Students from architecture-focused vocational secondary schools bring professional knowledge and experience they have already gained. We build on and organise that foundation so they can share a common basis with students coming from other schools.
PREPARATION
Preparation for entrance exams—and for studying architecture and interior design
The entrance exam is only the first of many…
Preparation for an entrance exam is not an isolated drill for a single test. It is the beginning of work on the knowledge and habits needed later: understanding a brief, reading spatial relationships, drawing clearly and explaining a solution.
What do we want to achieve?
That foundation matters for both architecture and interior design studies: no space can be understood apart from the whole it belongs to. The aim is for each person to recognise what the other is trying to say—and whether they have considered us, too.
How will we approach it?
01
Mastering the foundations
Drawing is the basic means of engineering communication; without it, that communication cannot happen. We begin with descriptive geometry and perspective. This also calls for a confident, freehand line, which we develop alongside the technical work. Our guiding principle is deduction: we start by asking how the result we are working towards shapes and determines the way we get there. We always work in context, approaching individual parts through the whole to which they naturally belong. Demystification without oversimplification, and the use of analogy, are essential: in the end, a drawing must be understandable to everyone. This covers sixty per cent of the entrance exam, as well as something that has not appeared in past exams but may: freehand drawing. The first stage covers the first semester, but never in isolation—we always work in context.
02
Application and focused practice
The emphasis shifts to application, while we fill in what is missing. Past entrance exams are a starting point, not a limit; we adapt tasks to the chosen architecture programme as well. At the same time, we work on the remaining forty per cent: architectural history and general knowledge. We use the same principles—deduction, analogy and association—to rule out the unlikely with confidence and arrive at the right answer, or draw a conclusion when we do not know something. We bring order to apparent chaos and look for the thread that connects it all, then follow it.
Monge
Perspective
Drawing
Association
Deduction
How will we work?
Small groups
Groups of up to five meet for four hours a week. This gives us room to adapt the work to the people in the group, allowing it to develop its own character while preserving each person’s individuality. We work with each student so that the group can become a team with a shared task and, above all, a shared understanding—one of the foundations of architectural practice.
What do we need?
A sketchbook—probably more than one. Choose your own white paper, its size and type; you may even change your mind along the way. Graphite pencils, a sharpener and an eraser will be waiting for you. Once we have built up our skills, we will also need rolls of fine tracing paper.
Everything we do, in our sessions or at home, should go into the sketchbook. It lets everyone follow and compare the work, and it will be invaluable when you come across it one day—in a present that has not happened yet…
NOTE
The foundation built in vocational secondary school does not end with the entrance exam. It develops through university studies and becomes part of a professional way of thinking and working.
The work has to be done. The process is designed to bring out the best in each person and, through understanding, make the work a pleasure. We just have to meet halfway…