So I shot a note over to Christine giving her my email and I got an
email back congratulating me on my nomination and asking me to put
together a 3’x7’ board and maybe some models for display.
The Widmann award is given to one undergraduate and one graduate student from each graduating class. This means that I’m not only competing with my class, but also the semester after ours. The faculty and administration kind of distance themselves from this distinction, but the award was created to go the “best architecture student.” There is also a cash prize of $1,500.
Actually, the school really plays down the awards. I never hear about them until pretty much the announcement of the award ceremony which is untaken with as much expediency and low-drama as possible. The exception is that they put up the works of the students nominated for the Widmann up in the main hallway.
Since I’ve never heard of students nominating, I can only assume that faculty nominate students and then a panel of faculty review the boards and the work and the select one student to be named the the winner.
There’s a LOT of nominees for this award- there were 12 students from my year of about 70 kids, and 12 kids from this semester’s class of 50. It works out to be nearly 1 in 5 getting nominated. Based on the list of students, it feels like it heavily favors the students who didn’t study abroad. Obviously face time plays a heavy role in who the professors favor. It also seems as though the degree project work is a large part of who gets tapped.
Let me say now that I’m 90% sure I’m not going to win. My work isn’t flashy enough, and while I have some professors who might champion my cause, I don’t think the combination of the two are sufficient to win. “Best architecture student” is such a vague criteria. If I were running the game, I’d base it on 25% on design innovation, 25% on collaboration/aiding other students, and 50% on working their ass off.
Actually, let me take a step back. I left my computer tower in Phoenix, so my first challenge was getting the tools to even create a board. I jumped on dad’s computer and downloaded a trial of InDesign, and rummaged through my bags until I found my jump drives with the smaller file versions of my architecture work I was going to use to put together a website for Saori and I. The only problem was using dad’s mac. I really hate mac computers, so I had to learn to use the magic mouse and the interface and try to figure out how the hell to right click. (Apple’s motto: “simplicity above usability”)
Based on boards I’d seen before, I didn’t want to go nuts. I selected my degree project, my new orleans project, and my housing studio project, and arranged them in three bands with lots of white space on the page. Not so many pictures. Minimal text. Took me a few hours to put it all together. But it still needed to be printed and posted tomorrow, in hard copy, in St. Louis.
I begged a favor from a friend of mine who kindly plotted it for me and she’ll post it for me sunday. So we’ll see. I think the award ceremony is in two weeks? Maybe less? I’m not crossing my fingers though.
The Widmann award is given to one undergraduate and one graduate student from each graduating class. This means that I’m not only competing with my class, but also the semester after ours. The faculty and administration kind of distance themselves from this distinction, but the award was created to go the “best architecture student.” There is also a cash prize of $1,500.
Actually, the school really plays down the awards. I never hear about them until pretty much the announcement of the award ceremony which is untaken with as much expediency and low-drama as possible. The exception is that they put up the works of the students nominated for the Widmann up in the main hallway.
Since I’ve never heard of students nominating, I can only assume that faculty nominate students and then a panel of faculty review the boards and the work and the select one student to be named the the winner.
There’s a LOT of nominees for this award- there were 12 students from my year of about 70 kids, and 12 kids from this semester’s class of 50. It works out to be nearly 1 in 5 getting nominated. Based on the list of students, it feels like it heavily favors the students who didn’t study abroad. Obviously face time plays a heavy role in who the professors favor. It also seems as though the degree project work is a large part of who gets tapped.
Let me say now that I’m 90% sure I’m not going to win. My work isn’t flashy enough, and while I have some professors who might champion my cause, I don’t think the combination of the two are sufficient to win. “Best architecture student” is such a vague criteria. If I were running the game, I’d base it on 25% on design innovation, 25% on collaboration/aiding other students, and 50% on working their ass off.
Actually, let me take a step back. I left my computer tower in Phoenix, so my first challenge was getting the tools to even create a board. I jumped on dad’s computer and downloaded a trial of InDesign, and rummaged through my bags until I found my jump drives with the smaller file versions of my architecture work I was going to use to put together a website for Saori and I. The only problem was using dad’s mac. I really hate mac computers, so I had to learn to use the magic mouse and the interface and try to figure out how the hell to right click. (Apple’s motto: “simplicity above usability”)
Based on boards I’d seen before, I didn’t want to go nuts. I selected my degree project, my new orleans project, and my housing studio project, and arranged them in three bands with lots of white space on the page. Not so many pictures. Minimal text. Took me a few hours to put it all together. But it still needed to be printed and posted tomorrow, in hard copy, in St. Louis.
I begged a favor from a friend of mine who kindly plotted it for me and she’ll post it for me sunday. So we’ll see. I think the award ceremony is in two weeks? Maybe less? I’m not crossing my fingers though.
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