The two-week course Portfolio School was held at MARSH from 3 to 16 August this year. This was the first experience, in fact - an experiment. Its goal is to help prospective students properly prepare for admission to the MARSH undergraduate program (its program was developed jointly with The CASS Faculty of Architecture at London Metropolitan University and is designed for three years of study). The applicants demonstrated a high level of training, but at the same time, a common problem for the majority became noticeable - the inability to clearly and clearly tell about themselves with the help of a portfolio. Then the idea arose to launch a small summer program with the self-explanatory name Portfolio School - “portfolio school”. However, the initiators of the course insist that in this mini-school they not only teach how to make high-quality professional portfolios, but also raise the general educational and cultural level of students, "immerse" them in the profession and the upcoming educational process.
The head of the school is Ruben Arakelyan, co-founder of the WALL architectural bureau, who will supervise the Professional Skills module at the MARSH Bachelor's degree. Specialists from various fields were involved in working with future students - Moscow artists Maria Pokrovskaya and Evgeny Monakhov, architectural photographer Yuri Palmin, architecture critic Alexander Ostrogorsky. Thus, applicants had the opportunity not only to learn, having learned the most diverse aspects of the profession, but also to get acquainted and even make friends with its teachers.
The first week of the course was completely devoted to the "material", technical skills of an architect - the ability to work with graphic presentation and flat images using graphic and pictorial techniques, observe and explore the context, identify the features of a place, make a layout, model, etc. The exercises were generally limited to developing the skills of observation, interpretation, reflection and creation in future architects. In the second week of training, the trainees were asked to familiarize themselves with "intangible" skills. The art of architectural photography and the principles of working with text and oral presentation fell into this category. From the very first day, the students of the course were fully involved in the work, and the methodology presupposed a rich lecture course, and difficult practical exercises, and a serious discussion of the material covered, involving honest criticism from fellow students and teachers. Classes lasted from morning to evening, but the variety of the program did not let you get tired, let alone get bored.
Acquaintance with MARSH began with a lecture by Ruben Arakelyan on the history and nature of the portfolio. From theory, they immediately switched to practice: as a concrete example, an object on the territory of Artplay was chosen - a small segment of the urban environment of 3x3x3 meters, which, despite its modest size, combined numerous layers of the city and its distinctive features. To look at the object in a new way, study the situation in detail, disassemble it in layers, notice how it is illuminated, how it breathes, how it lives, what people and functions fill it - this is just a short list of tasks assigned to the children. Moreover, many of them analyzed the site and the surroundings, depicted the facade and section of the building for the first time and at the same time learned to look at the city in a new way - not as ordinary people, but as architects. Perhaps the most unexpected task was the need to disassemble the building into layers - textures, materials, light and shadow. It would seem simple to draw only a shadow with black ink, separate from the subject, but after all, it never even occurred to anyone before, but everyone turned out very beautifully, vividly. Students showed their works - sketches, drawings, drawings - to each other every evening at the end of the school day at mini-exhibitions, which were an important part of the educational process.
Maria Pokrovskaya gave a lecture to the students about painting on a plane. And then Ruben, together with Maria, proposed to continue work on the formation of a sketchbook - "the diary of a real architect." And these are not just sketches on the last page of a school notebook, but meaningful architectural plots, in which an understanding of the place, and close observation, and the ability to notice interesting, accent details, to identify the main thing would be read. Many listeners later admitted that, after spending several hours drawing a small brick fragment of a building, they began to look at it completely differently: for some, it became especially dear - so that they wanted to keep its every line unchanged and clean, and for some an idea was born on how to make it even more valuable and original. Many people began to look at the buildings as a whole in a completely different way: “As if the consciousness had rebooted overnight,” one of the entrants explained.
The second week of training after a single, instantly flashed weekend of Sunday began with a photograph. Classes with Yuri Palmin were especially memorable for the students. In addition to a meaningful lecture on the history of photography through the prism of the personality of photographers, he gave a master class on photography. They photographed the new building of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Gorky Park, and despite the very different level of training, some listeners have long been fond of photography, while others have never done it, the result was surprising for its high quality. To feel the architecture almost tactilely, to achieve its volumetric image, to find unexpected angles - everything was possible.
The art of writing, speaking and telling was taught by Alexander Ostrogorsky. He proposed something like a game in which everyone should immediately, without preparation, tell about themselves - in fact, make a short self-presentation. The teacher started with himself, and continued with the most daring students. Of course, at first they were shy, timid, and then they groped for both the scheme and the framework of the story, relevant in the given situation. As Alexander explained, they all did it intuitively and absolutely correctly, but only during the discussion of what they heard did they learn to consciously approach the issue, to identify the boundaries of a particular story, its most important, key aspects. The result of the work was the text written by each applicant for his portfolio.
At the end of the second week, Ruben Arakelyan made a real gift to applicants - a full day of excursions to the largest workshops in the capital. The list includes Project Meganom, Tsimailo & Lyashenko, Wowhaus, FASt, Architects ACC and WALL - a bureau headed by Ruben himself and his partner, chief architect Hayk Navasardyan. Yuri Grigoryan, Oleg Shapiro, Alexander Tsimailo, Nikolai Lyashenko and other eminent architects told in detail how their bureaus work, what difficulties a practicing architect faces every day and how he overcomes them. Students bombarded their senior colleagues with questions - and not only about work, and, probably, after such a busy day, everyone drew their own future.
The main part of the training had already been completed, but an equally important stage remained ahead - to prepare, layout and independently present your work to a large audience. All my thoughts and judgments, which had changed a lot in two weeks, had to be collected on several pages and, using the example of one tiny object, be able to tell about myself. The course leader came to the rescue again. Ruben Arakelyan offered the audience a certain standard for the layout and presentation of the portfolio in electronic form. The step, on the one hand, is ambiguous - after all, the task was to teach them how to do it on their own - and, on the other hand, it is quite justified. As Ruben himself explains, “This was done deliberately to teach them some kind of taste. Of course, then they will have to develop their own style, but this cannot be done in two weeks. And so the works have a higher level, the quality bar, which now they will have to comply with. Interestingly, each portfolio was asked to start with one image and just one word, characterizing the 13 days spent at MARSH School.
We publish comments from teachers and students of the Portfolio School summer preparatory course:
Ruben Arakelyan, course leader:
“Portfolio School is a kind of test drive for the first semester of training. For 13 days, we tried to immerse applicants in the profession, raise their general cultural level, broaden their horizons, acquaint them with a variety of forms of expression - and this is not only layouts, paintings and graphics, but also photography, text, presentation, even music. It was especially important to cover the most diverse and seemingly not directly related to architecture areas of knowledge. Many famous architects, from Palladio to Peter Zumthor, did not have a special architectural education, but this only helped them to succeed. After all, the wider the range of skills, the greater the chances of becoming a good architect. Therefore, it was with special pleasure that we welcomed applicants with economic, art history and technical education.
The practical task that I offered to the audience was called Place. The object is 27 cubic meters, by the example of which we tried to explain that everything starts from a place. The place is the primary source of the architectural form. The architect must be able to constrain, protect and accommodate space. It was interesting to show how one small urban segment reflects the essence and history of the whole Moscow. We deliberately chose a very complex place where different states of the city intersect - exterior, interior, small forms, landscape, greenery, people. All this had to be seen, recorded with the help of various artistic techniques and comprehended on the scale of the urban environment. Thus, in just a few days, the guys tried on the role of scientists, researchers, artists, architects.
I would like to mention some works separately. For example, Maria Ekushevskaya suddenly changed the scale. Having drawn the brickwork, I saw in it a model, a map of the city, where bricks are buildings, volumes, and concrete mortar are streets and alleys. Alexandra Shcherbakova suggested minimal changes by hanging a large mirror. Her project turned out to be very beautiful. Some did not want to change anything in the existing object, but in this case I asked them to write more detailed text to justify their decision.
My main task was to introduce listeners to such a special genre as portfolio. But I decided to significantly expand the program of this course, as well as the program of my main module in the undergraduate program. A portfolio is not a reporting job. This is self-criticism, a collection of stories. When the guys brought their portfolios to the first lesson, it became obvious that practically not one of them had the necessary qualities. All had developed only one side - the artistic, while the analytical was absent altogether. However, what we received at the end, it seems to me, completely turned their idea and consciousness upside down. I think they themselves did not expect such a result."
Yuri Palmin, teacher:
“The aim of my course was to introduce students to architectural photography. We began with an introductory lecture on the history of photographic representation of architecture, from the beginnings of the profession in the mid-19th century to its fragile and controversial present. The next step was a walk through the Artplay territory. We tried to pay attention to the peculiarities of photographing architecture using examples of zones already familiar to students and appearing in their main tasks. On the morning of the second day, we met at the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, where we discussed the role of photography in critical reflection on modern architecture and had a real session of shooting the cover of Garage magazine based on Rem Koolhaas's sketch. We devoted the second half of the same day to critically reviewing students' photographs and reviewing several of my projects. In addition, the short shooting of the layouts made by the students as part of the course of Evgeny Monakhov turned out to be very useful. The shooting took place in the BHShD photo studio using professional lighting equipment."
Alexander Ostrogorsky, teacher:
“This school, it seems to me, has given the potential for self-development for all its participants. Moreover, this potential can be used in all spheres of life - not only to create an architectural portfolio for admission to a university. As part of the word processing program, we tried to give the participants a tool with which they can construct texts related to the presentation. We started with impromptu self-presentation. It is clear that all the stories revolved around the same topics. But that was the point, since the situation itself determines the framework of the speech. Students' stories became the source material that later allowed us, after discussing it, to understand where these frames come from and how to learn to define them consciously, and not intuitively. The next step was the video lectures of famous architects, which, in fact, are also self-presentation, but built differently, around the aspects of the history of his professional activity that are most important for an architect. The ultimate goal of our course was portfolio copy. It was important for me to direct the thoughts of the students, but everyone decided for himself what story he wanted to tell. Then we discussed what texts they want them to have, what they want to say in their portfolio, what story they should tell. As it seems to me, the result is small but capacious statements and theses about architecture or a completed project."
Artem Abgaryan, listener:
“After this summer course, I rethought my attitude to architecture, began to think deeper. It is important that we got the opportunity to immediately get to know all the teachers - they are wonderful. Now I really hope to continue my studies at MARSH”.
Maria Ekushevskaya, listener:
“MARCH gave an opportunity to learn to evaluate space in a new way - for example, to see the scale of a city in an ordinary brickwork. And also to understand that in some cases, keeping the object intact is much more valuable than new additions."
Alisa Bunyatova, listener:
“I realized that architecture is not just a form. Architecture starts with an analysis of the terrain, and its perception is influenced by many details. I learned that a shadow can completely transform a shape. I learned how to translate a volumetric image into two-dimensional. As a result, in the object proposed to us, I saw, it seems to me, the main thing is the need to return its identity to it, to cleanse it of unnecessary modern layers."
In total, fourteen applicants took part in the preparatory course, and almost all of them, with the exception of those who had not yet graduated from high school, expressed a desire to study at MARSH after a two-week program. I must say that the immersion in the upcoming educational process turned out to be complete. Everything was for real, that's why the decision to seriously devote oneself to the profession of an architect for many after Portfolio School became final and irrevocable.
