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Candidates applying for the two-year Master of Architecture, two-year Master of Landscape Architecture or the two-year Master of Urban Design program are required to submit a portfolio. The portfolio must be no larger than 8.5 x11-inch (image size). The admissions committee is interested in the quality of work submitted in the portfolio, and applicants are advised not to lavish expense on special or unusual packaging. Slides, original drawings, CDs, and loose (unbound) materials should not be submitted. The portfolio should include at least five projects with a range of complexity and with concise, explanatory statements for each project. Include the dates of execution; course, professor, or firm; objective or program summary; and most importantly, a brief self-analysis of the results. When any work is not completely original, the relevant sources must be given. When work is of a team nature, the applicant’s role and contribution to the project should be clearly indicated. Applicants who have professional experience and wish to submit examples of professional work may do so. Of particular interest are projects in which the applicant has played a principal role in design.
The portfolio is returned after final admission procedures, provided the applicant encloses a self-addressed return mailer with sufficient prepaid postage or if the applicant appears in person to claim the materials within one year of submission. Unclaimed portfolios are retained for only one year. The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture assumes no liability for lost or damaged materials.
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Candidates applying for the Master of Architecture, Master of Landscape Architecture, or the Master of Urban Design three-plus program must also provide a portfolio of creative works. It is recognized that candidates to this program may not have work related to architecture; therefore, the portfolio should include other forms of creative work such as drawings, designs, painting, photography, writing, craft, and construction. The work presented may be from vocational, avocational, or academic sources. The portfolio must be no larger than 8.5 x11-inch (image size). The admissions committee is interested in the quality of work submitted in the portfolio, and applicants are advised not to lavish expense on special or unusual packaging. Slides, original drawings, CDs, and loose (unbound) materials should not be submitted. The portfolio should include at least five projects with a range of complexity and with concise, explanatory statements for each project. Include the dates of execution; course, professor, or firm; objective or program summary; and most importantly, a brief self-analysis of the results. When any work is not completely original, the relevant sources must be given. When work is of a team nature, the applicant’s role and contribution to the project should be clearly indicated. Applicants who have professional experience and wish to submit examples of professional work may do so. Of particular interest are projects in which the applicant has played a principal role in design.
The portfolio is returned after final admission procedures, provided the applicant encloses a self-addressed return mailer with sufficient prepaid postage, or if the applicant appears in person to claim the materials within one year of submission. Unclaimed portfolios are retained for only one year. The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture assumes no liability for lost or damaged materials.
For help in preparing your Creative Works portfolio, see Creative Works Portfolio Tips.
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Candidates applying for the MS in Building Design program are required to submit a portfolio. The portfolio must be no larger than 8.5 x11-inch (image size). The admissions committee is interested in the quality of work submitted in the portfolio, and applicants are advised not to lavish expense on special or unusual packaging. Slides, original drawings, CDs, and loose (unbound) materials should not be submitted. The portfolio should include at least five projects with a range of complexity and with concise, explanatory statements for each project. Include the dates of execution; course, professor, or firm; objective or program summary; and most importantly, a brief self-analysis of the results. When any work is not completely original, the relevant sources must be given. When work is of a team nature, the applicant’s role and contribution to the project should be clearly indicated. Applicants who have professional experience and wish to submit examples of professional work may do so. Of particular interest are projects in which the applicant has played a principal role in design.
The portfolio is returned after final admission procedures, provided the applicant encloses a self-addressed return mailer with sufficient prepaid postage, or if the applicant appears in person to claim the materials within one year of submission. Unclaimed portfolios are retained for only one year. The School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture assumes no liability for lost or damaged materials.
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Manage the process and get it done.
Although much of what is suggested here is geared towards undergraduate architecture students who are preparing to apply to the upper-division program, it’s also helpful information for students who are applying to the 3-plus MArch program. The school doesn’t provide any “examples” of 3-plus student’s portfolios in the school because portfolios submitted to the 3-plus program are extremely subjective. However, the guidelines below should help students get prepared and thinking about how to put together a “creative works” portfolio.
Keep it simple and clear.
Don’t try to be overly complex graphically, and watch out for graphic excess. It is easy to get lost in an overly complex project that, because of its time requirements, doesn’t get developed sufficiently. Simple, but well-presented content is very effective. The portfolio should be about presenting the creative work, not itself.
Don’t get in over your head.
To be ambitious in the portfolio’s design is good. To be ambitious to the point that the portfolio is not feasible is not. The portfolio is, for most of you, a new problem, and new problems are full of possibilities—don’t get lost in those possibilities. Be realistic in regard to time. Be realistic in evaluating what you can pull off. It is most important that the portfolio be clear, well-crafted, and aesthetically developed. Well-developed and made simple are much better than not so developed, but new and interesting.
Go through a few drafts.
The portfolio is like a studio project or an English paper. The more you work on it, the better it gets.
Use the computer.
Putting a portfolio together digitally is far easier than the old cut-and-paste method.
Get and stay organized.
Be organized with your computer files, images, etc.
II. Presenting the Work
Be clear .
Above all, be clear. You have the reviewer’s attention for a brief period of time, so use it well. Don’t waste that time with pages, images, drawings, and text that is unclear. Be focused in how you present the work.
Have good descriptive photographs.
Make sure that you have clear and descriptive photographs of your work. Nothing kills a portfolio like poor documentation.
Set up a compositional structure/system.
The system needs to be flexible—every page should not be exactly the same.
Focus the reviewer’s attention.
Fewer images that are very strong are more effective than many that are not as strong.
Show yourself at your best.
You don’t have to show every single project. Certainly you want to include most of your work, but if you have a project that just did not work, you can omit it. You can also, through the presentation in the portfolio, show those aspects of a project that are strong and not show the aspects that are weak.
Use/leave white space.
Don’t fill up the page with images and text.
Don’t use overly large images for every photograph.
Consistent use of large images tends to be less effective. You can use images as large as an entire page and also quite small images size should relate to the composition of the page and to what you are presenting. Remember to use white space.
Be selective with your use of images.
Leave the bad stuff at home. The photographs are the means through which you and your work are known. They have to be effective. Fewer good and effective images are more effective than a lot of mixed images.
Use cropping to strengthen subject matter.
Crop your photographs as necessary to present the real subject matter of the shot in a stronger, more focused way.
Don’t distort your project images.
Every year there are a few portfolios where the student has pushed, stretched, and colored images as a way of making them graphically more exciting. This is always a problem because it clouds the actual project. The portfolio is about the content of the projects—don’t undermine that.
Avoid backgrounds.
Backgrounds can be used effectively but much more often they undermine a portfolio. Backgrounds tend to end up giving little information and then competing with project images. When not used in a fairly sophisticated way they result in busy, unclear and confusing pages.
One sketch does not qualify as a process.
Presenting process can be very effective, but to show process and you have to show a progression (a series of sketches).
Present developed sketches.
If you include sketches, make sure that they are graphically developed/good, particularly if you are including only one or two from a project. You can present a series of less developed sketches to talk about process. That way all the attention is not on a single so-so sketch.
Drawings need to be readable.
Drawings and, most particularly, line drawings suffer when reduced to a small size. Ninety-five percent of the information they carried is usually lost. This is complicated by the fact that drawings are the most difficult things to photograph. If a drawing ends up not showing anything, it is better to leave it out. Ways to make drawings more effective are complimenting the overall drawing by including detail fragments that will how the quality and content (this is probably the most effective), and making your drawing images larger (even as large as a whole page if the drawing is worth that kind of emphasis, although not every drawing is worth it).
III. Text
Present your ideas clearly and succinctly.
What was your interpretation of a project, what was your idea, what did the project mean to you? A very brief list of ideas and issues can be very effective.
Use captions, titles and notations.
Use captions and brief notations to describe a little more about what the reviewers are seeing. You have an informed audience, so a little well-chosen text goes a long way in conveying the ideas behind the project.
Don’t use too much text.
Too much text is like too many images, it dilutes your reviewer’s focus.
Avoid overly large type for general text.
Larger type has its place to be sure. This caution is against using 18-pt text for your general text throughout the portfolio. Overly large text tends to make the portfolio seem less refined and text can overwhelm content. The 12-pt font is good as well as the 9-pt font. Even the 7-pt font can work for elements like image captions.
Don’t use exotic fonts.
Exotic fonts like gothic scripts, handwriting fonts, fantasy fonts, etc tend to overwhelm the content and are distracting. Simple fonts like Times, Geneva, Arial, Helvetica, Andale Mono, etc., are good.
IV. Cover and Binding
Make your own cover and binding.
Avoid expensive portfolio folders—make your own portfolio and cover. Chipboard or illustration board functions well. You can have the entire portfolio bound with spiral wire binding at a copy shop.
Avoid elaborate covers.
Avoid overly elaborate covers like metal or wood covers with hinges or complex mechanisms to operate. This can be done successfully, but past experience has been that this type of work is not successful much more often than it is. This type of cover and binding has to be done very successfully in order not to detract from the portfolio. Also, the time requirements of this type of cover often take time away from the general composition and production of portfolio, so the content is hurt. If you want to do it try it—make sure you can pull it off at a high level of execution and get some feedback from a faculty member.
Don’t use plastic page sleeves.
Make it your own and make the portfolio more like a book and not pages inside something you bought.
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