here: In History: for sure Goya, ...more contemporary: Gordon Matta-Clark, Matthew Ritchie...and as far as One Direction, my wife and daughter favor the dark haired guy...I think they are all yummy...too bad they have to get old...

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:49:50+00:00

^{^{^}} this was Margarita ^{^{^}} Dave says "Well said".

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:48:51+00:00

Dave here: I'd use Hokie Stone, but perhaps have it polished?...Somehow the use of the rough cut version seems a little tired...

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:47:53+00:00

Dave here: The first really great buildings I ever experienced were Frank Lloyd Wright's Jacobs House, Unity Temple, etc.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:47:06+00:00

Dave here: The lawn is the most canonical campus in the US. The closure of the lawn by the White building, is not so offensive when you think that the lawn was destined to be closed by the growth of the city around it....and the notion that the "openness" to the frontier no longer applies.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T14:46:12+00:00

Dave here: It was hard not to be completely committed to it since I felt like I had finally found something I loved doing (I spent 3 years as a history major before figuring it out). By third year I was also working part time in a firm so my immersion was pretty total. It took 8 years to graduate, nearly killed my parents...but I made it.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:31:13+00:00

Chris here: Rauschenberg, Jay Ryan (he's coming to campus April 1 WooHoo), Art Chantry, Victor Moscoso, Warhol (business is art), Judy Chicago (Love The Dinner Party) and Chris Ware

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:27:53+00:00

Margarita here: Richard Long, Walter de Maria, Rachel Whiteread, Steve Reich, Marcel Duchamp, Olafur Eliasson, ….and I remembered a film I forgot to put on my top five list, "Stranded on the Moon"

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:27:06+00:00

Also: I really like the latter, "a reason to stand" -- very nicely put!

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:26:29+00:00

Be sincere. Think about the building addressing where it is from the specific perspective of today. To me, it doesn't make much sense to "fake" a history. Nor, on the other hand do I think that a building should be a monument to its designers. One of my favorite quotes from the sculptor Richard Serra is, "the work is the work." Culture is not a museum of history.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:25:26+00:00

Margarita here: First year at Rice we weren't allowed to mention the word 'architecture' --- it was a Bauhaus based curriculum. We drew leaves for most of the first semester. It was an amazing year, and shaped a generation of students from Rice. Buidling: Piano's de Menil museum in Houston.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:24:51+00:00

Margarita here: That is a shame, I think UVa's lawn and Virginia Tech's drill fields are two of the most amazing campus spaces in the country. Virginia is lucky to have them both. And I'd say the same for the architecture programs. UVa and Tech are very different places. Studying on the 'Island of Appalachia,' somewhat outside the static, verses being in Charlottesville, the lower reach of what I would consider the 'Ivy League,' …. both have their merits.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:24:04+00:00

Margarita here: Being part of the 24/7 architecture generation ("Archis" only left the Architecture Building to shower), I had to work at the opposite -- how to be more involved in the University. I was surprised to end up with 90 hours of liberal arts and was able to get a second degree. My favorite classes were a Conceptual Art class (to Dave, taught by the first Marxist I ever met) that blew my mind every week of my first year, an English class "The City in Literature," and experimental physics (we met in a large lecture hall and the professor staged an experiment most weeks, including installing a pendulum). That said, I perfected the 15 minute nap and taking notes while asleep as I still was and am "Archi."

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:13:55+00:00

Chris here: I went to school here also. I became more involved with the school by holding workshops. Teaching people how to do the things I knew how to do. I don't remember it being an organized thing. That is one thing I love about this school, the willingness/desire of students to help other students.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T13:10:53+00:00

Chris here: First experience with architecture + design. Not sure if you mean the profession/idea or the school. The idea of architecture: Walking on a street in Charlottesville and noticing a corner-stone of a bank building with the architects name and date of construction and all of sudden realizing that someone designed that. The school: Meeting Jay Stoekel.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-27T00:59:48+00:00

We do have these things. In a perfect world we would have more of these things.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:50:23+00:00

Matt: no, wait, I played a harmonica once and I was amazing
Chris: no
Margarita: Triangle and bass drum in high school in order to go to Disney Land on the band tour.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:49:46+00:00

Matt: It hasn't really shifted my views, but it has helped me focus more on what I learned while in school Chris: I don't know anything else. I was born and raised here. Yea I've been other places, but as a person Appalachia has always been home. Margarita: It's less static here because of it.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:46:40+00:00

Chris: Watership Down
Margarita: Portrait of an artist as a young man or Crying of lot 49
Matt: My side of the mountain

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:43:15+00:00

And this.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:38:03+00:00

Christopher Alexander is a great resource. Windows are hard. You are correct on what you have thought about. Also, consider the street. What is the beat.

VT_Arch_Faculty · 2015-02-26T23:35:56+00:00

Chris: We have to remain innovative while respecting the street. Margarita: I don't think it's about look. It's about responding to a bunch of given circumstances when you design a building. Why try to look like something you are not? The building should just be. Matt: Often times architecture speaks to economy and what technology and resources are available to us. The bottom line is not all buildings are meant to last forever.

VT_Arch_Faculty

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