Architectural Design postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

The ginnel behind my grandmother's terrace is 1.1 metres wide, and I know this because I measured it eleven times during my final year. It became the starting point for my undergraduate thesis project, which asked whether the narrow alleys running behind back-to-back and terraced housing could become shared outdoor space without losing the privacy residents value. I am applying for postgraduate study in architectural design because that project left me with questions I could not answer at undergraduate level, particularly about how designers work with existing fabric and the people who already use it.

My BA in Architecture gave me a solid grounding in studio practice, technical drawing and history and theory. I graduated with a 2:1, and my strongest marks came in studio work where the brief involved an existing site rather than a blank plot. For the alley project I spent several weekends recording how one street used its back spaces: where bins stood, which gates were kept open, where children played and where washing was hung. I spoke informally with eight households, made a set of measured drawings, and proposed a series of small, low-cost interventions, including shared planters, a fold-down bench fixed to a garden wall and a lighting scheme negotiated gate by gate. My tutors felt the analysis was stronger than the final proposal, and I agree. I had documented the street well but had not fully resolved how ownership and maintenance would work. That is precisely the area I now want to study in more depth.

Since graduating I have worked part time as a CAD technician for a small builder specialising in loft conversions. My role is modest: I produce survey drawings, prepare planning sets for the director to check and adjust details when a site measurement does not match the original drawings. It has taught me a great deal about how buildings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries actually behave, from uneven party walls to joists that are not where any drawing says they should be. It has also shown me how much design happens in conversation with clients who are anxious about cost and disruption. I have learned to explain a section drawing to someone who has never read one, which I suspect will be useful in any design work involving communities.

At weekends I work shifts in a café, which is unrelated to architecture but has made me more attentive to how small spaces are arranged for both staff and customers. I also keep a half plot on a local allotment site, where I have helped rebuild a communal shed with other plot holders. That experience of shared decision-making, often slow and occasionally frustrating, connects more closely to my alley project than I expected.

My reading has followed the same thread. Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities shaped my thinking about informal surveillance and street life, although I am conscious that her observations came from a very different urban context. Stewart Brand's How Buildings Learn helped me think of houses as things that are continually altered by their occupants, which matches what I see every week on site.

At postgraduate level I hope to develop a more rigorous design research method, to strengthen my ability to carry analysis through into convincing proposals, and to test ideas about adaptive reuse and shared space at a range of scales. I would bring practical knowledge of existing housing, reliable technical drawing skills and patience with the slow work of listening to residents. I am ready for a demanding studio environment and keen to be challenged on where my thinking is still unfinished.