design is subjective. there's just no way of getting around that fact. and architecture in
a lot of ways is the art of convincing people that your design moves were the right moves. and one of
the ways you can convince people is through case studies. i think of case studies like a shield.
if you present it correctly, it can be a very powerful way for you to defend your design moves,
especially if you're choosing a project that's been successful before and it's been done by a
well-known architect. it can build a very solid foundation for you to build your design strategies
from, and it can be a lot harder to poke holes at something that's been proven to be successful
before. there is a lot of information out there on how to do case studies but not so much on how to
present them. so if you're looking for information on how to do them this is not the video for you.
in this video, i'm gonna show you how to present them in a way that's informative,
in a way that's engaging, and in a way that can create a bulletproof defense for your project.
hey guys, how's it going my name is dami and i'm an architect based in vancouver. on this channel,
i make videos about architecture, design, and creativity. one of the reasons i started this
youtube channel is because i miss the presentation and storytelling aspect of architecture school
and so this is a process that i love and it's a process that i'm always trying to refine
but this is a fun topic for me. so when i started architecture school,
i was absolutely terrible at presentations. i would get stage fright i would get nervous,
i would shake, i could hear my heartbeat, and of course, i would work right up to the presentation.
i would have pulled like two all-nighters before. i would basically wing it every single time,
so as you can imagine they did not go very well. it wasn't well into my second year
of architecture school that i sort of started to get the hang of it. i think it was a combination
of like actually liking my project and being proud of them, and wanting to tell a story that kind
of did it justice, and also getting a little bit better at time management so that i could
plan out my presentations beforehand. so slowly and slowly i started to improve but
it was actually in my thesis year when i really started to strategize on my presentation technique
and sort of build a system around it. so this is a strategy that i've refined over years and years of
presenting my own work and from observing other people present. nobody actually taught me this
so it is a little bit different from the standard way of presenting your case studies
but throughout my bachelor's and my master's i did receive numerous awards for my project and for my
thesis i received the aia henry adams award which is the highest honor you can get for your thesis
project in north america, and i attribute this a lot to my presentation methods. just before
we start let's just cover the basics. what are case studies? case studies are when you study an
existing building or an existing project usually a well-known piece of architecture to inform your
design. if you want to design a chicken coop you don't really want to start from scratch. you want
to see how other people have done it, you want to see how other people located their chicken coops,
how they shaped it how they place the doors and you want to learn from their mistakes
and you want to use that to inform your design. a lot of times students present case studies
as a formality because it's a requirement but that is such a missed opportunity. you are using your
precious minutes of your presentation time to talk about someone else's building, so you want to
use that to prepare the viewers for what they're about to see with your design. so
how do you present case studies? so i like to call the strategy sam. simplify and multiply.
so first simplify. so presenting a case study is very different from doing a case study.
when you're doing a case study you might learn a lot of different things from it but when you're
presenting it you just want to show the aspect that you're going to be employing in your design
and then you want to diagram. graphics and visual continuity is key.
you want to take the plan elevation in section and you want to diagram on top of it.
and multiply. instead of just studying one or two buildings, do multiple. so i read an
article a long time ago about why architectural research is so slow to progress compared to other
disciplines like science or medicine and apparently it's because we usually tend to
create a unique one-off solution to the design as opposed to collecting a massive sample of
architecture and creating statistics. i mean this is the fundamental tool behind scientific research
like they take a massive sample and then they make some assumptions based on that.
and so we want to do the same thing. we want to study a bunch of different buildings
and we want to show, hey, look, like all of these different buildings achieve the thing
that i want to achieve by doing it this way, and you want to show that you have that understanding,
especially if you want to deviate from that and come up with your unique solution. i mean,
if you just show one or two case studies no matter how successful that project is,
it's not really a good defense for your case because you know those buildings could have had
really unique conditions. like they could have had a really unique site or a program right?
so it's not really a good basis to build your design off of. and just one more thing before
we jump into the example. the common advice is to study a building that has the same function as the
function that you want to do in your project but in my humble opinion that is not always necessary
because most architecture is a unique response to a site or program and you want to create your
unique response. so i wouldn't really base it on the function or the program but i would base
it on the feeling or the atmosphere or the way you want people to behave in that particular space and
i would try to emulate those in your design. i'll kind of show you what i mean in a sec
just. a little background. my thesis project was called a library of the mind, explorations on
slow reading browsing and serendipity. and i was looking at our culture of speed and productivity,
and how that has affected our culture of learning. this has also had a pretty big impact in our
building typologies in our libraries, where we went from quiet reading rooms to large
collaborative working spaces. and so the physical thing that i created was a library in venice
and through the project it was a discourse on all these different aspects like learning,
innovation, serendipity. so this is the first page of the case study page
and as you can see, i'm not showing the buildings as a main focus of the page.
the title of this page is visual harmony and moment of pause, so you can see here i've given
three examples of buildings that have achieved visual harmony through the use of proportions.
so as you go through these projects you can give a little spiel about the significance of each
project but the idea is that the visuals, it speaks for itself and um it's very easy
to convey these architectural elements without you having to say a bunch of things about it.
so just be strategic based on how much time you're given for the presentation.
if you're only given 15 minutes you kind of want to breeze through this. if you have like half an
hour then you can go a little bit more in depth into each building. and in most cases the case
studies that you'll be doing are buildings that like your peers and your professors
will know about um because you are speaking to an architectural audience. um so like you shouldn't
have to go too much in depth in describing like the particular significance of each building. you
just want to distill the qualities of that space that you're taking into your design.
the second one is rhythm and movement which is important in slowing us down psychologically and
physically before we enter our reading space. and so i'm showing how these two examples
are doing that. the first one through a series of arcades and then in exeter library through a
series of colonnades, and the third one is about nestling. which is um all about the architecture
itself creating an enclosure around your body so that you can sit comfortably and read your
books. and then the next one is narrative sequence which is creating special memorable moments in the
space through distinct architectural elements and then we have degrees of privacy slash intimacy.
and i'm showing how these three buildings uh have created a buffer between the outside world and
this intimate space of reading, both physically and psychologically and then the last one
is the design of the stacks and browsing, which i talk about as an important feature
in creating serendipitous discoveries. and then once you go into showing your project you can
use the same graphics into your building. so i'll show you an example here. so this is the pathway
approaching my building so this labyrinthian pathway and you get into this narrow low dark
corridor and bam you come into this open grand courtyard and you see here i'm using the same
graphics i was using in my case study. and if you want to reinforce it a little bit more
on the next page you can show the visuals that you were showing in your case study on the sides.
i typically try to create visual continuity so i'll have the same graphics here and here but
i'll just change the color of the background just so that like i'm switching back and forth between
my design and the explanation of my design and you really have to do this for like a split
second throughout your presentation just so that your audience understands okay like i understand
where that architectural element is coming from. and then again back to your building
you circulate around the courtyard through a series of rhythmic colonnades to slow us down
psychologically and physically before we get into the library. and then the next page i have
the same graphics as i had in the case studies and then on the next page i'll show a render and i'll
just keep doing this throughout the presentation. and so as you go through your presentation you're
reinforcing the reason why you made certain design moves and at the end of your presentation
um you can really focus on um discussing your ideas not like
oh why did you do this like why didn't you do this and hopefully it opens up the room for
um a more open discussion rather than like a critique on your design and if it is
more of a direct critique then you are able to speak more intelligibly about your design moves.
um which is really the point you want to get to. so i hope you guys found this helpful um
and if you have any questions just let me know if you enjoy this video,
i think you will also enjoy one of my other videos where i do a quick architectural design process
from beginning to the end and in that video you can also see me attempt to do a headstand.
aah you