How architecture students and educators are optimizing their work environments at home
For most architecture students, faculty, and staff around the world, working from home has become the new normal since campuses closed in response to the sweeping pandemic several weeks ago.
Archinect wanted to find out how things had been going so far for the architectural academic community and reached out to its readers via the ongoing survey How is your school dealing with the coronavirus outbreak? In our previous two analyses, we looked at the initial experience of working online versus onsite at school and the emotional impact this ongoing new situation was having.
Today, we learn from students and educators how they tried to optimize their work environments to facilitate remote learning and teaching.
“It’s ALL on my laptop,” was the upbeat response from one educator at the California State University, Sacramento. “Other than that, I have a comfortable chair, a space I enjoy, and coffee in the kitchen.”
“Cleaned off my desk, got everything laid out as close as I can to what I had at school,” responded a student at the University of Tennessee, College of Architecture and Design in Knoxville. “Also set up a work area outside for nice weather.”
“My partner and I work at our little eating table and keep our gaming/TV separate from our working laptops,” wrote one University of Washington
student from Seattle. “We live in a 600 sqft apartment, so physical
separation gets difficult. It’s not like we have an office. I have no
idea how I’m going to address studio work.”
“I already had a home office; just using Zoom a whole lot more,” answered the Marketing and Communications Director at University of Arizona’s College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture.
“Slack has also greatly facilitated our work (and on my specific team,
we already used Asana). I think with all this Zoom-watching that I need a
better home office chair now, though!”
“I didn’t have room for a desk in my room, so the kitchen table became my new studio desk,” explained a University of Michigan student in Ann Arbor.
“Since I’m a student, I have a proper work space at home, but due to suddenly being summoned back to my parents house, I’m not able to set up a proper workspace,” expressed this student at the Nuremberg Institute of Technology Georg Simon Ohm in Germany. “I’m missing space and necessary equipment (table, printer, etc). Since it’s also only short term for now (2 weeks), it doesn’t make sense to buy new things. Right now, I’m using an old (crooked) PC table with a smaller extra table to put on stationary in my sister’s room.”
A Chilean student at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile shared: “I try to keep the door closed to minimize noise, if necessary use headphones. Have a clear desk to take notes and use the computer. We also have a rule that WiFi is only for classes or work until 4 o’clock.”
“First day, cleaned my entire room, made a Spotify playlist with only instrumental blues/jazz to concentrate, and I eliminate distractions as much as possible,” posted an interior design student at Saxion University of Applied Sciences in Almere, The Netherlands. “Put my phone out of sight and on silent.”
“I am a scruffy person and don’t throw things out as easily, especially if they are little broken mechanical parts of things,” responded an educator at East Los Angeles College in Monterey Park, CA. “Always saving stuff thinking I’ll use them for something else in the future. I should be an expert on adoptable reuse. […] But I did put together an express drawing surface!”
How is learning or teaching from home working out for you? Let us know.
Archinect wants to hear from its active audience of architecture students, educators, and professionals! Please share your insight in our ongoing two surveys about COVID-19 response in schools as well as firms, and also let us know your thoughts in the comment section below. We will continue to screen new responses as they come in.
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