Architecture MArch postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

The first drawing I produced at work that was refused by a planning officer was a single-storey rear extension in Stockport. The design itself was modest, but its side wall broke the 45-degree line taken from the centre of the neighbour's kitchen window, and the council's guidance was clear. Redrawing it, I stepped the roof down and pulled the wall back by 600 millimetres. The client lost a little floor area and gained a scheme that was approved on resubmission. That small exercise has stayed with me because it showed, in one line on a plan, that a building is always negotiating with the people next door. I want to spend the next stage of my education learning to make that negotiation deliberate rather than reactive.

I graduated last year with a 2:1 in Architecture. My final-year project took a pair of back-to-back terraced houses in Leeds and asked whether they could accommodate three generations of one family without extending outwards. The houses have no rear windows, so daylight and ventilation drove almost every decision. I proposed a shared stair core cut through the party wall, a rooflight over that core to draw air upwards, and a ground floor that could be closed off as a self-contained flat for an older relative. I tested the daylight with a physical model under a sky lamp in the studio and adjusted the rooflight size three times before the back rooms reached a level I could justify. My tutors questioned whether the flat was too small to be dignified, and answering that pushed me to think about thresholds, storage and the sound of a stair as seriously as the structure.

Since graduating I have worked as a Part 1 assistant at a practice of five people. Most of our projects are loft conversions, kitchen extensions and occasional shopfronts. I measure existing buildings, prepare planning and building regulations drawings in Revit, and draft the first version of design and access statements for the directors to revise. I have learned how often old houses differ from their deeds: walls out of square, chimney breasts removed without support, floor levels that drift by several centimetres across a room. Surveying carefully has become something I take pride in, because every later decision depends on it. I have also sat in on client meetings where budgets shift, and seen how a practice explains trade-offs to someone spending their savings.

Reading Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn during my year out gave me language for what I see on site. His idea that a building is made of layers changing at different speeds, from structure to services to furniture, matches the houses I measure, where Victorian brickwork carries 1970s wiring and a kitchen fitted last spring. I would like my master's work to focus on that layered approach to existing housing stock, particularly how retrofit can improve energy performance without stripping out what makes terraced streets sociable.

Outside work, I ring bells at a parish church on Thursday evenings and most Sundays. It is a team activity that depends on timing, counting and listening, and climbing the tower has given me an unusual familiarity with timber frames, ladders and the way a structure moves slightly when a heavy bell swings. I also help organise our band's practice rota, which has taught me patience with competing schedules.

I am applying for postgraduate study because I want to move from producing drawings that pass to producing designs that argue well for their place. I bring careful surveying habits, a working knowledge of planning and regulations, and a genuine curiosity about ordinary buildings. I am ready for the more demanding design studio and research that the next stage requires.