Architectural studies personal statement example

Personal statement example

The doorway between my grandad's hall and his bathroom is 74 centimetres wide. I know this because I measured it twice last spring, after his hip replacement, when we needed to know whether his walking frame would fit through without him turning sideways. It did, just, but the bathroom door opened inwards, and once he was inside there was no room to close it behind him. Rehanging the door to open outwards was a small job my uncle did in an afternoon, but it changed how Grandad could use the room. Since then I have looked at doors, steps and corridors differently, noticing how much a few centimetres decide about who can move comfortably through a space.

That summer I helped rearrange the rest of his bungalow. I drew a floor plan on squared paper at 1:50, cut out paper shapes for each piece of furniture, and we moved them around at the kitchen table before moving anything heavy. Grandad was firm about keeping his armchair by the window where he watches the birds, so the challenge became fitting a clear route around it. Working with someone who had strong views about his own home taught me that a plan is not only about efficiency. The best arrangement was the one he actually wanted to live in.

The paper plan led to a hobby. I now build small card models, starting with a copy of our own house and moving on to buildings I like in town, including the Victorian library with its tall arched windows. I use mount board from the art department's offcuts and a steel rule. The library model taught me how hard it is to make window reveals look deep enough. I ended up layering three thicknesses of card to suggest the depth of the stone. I have also begun photographing the models with a desk lamp at different angles to see how shadows fall across the facade, which has made me pay attention to orientation when I walk past real buildings.

My reading has given me words for things I had only half noticed. Steen Eiler Rasmussen's Experiencing Architecture describes buildings through texture, rhythm, light and scale, and his idea that we experience architecture with our whole bodies, not only our eyes, matched what I had seen with Grandad's frame. I have also read parts of Jan Gehl's Life Between Buildings, which made me watch how people use our town square. On a Saturday the benches facing the café fill first, while those facing the car park stay empty.

At school, A-level Art has developed my drawing, and my coursework on industrial buildings by the canal involved measured sketches of brick bonding and repeated window patterns. Maths has helped with scale and geometry. In Geography I completed a fieldwork study on pedestrian flow along our high street, counting footfall at three points and relating it to pavement width and shop frontage. It was ordinary data, but analysing it showed me how physical layout shapes behaviour.

On Saturdays I work at a garden centre, mostly on the tills and restocking the outdoor area. It is not connected to architecture, but it has made me reliable and comfortable talking to customers of all ages, and I have learned how a shop's layout moves people past seasonal displays. I also play bass in a school band, which takes regular practice and patience when rehearsals fall apart.

I want to study architecture because I enjoy the combination of drawing, making, measuring and thinking about the people who will use a space. I know I have a great deal to learn about structure, history and design theory, and I am looking forward to developing my ideas through studio work and criticism. What I can bring is careful observation, practical model-making and a habit of asking how a place feels to someone using it every day.