Architectural Design personal statement example

Personal statement example

Every Thursday at half past eleven I unfold twelve trestle tables in our community hall for the lunch club. After two years I know that the hall works best when the tables run lengthways under the windows, leaving a clear path from the kitchen hatch to the door. The volunteers who serve need that route, and the residents who use walking frames need it even more. Nobody designed the hall with this in mind; we found the arrangement by moving furniture until people stopped bumping into each other. That small, practical puzzle is where my interest in architectural design began. It has grown into a wish to understand how buildings shape the way people move, meet and rest.

At school I study Design and Technology, Art and Mathematics. My Design and Technology coursework grew directly from the lunch club. Several regulars mentioned that they would sit outside if the paved yard behind the hall were less exposed. I surveyed the space with a tape measure, recorded where the sun fell at different times over three weeks, and asked eight residents what stopped them using it. Their answers were specific: nowhere to rest a cup, benches too low to stand up from easily, and wind funnelling between the hall and the neighbouring garage. My final proposal used a timber pergola with a partial screen on the windward side, benches at a higher seat height with armrests, and a narrow shelf along the screen. I built a 1:20 model from card and balsa and tested the screen's position by sliding it along a base marked with my sun readings. The design is modest, but it taught me that good spaces often depend on observing ordinary needs carefully before drawing anything.

Art has given me a different set of skills. I keep a sketchbook of bus shelters, stairwells and shop fronts near my school, drawing them quickly in pen and then again more slowly in perspective. Mathematics supports this more than I expected: working out angles and scale for my drawings has made trigonometry feel useful rather than abstract.

Outside school, I collect my younger sister from primary school three afternoons a week while our parents work. The walk takes twenty minutes and crosses a busy junction, so I have become very aware of how a crossing, a wide pavement or a low wall where she can wait safely changes a journey. I would not claim this makes me an urban planner, but it has made me notice that the spaces between buildings matter as much as the buildings themselves.

To widen my understanding I have been reading Steen Eiler Rasmussen's Experiencing Architecture, which describes how we perceive buildings through rhythm, texture, light and sound rather than only through appearance. His discussion of how materials feel underfoot and in the hand made me reconsider my courtyard benches, and I changed the specification from painted metal to timber. I have also watched recorded lectures and visited our local library and a converted mill nearby, where I spent an afternoon sketching how the old structure had been adapted for flats.

I also enjoy things that have nothing to do with design. I play five-a-side football on Sunday evenings and have learnt to cook simple meals for my family, which mostly teaches me patience and timing.

I want to study architectural design because I would like to learn the technical, historical and creative foundations that my hall and courtyard projects only hinted at. I am used to measuring, listening, making models and revising them, and I am reliable in the routines that other people depend on. I hope to bring that combination of care and curiosity to a course where I can develop my drawing, learn to think structurally and design spaces that work well for the people who use them every day.