My studio has just had what I suppose you could call their mid semester crits.

They’ve been developing and researching their existential threats over the last few weeks, and this crit was a chance for them to present that work. I was a little surprised by the presentations, this was the first time that I’d seen architecture students presenting a non-architectural topic. It shows how accustomed we get to relying on familiar presentation styles—‘this is the plan’ and ‘here are some elevations’. Everyone struggled to convey information about things related to magnitudes, and there was a general lack of clarity on the slides, too much information crammed onto each slide.

The thing that really struck me was that when stripped of the framework imposed on every presentation since first year there was very little to fall back on, the story just didn’t flow. It is tempting to think of this as a failing of my students (and by extension, myself), but I’d be interested to see a good startup entrepreneur pitching a building design. I’d imagine that a really ace presenter of either ilk could cross over without too much trouble, but mere mortals—less easy!