The Portfolio

Lesley Lokko, Katerina Ruedi Ray, Igor Marjanovic

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781136356421
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architettura
• Subtopic: Architettura generale

The portfolio is the single most important part of every architectural student's education. This book proides a complete guide to preparing, compiling and presenting this crucial element of the architecture course.
The experienced author team gives practical advice for the creation of the portfolio covering issues of size, storage, layout and order. They go on to guide the student through the various forms a portfolio can take: the Electronic Portfolio, the Academic Portfolio and the Professional Portfolio suggesting different approaches and different media to use in order to create the strongest portfolio possible. The team also presents the best examples from international student portfolios to show the reader their recommendations in practice. The book has a companion website where full colour representations of the best examples of portfolio work can be accessed. Also in the Seriously Useful Guides series:
* The Dissertation
* The Crit
* Practical Experience

1 Introduction

Why Make a Portfolio?

A carefully wrought portfolio of work will be the single most important record and outcome of your architectural education. The major part of your education is always going to be the design of buildings as executed through drawings, models and other kinds of visual representation, and your portfolio records the ideas, the processes and the result of your work as a designer in the architecture studio as well as in other visually oriented classes. It can also contain other kinds of information, from your professional work in an architectural office, to your creative work in related artistic disciplines, your built work if you have construction experience, and your written work if that is an important part of your educational process. It is a document with many functions and will therefore take different shapes depending on the situation for which you need it. If it is well considered and crafted it will certainly open many doors for you – to further study, to different areas of work in the architectural profession, and quite possibly work in related fields. You will also need it to get teaching positions in academia, or in secondary (UK) or high school (USA) education. It can also help you win prizes and scholarships while you are on your way.

Whichever purpose it needs to serve, your portfolio is your passport and your visiting card, through which you introduce yourself to the new worlds you wish to enter and by which your value is established and compared to others. Very importantly, it is also a document through which you make a contribution to how we understand architecture; it is your chance to clarify and share what you believe and aspire to, and to present new ideas, techniques, observations and experiences, mainly to others but sometimes just to yourself.

The Handbook

This handbook provides a guide to the whole process of designing, making and sending out or presenting a portfolio. It explains carefully what to do, how to do it, when to do it, and what the major pitfalls are to avoid when making a portfolio. Each university and architectural programme does, of course, have its own rules and requirements for a portfolio. Architectural offices also vary in what they like to see in a portfolio. Sometimes these requirements are explicit, and sometimes they are less tangible. Whichever the case, you are strongly advised to check everything said here with what different institutions and offices expect. It is also important for you to understand that sometimes the advice we will offer you may differ from that given by your professors or colleagues in an architectural office. This is because the architectural discipline is becoming more and more pluralistic in its ideas and cultures, and architectural portfolios necessarily reflect that pluralism. Even if it were once possible, there is no longer a single type or format of portfolio that will fit all contexts. Instead you will need to make choices depending on the destination or design culture for which the portfolio is intended. Nonetheless, if you follow the guidance in this book, and if you add to it your own intelligent and rigorous creative efforts, you should go on to produce a portfolio of the best possible standard for the different situations in which portfolios are needed.

The book, following this introduction, is divided into five chapters. Chapter 2 Getting Started outlines the essential ideas behind a portfolio, the kind of occasions for which you need to prepare different portfolios, different kinds of specialization in architecture, and how you might adjust the message of your portfolio to the audience that will be looking at it.

Chapter 3 Design Cultures explains why portfolios differ in form and content in different design cultures, and how they represent cultural value. It gives some practical advice about how to find out about the design cultures of different architectural schools and practices, and how to understand some regional and global differences.

Chapter 4 Academic Portfolio then focuses in detail on how to prepare an academic portfolio, what it needs to contain, and how to format an academic CV, statement of intent, references and letters of recommendation.

Chapter 5 Professional Portfolio examines in detail how to prepare a professional portfolio, covering portfolio form and content, résumé, references and the cover letter, with special emphasis on the selection and presentation of built work.

Chapter 6 Preparing Material offers practical advice on selecting, recording and storing work, as well as scanning, reducing and reproducing it.

Chapter 7 The Folio Container is about making the physical portfolio container itself, whether this is bought or made specially for the occasion.

Chapter 8 Making the Traditional Portfolio gives advice about the organization and layout of images and text in the portfolio for a small selection of different portfolio types.

Chapter 9 Digital Portfolio focuses on the advantages and disadvantages of the digital portfolio, as well as different formats such as CDs or web pages, and outlines some basic technical issues related to the digital production of images and animations.

The final chapter, Chapter 10 Afterwards gives advice about how best to send your portfolio, whether in physical or digital format, and also suggests useful ways to keep updating your portfolio.

Throughout this book, we are very proud to say, you will also find examples of pages from outstanding portfolios previously completed by architecture students. Some of these are prizewinning portfolios submitted to the Royal Institute of British Architects in London for its international Presidents Silver and Bronze Medal student competition. Others are award winners in the Skidmore Owings and Merrill Travelling Fellowship, the most important architectural competition for USA students. Other portfolios helped their authors to obtain work in architectural practice, in architectural education, or in related design disciplines such as graphic design or advertising. You will therefore find not only pertinent advice but also instances of how architectural students have tackled the portfolio with extremely successful results. We have tried to point out individual strategies used by the contributors in their portfolios in captions below the images at the end of each chapter. These groups of images will give you a quick visual introduction to some of the issues covered in each chapter. However, you will still need to read each chapter itself to get a balanced overview of the issues it covers.

Accompanying this book is a website that shows the full portfolios of the contributors to this book. In many instances it also includes the contributors’ résumés or curriculum vitae so that you can get an idea how to format those for yourself. We encourage you to go to the website to get the overall impression of each portfolio, as individual pages certainly do not do justice to the creativity, thoughtfulness, technical ability and hard work that have gone into the making of each of these portfolios. The website url is http://www.theportfolio.org.uk

The website will also give you an idea of the diversity of formats and approaches which you can explore as you prepare your portfolio. We hope that it will help and encourage you to make your portfolio a document of which you will be proud and which will represent you well in the broader world of architecture and design.

2 Getting Started

Getting started involves understanding the most basic aspects of a port-folio and its preparation. Getting started also involves understanding why you need a portfolio and what it is for. This chapter will help you get started, outlining some of the issues to help tailor your portfolio to various destinations in academia and practice.

What is a Portfolio?

A portfolio of work is defined in different ways depending on the situation. There are different portfolios for different occasions. Obviously you will have one kind of portfolio at the end of your second year as an undergraduate student and another kind when you have finished post-professional studies. More importantly, when you come to make your portfolio at the moments in your life when you want your academic or professional career to develop or change, you will most probably make a different portfolio to suit where you would like to be heading.

However, all these different kinds of portfolios will have one thing in common. They will contain your work in a format that will make it easy for the portfolio to be transported physically and digitally to many different situations. The most normal format for a portfolio most closely resembles a book. It can be a small book (A4 or 8½" × 11" (210 × 279 mm)) which is easy to mail, or it can be a large book, almost like a collection of paintings (A1 or 24" × 36" (594 × 841 mm)) which you take with you to interviews. Increasingly, portfolios are digital and can be sent in CD format or exist as a website. With a digital portfolio you will have more freedom to play with the format but will also be relying on someone else to understand how to access it.

Remember, it is still easier for most people to turn pages than to navigate links and understand graphic and animation software.

All these formats will have one thing in common. The fact that the portfolio is a travelling document, that its function and meaning may change depending on the context, and that your career may hang on it, means that it has to be tough, beautiful, clearly organized, very easy to understand and even easier to use.

Whatever the context for which you need the portfolio, or the phase of your career, there are basic rules about the portfolio that you should remember. They are:

• DOCUMENTATION

• EDITING

• MESSAGE

• AUDIENCE

Documentation

The first rule for making a portfolio is to keep every piece of work you produce in the studio, in the office and in related visual, technical, or practical areas. Taking care of your work is the most important professional activity you will ever do. Although you may not see the connection now, later on you may need to show some of your exploratory sketches for a design project because a particular Diploma Course or graduate programme may want to see how you think through drawing. Or you may need construction photographs because a particular office may want to see that you already have some site experience, and that you know how to recognize good from bad construction. So, get into the habit of scanning or photographing hand-drawn work or models at regular points during the project. A good time to do this is immediately after a review or jury – it gives you time to reflect on the totality of the work, and if you do it well, it will make you proud of what you have done. Make sure you date the work – memory alone can play tricks later on. Buy a plan chest (UK) or a flat file (USA) for your flat work. Take photos when you go on site and date them. Keep an album or digital record of photos. Get extra copies of construction drawings that you produced or co-produced. Save all your digital files and make sure you get CD copies of digital work so that your work is always backed up outside as well as inside your computer. Dating, scanning and filing work is good to do when you need a break from creative work. This will create a large volume of work, so think about its ease of storage and transportation. As you are designing, whether you are making sketches, drawings or models, use consistent sizes or plan to assemble work into consistent formats at regular intervals – it will be much easier to transport and store. Having a thousand pieces of work of different sizes will make your life really difficult in the long run.

However you choose to do it, remember: when in doubt, be consistent and DOCUMENT!

Editing

The second rule for making a portfolio, however, is knowing what it is not. The portfolio is definitely not an archive of every piece of work that you have ever done. At a basic practical level you will not have the time and money to reproduce all that work, you will not want to pay vast amounts of money to mail it, and certainly the people who will be looking at your portfolio will not have time to look at everything you have done. In a professional situation, especially if there is an economic recession and greater competition for work, very often if you do not capture in the first few pages of your portfolio the imaginations of the p...