101 Things I Learned in Architecture School by Matthew Frederick

I purchased the 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School and after 10 minutes of reading, I conclude that this is a funny and by far the best architecture book – ever, this is a book that students of architecture will want to keep in the studio and in their backpacks. It is also a book they may want to keep out of view of their professors, for it expresses in clear and simple language things that tend to be murky and abstruse in the classroom.

I don’t remember ever having any textbook for my design class, if I had, this would be the book, the bible for every architecture student. I recommend reading it, especially first year architecture students.

From my personal point of view, every information in the book is useful, for instant it contains advice on both the technical and the intellectual. Hints for everything from lettering to post modern theory share page space with reminders as varied as ‘design in section’ to ‘if you can’t explain your design in terms your grandmother understands, you don’t understand your own design.’

About the Author, Matthew Frederick is an architect and urban designer in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including Boston Architectural College and Wentworth Institute of Technology.

An Architect knows something about everything. An engineer knows everything about one thing.

Cool drawing titles for schematic design
Use a light-coloured marker with a big chisel point to form lowercase architectural letters; then trace around the resulting shapes with a thin black pen.

A good graphic presentation meets the Ten-Foot Test.
The essential elements of the drawings you pin up for a design studio presentation – in particular, labels and titles – should be legible from 10 feet away.

Windows look dark in the daytime.
When rendering an exterior building view, making the windows dark will add depth and realism.

What are you waiting for? Get the 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School book now! Only USD 10.15. View samples of ‘101 Things I Learned in Architecture School’ in pdf format (MIT Press)

All Images Source: Matthew Frederick, 2007, 101 Things I Learned in Architecture School, USA: MIT Press Book.

Download Tekton, DK Ching’s Architectural Hand-Lettering Font

According to Matthew Frederick, good architectural lettering adheres to several principles and techniques, that is to emphasize the beginning and end of all strokes, and overlap them slightly where they meet.

If you happened to have a really shitty handwriting, just like me, there are several ‘hand lettering like ‘ standard computer fonts that comes pre-installed in your pirated version of Windows XP and Vista, Apple Mac Sucks. These fonts are City Blueprint and Stylus BT (one of my favorites)

How to piss me off? By using ‘Tempus San ITC’ font, they are ugly, horrible and please for the sake of mankind, delete it.

Stylus BT is a pretty nice looking architectural hand lettering font but still not quite what I had in mind, until I discovered the Tekton fonts [Download Tekton Font ] by DK Ching last year. The Tekton is based on the hand lettering of West Coast architect Frank Ching, who wrote out the text for his books.

In 1972, a former classmate working at Ohio University needed someone to teach drawing, so he contacted Ching. As part of preparing lectures in architectural graphics, Ching hand-drew and hand-lettered 400 pages of lecture notes. They came to the attention of Forrest Wilson, chairman of the School of Architecture, who showed them to his publisher, Van Nostrand Reinhard, and the rest is history. ( University Week )

His sketches reminds me of the Japanese’s mad poet:

“From the age of six I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was fifty I had published a universe of designs, but all I have done before the the age of seventy is not worth bothering with. At seventy five I’ll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am eighty you will see real progress. At ninety I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At a hundred I shall be a marvelous artist. At a hundred and ten, everything I do – be it but a line or a dot – will be alive.” – Hokusai (1760-1849)