Architecture School Admission Portfolio: Show the Architect Who Does Not Exist Yet: One of the biggest misunderstandings I encounter when working with students applying to architecture school is the belief that their portfolio should make them look as though they are already architects. Students begin searching for architectural drawings, trying to produce complicated buildings, learning software, creating renders and imitating the visual language of architecture students. I

The Professional Architecture Portfolio: Your First Silent Interview: When you send your portfolio to an architecture office, the interview has already begun, even though you are not in the room. Someone opens your PDF, scrolls through the first few pages and begins making decisions about you from the evidence in front of them. This is why I developed what I call the 20-second test. Imagine that a busy architect gives your portfolio only twenty seconds before deciding whether

Architecture Portfolio for Master’s Applicants: Showing the Architect You Are Becoming: An architecture portfolio for a Master’s application should not simply be an improved version of your undergraduate portfolio. By the time you apply for postgraduate architecture studies, the question is no longer only whether you can design a building, produce drawings, make models, or create convincing images. Your previous education already provides evidence that you have studied archit

Applying to a world-leading architecture firm is not the same as sending your portfolio to an ordinary office. These are large international organizations with their own culture, visual language, working methods and philosophy. Your portfolio therefore needs to communicate much more than: “I am a talented architect.” 1. Understand the Office as a Micro-Culture Every major architecture firm develops its own internal culture. There is a certain way people communicate, present i

Your portfolio has about 20 seconds to make someone want to know more. When you apply for a job in an architecture office, your portfolio is not simply a collection of university projects. It is often the first real test of how professionally you think, communicate and present yourself as a future architect. Architecture studios receive large numbers of applications. Before anyone reads every paragraph or carefully studies every drawing, they usually scan. Very quickly they a

An architectural portfolio for a job interview is not simply a collection of projects. It is a carefully designed portrait of who you are as an architect, how you think, what you can do, what you care about and what you may be capable of becoming. When an architecture office opens your portfolio, it is not only looking at buildings, plans, renderings and sketches. It is looking at you. This changes everything about how an architecture portfolio for a job interview should be c