Statement

I  wish to study at MSA in part due to the access to professional architects and engineers that I have heard is excellent at the university. I also like that the university has a slightly more technical focus as well as being in a strong urban setting that is full of influential architecture and architectural history, particularly in terms of city planning.

 Recently I visited the ‘Small Scale Big Change’ exhibition at the MOMA in New York. The exhibition led the viewer through a number of different projects focused primarily on affordable housing and communal buildings for impoverished regions, with a series of scale models, video, images and writing. I found a couple of the projects particularly engaging. Firstly, a project based on building a ‘$20k House’ in rural Alabama I found interesting both for its versatility, as the design for the house can easily be expanded or changed for different purposes, as well as its location, in the USA, not normally a country associated with low cost housing needs. Secondly, a project based on a much lower budget of $7,500 per house to create high density housing in Chile was to me a much more impressive and ground-breaking project. It was particularly interesting in not only focusing on the obvious problem of how to fit the houses in for the price, but the architects also focused on trying to remedy some of the social problems encountered in favelas by creating a courtyard community structure.

One of my favourite architects is Frank Gehry due to his extremely flowing architecture that has a fluid, dance-like form. The IAC building in New York, for example, beautifully complements the bay behind it and the Stata Centre at MIT, although occasionally criticized, seems to have deftly dealt with the problems of constantly changing usage and technology at MIT. I also appreciate the metal and glass style of Gehry, particularly in the Beekman Tower, for example, the metal has a powerful utopian feel, futuristic almost, but the curves and form that Gehry uses lend it an air of delicacy.

As a work of architecture I would love to see the HSBC building in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong, a city with a huge number of skyscrapers, the airiness and modernism seems powerful in a more sophisticated sort of way. The building also pioneered a number of interesting ideas such as removing the central lift core of the skyscraper and using escalators that promote interaction between floors. It would also be interesting to see the contrast between the HSBC building which is light and modernist, and the primarily cement and steel skyscrapers in New York that I’m familiar with.