Master of Architecture (Professional) and Heritage Conservation postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

When I scraped a flake of paint from the window sash of a 1910s corner shop during my final-year survey, I counted seven layers: cream, two greens, a brown, a pale blue, white and a modern grey. That small cross-section told me more about the building's life than any drawing I had produced. It showed that the shop had been cared for, neglected and reinvented many times. I want to pursue professional architectural training alongside heritage conservation because I am interested in buildings as records of change as much as objects of design.

The corner shop was the basis of my final undergraduate studio project. It was a single-storey weatherboard building with a splayed corner entrance and a later lean-to at the rear. It had been empty for some years. Working in a pair, I carried out a measured survey with tape, laser measure and photographs. I then redrew it in plan, section and elevation, marking original fabric, later alterations and areas of decay. The most difficult part was deciding what the drawings should say. Our first set made the building look tidier and more coherent than it was. After a tutor review, I redrew the elevations to show the patched weatherboards and the replaced sill, because those were part of the evidence. Our proposal turned the shop into a small community workshop. It kept the corner entrance and the shop window, and removed the poorly built lean-to rather than the original rear wall. I was pleased that our assessors described the scheme as restrained. Choosing not to do something had been a design decision we had argued for carefully.

Reading for that project introduced me to the Burra Charter. Its principle of changing a place as much as necessary but as little as possible gave me a practical way to think about intervention. I also read Ruskin's chapter on memory in The Seven Lamps of Architecture. I found his opposition to restoration persuasive in its respect for age, but too absolute to guide someone who needs to keep a building in use. I would like to study how practising conservation architects work between those positions, particularly with timber buildings, where replacement is routine and the line between repair and renewal is easy to blur.

Since graduating I have worked full-time in a paint and hardware store. It is not an architecture job, but it has taught me a great deal. Many customers are owners of villas and bungalows tackling repairs themselves. I have learned to ask what a surface is before recommending a product. I ask whether old paint might contain lead, whether a wall is lime plaster or board, and whether the timber is rimu or a later softwood. I always refer serious questions to specialists, but I have become much more aware of how decisions about historic fabric are often made at a shop counter by people with limited advice. That has made me interested in how conservation knowledge can be communicated clearly to owners and builders, not only to other professionals.

Outside work, I sing tenor in a community choir that rehearses in a church hall. I also help the committee keep track of bookings and the hall's small maintenance list. Some of this is unglamorous: chasing a leaking gutter, or arranging a trades visit. However, it has given me a sense of what a building's custodians actually deal with week to week.

I bring a solid grounding in design, drawing and survey from my undergraduate degree. I also bring an everyday familiarity with materials and with the people who look after old buildings. At postgraduate level I hope to develop the technical and historical knowledge to make well-judged interventions in existing places. I want to learn when to add something new, when to repair, and when to leave the seventh layer of paint alone.