Survival Kit for Studies  “As an architect you have to take responsibility for the buildings you build.”

Gregor is studying at the University of Kassel and is currently doing his internship at an architecture firm in Munich. In our Survival Kit study programme, he tells us about how meditation saves his Corona everyday life and which building material is currently experiencing a great renaissance.

 
The biggest cliché about your school – and to what extent it’s true:
There's this saying that goes: "Show me what you wear and I'll tell you what you’re studying." I find it very amusing, and it’s fairly often true. Architecture students tend to dress more casually than other students, which I think makes them pretty likeable. Another cliché is that the architecture programme is extremely time-consuming – which has definitely been borne out by my experience: I’ve had to pull an all-nighter or two.
 
What’s your everyday life like?
Before the pandemic, everyday life was meeting up with other students and friends in the morning for lectures. Unfortunately, Covid put a stop to that. Now I really feel the lack of this important experience, this face-to-face interaction. I start my day now with sport or meditation. The lectures are online, so I can organize my time a bit more flexibly now. Online classes blur the distinction between what you have to do and what you feel like doing. So there’s a risk of not getting enough work done every day. I much prefer in-person classes. At home, I find myself alone in a laid-back atmosphere of general well-being. Whereas the school of architecture is known for its big lecture halls and workshops, where I’m surrounded by other architecture students making models and drawings, and that inspires me. I don't have that at home. 
 
What would have been too much of a sacrifice for you?
Having to do without in-person classes and working in groups during my first term would have been too much of a sacrifice for me. Teamwork is important, it’s motivating. During my previous studies in psychology, I was left to my own devices a lot and spent most of my time reading and writing. Now I usually work in small groups, and there’s so much more to be gained from that. The first three terms of the programme are particularly hard, so it's a really good thing to have other people around you and to have that mutual support. It would have been too hard on me to do without that. Which day at university will you never forget?
One day during my second term I was working on a highly experimental digital introductory project. It involved combining cutting-edge manufacturing methods, in this case using a robot, with traditional building materials – in this case wood. I found it quite interesting that cutting-edge manufacturing and design techniques are giving rise to a renaissance in traditional and historical building materials. Wood is booming thanks to the current focus on sustainability. I’ll never forget the way that robot arm picked up each of our wood elements and set it down somewhere else and then connected them all up together.
 
If you could start over at university, what would you do differently?
All things considered, I'm pretty content. Maybe I’d be a little more easy-going about my studies. Especially now, in my internship, I realize that working life takes up an incredible amount of time and that studying at university is, as many people say, the best phase in life. You’ve got so many opportunities. Universities offer all sorts of different sports, like kung fu, crew and tennis. So I’d take more advantage of all that if I were starting over. Fortunately, I’ve still got two or three years left at university.

What did you find the most annoying?
Certain parts of courses are probably always annoying because you have a hard time getting through them or you just don't see the point. But now, in hindsight, I find it was all worthwhile. Of course it can be annoying when you’ve put a lot of work into a model or a design and then you get a lot of criticism from the professors. Because even if some of the criticism is constructive, architecture is largely a matter of taste.
 
What has often proved a lifesaver for you?
When I get a lot of criticism, I discuss my designs with friends at university, who give me impressions, advice and pointers I can work into the design. They can also give me feedback and tell me whether the professors might be right or whether their criticisms are unfounded. It's not always easy to take negative criticism, whereas praise is, of course, very motivating. I’ve also noticed that sport and meditation help me cope well with all of this. That's why I try to meditate before getting down to work. If you get into meditation, it can trigger an amazing sensation.
 
What did you eat when you were running low on funds?
I like spaghetti with ketchup, which is the flavour of the month not only in hard times – I mean that ironically, of course. I have to admit I’m not one to scrimp on food. It's super important to me to eat well – and I like cooking good food. I’d be more inclined to economize on other expenses, like clothes or housing.
 
What question do you hear at every family gathering?
I don’t have a very big family anymore, unfortunately. My grandmother and my aunt used to come to visit a lot. They never asked, "What are you making of yourself now?" or "When will you finally be done with school?" They always made very supportive comments. My family always gives me plenty of support, I'm very happy about that.

What are you proud of?
A project at university on space architecture. This is doubtless surprising to most people because hardly anyone imagines designing space stations as a job for architects. But in my opinion, this is going to be an important branch of architecture in the decades to come. I’m proud that in our utopian plans we developed what a station for space tourism or research might look like in future. And I liked the fact that it was such a playful idea and that we weren’t entirely confined to the here and now. It's important to me to be able to dream a little.
 
What was the highest price you had to pay for a good mark?
The all-nighters. We even spent one night working as a team on two different projects. One was for a competition we wanted to take part in, the other was our final assignment for university. I worked on the plans for the university project first, then the plans for the competition project. It took all night. At 8 o'clock in the morning I printed out the plans, burned the CDs, put everything in folders and took them to the university offices. I stayed awake for 30 hours that day. I didn't feel terribly fit, but it was necessary and worth it to get the job done. A collective experience like that also creates a lasting bond, so when we get to meet up again at university we’re planning to do another project together. And I hope we’ll stay in touch after graduation.
 
University is also about learning for life. What’s your takeaway so far for the future?
I’ve learned that as an architect you have to take responsibility for the buildings you build. I think it's wrong to build only what you feel like building. You need to find a mix between what you find architecturally exciting and your responsibility for the generations to come and for the planet. You can build giant glass-and-steel skyscrapers, and of course they’re aesthetically gratifying, but they’re not really responsible architecture. I think wood is the building material of the future. Not only is wood one of the most traditional materials, it has also developed into one of the most modern, especially in recent years. Sometime in the near future, the first wooden skyscrapers could be shooting up into the sky like trees.
 

June 2021