thesis architecture portfolio

FIND YOUR SCHOOL

Degree program, areas of focus, tuition range.

Continue to School Search

• Where to Study
• What to Know
• Your Journey

2020 Student Thesis Showcase - Part I

Have you ever wondered what students design in architecture school? A few years ago, we started an Instagram account called IMADETHAT_ to curate student work from across North America. Now, we have nearly 3,000 projects featured for you to view. In this series, we are featuring thesis projects of recent graduates to give you a glimpse into what architecture students create while in school. Each week, for the rest of the summer, we will be curating five projects that highlight unique aspects of design. In this week’s group, the research ranges from urban scale designs focused on climate change to a proposal for a new type of collective housing and so much in between. Check back each week for new projects. 

In the meantime, Archinect has also created a series featuring the work of 2020 graduates in architecture and design programs. Check out the full list, here .

Redefining the Gradient by Kate Katz and Ryan Shaaban, Tulane University, M.Arch ‘20

Thesis Advisors: Cordula Roser Gray and Ammar Eloueini / Course: 01-SP20-Thesis Studio

Sea level rise has become a major concern for coastal cities due to the economic and cultural importance tied to their proximity to water. These cities have sustained their livelihood in low-lying elevations through the process of filling, bridging, and raising land over coastal ecosystems, replacing their ecological value with infrastructures focused on defining the edge between city and nature. Hard infrastructures have been employed to maintain urban landscapes but have minimal capacity for both human and non-human engagement due to their monofunctional applications focused on separating conditions rather than integrating them. They produce short-term gains with long-term consequences, replacing and restricting ecosystems and acting as physical barriers in a context defined by seasonal transition. 

To address the issues of hard infrastructure and sea level rise, this thesis proposes an alternative design strategy that incorporates the dynamic water system into the urban grid network. San Francisco was chosen as the location of study as it is a peninsula where a majority of the predicted inundation occurs on the eastern bayside. In this estuary, there were over 500 acres of ecologically rich tidal marshlands that were filled in during the late 1800s. To protect these new lands, the Embarcadero Sea Wall was built in 1916 and is now in a state of neglect. The city has set aside $5 billion for repairs but, instead of pouring more money into a broken system, we propose an investment in new multi-functional ecologically-responsive strategies. 

As sea levels rise, the city will be inundated with water, creating the opportunity to develop a new circulation system that maintains accessibility throughout areas located in the flood zone. In this proposal, we’ve designed a connective network where instance moments become moments of pause and relief to enjoy the new cityscape in a dynamic maritime district. 

On the lower level, paths widen to become plazas while on the upper level, they become breakout destinations which can connect to certain occupiable rooftops that are given to the public realm. The bases of carved canals become seeding grounds for plants and aquatic life as the water level rises over time. Buildings can protect high-risk floors through floodproofing and structural encasement combined with adaptive floorplates to maintain the use of lower levels. The floating walkway is composed of modular units that are buoyant, allowing the pedestrian paths to conform and fluctuate with diurnal tidal changes. The composition of the units creates street furniture and apertures to engage with the ecologies below while enabling a once restricted landscape of wetlands to take place within the city. 

The new vision of the public realm in this waterfront district hopes to shine an optimistic light on how we can live with nature once again as we deal with the consequences of climate change.

Unearthing the Black Aesthetic by Demar Matthews, Woodbury University, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Ryan Tyler Martinez Featured on Archinect

“Unearthing The Black Aesthetic” highlights South Central Los Angeles’s (or Black Los Angeles’s) unique positioning as a dynamic hub of Black culture and creativity. South Central is the densest population of African Americans west of the Mississippi. While every historically Black neighborhood in Los Angeles has experienced displacement, the neighborhood of Watts was hit particularly hard. As more and more Black Angelenos are forced for one reason or another to relocate, we are losing our history and connection to Los Angeles.

As a way to fight this gentrification, we are developing an architectural language derived from Black culture. So many cultures have their own architectural styles based on values, goals, morals, and customs shared by their society. When these cultures have relocated to America, to keep their culture and values intact, they bought land and built in the image of their homelands. That is not true for Black people in America. In fact, until 1968, Black people had no rights to own property in Los Angeles. While others began a race to acquire land in 1492, building homes and communities in their image, we started running 476 years after the race began. What percentage of land was left for Blacks to acquire? How then can we advance the development of a Black aesthetic in architecture?

This project, most importantly, is a collaboration with the community that will be for us and by us. My goal is to take control of our image in architecture; to elevate, not denigrate, Black life and culture. Ultimately, we envision repeating this process in nine historically Black cities in America to develop an architectural language that will vary based on the history and specificities of Black culture in each area.

KILLING IT: The Life and Death of Great American Cities by Amanda Golemba, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Nikole Bouchard, Jasmine Benyamin, and Erik Hancock / Independent Design Thesis

For decades, post-industrial cities throughout the United States have been quietly erased through self-imposed tabula rasa demolition. If considered at all, demolition is touted as the mechanism for removing unsightly blight, promoting safety, and discarding the obsolete and the unwanted. Once deemed unworthy, rarely does a building survive the threat of demolition. 

In the last decade, the City of Chicago has erased over 13,000 buildings with 225 in just the last four months. Not only does this mass erasure eradicate the material and the spatial, but it permanently wipes the remnants of human bodies, values, and history — a complete annulment of event, time, and memory. 

But why do we feel the need to erase in order to make progress?

Our current path has led to a built environment that is becoming more and more uniform and sterile. Much of America has become standardized, mixed-use developments; neighborhoods of cookie-cutter homes and the excessive use of synthetic, toxic building materials. A uniform world is a boring one that has little room for creativity, individuality, or authenticity.

This thesis, “KILLING IT,” is a design proposal for a traveling exhibition that seeks to change perceptions of the existing city fabric by visualizing patterns of erasure, questioning the resultant implications and effects of that erasure, and proposing an alternative fate. “KILLING IT” confronts the inherently violent aspects of architecture and explores that violence through the intentionally jarring, uncomfortable, and absurd analogy of murder. This analogy is a lens through which to trace the violent, intentional, and premature ending and sterilization of the existing built environment. After all, as Bernard Tschumi said, “To really appreciate architecture, you may even need to commit a murder.”1 But murder is not just about the events that take place within a building, it is also the material reality of the building itself. 

Over the life of a building, scarring, moments in time, and decay layer to create an inhabitable palimpsest of memory. This traveling exhibition is infused with the palimpsest concept by investigating strategies of layering, modularity, flexibility, transparency, and building remains, while layering them together to form a system that operates as an inhabitable core model collage. Each individual exhibition simultaneously memorializes the violence that happened at that particular site and implements murderous adaptive reuse strategies through collage and salvage material to expose what could have been.

If we continue down our current path, we will only continue to make the same mistakes and achieve the same monotonous, sterilizing results we currently see in every American city and suburb. We need to embrace a new path that values authenticity, celebrates the scars and traces of the past, and carries memories into the future. By reimaging what death can mean and addressing cycles of violence, “KILLING IT” proposes an optimistic vision for the future of American cities. 

• Tschumi, Bernard. “Questions of space: lectures on architecture” (ed. 1990)

A New Prototype for Collective Housing by Juan Acosta and Gable Bostic, University of Texas at Austin, M.Arch ‘20

Advisor: Martin Haettasch / Course: Integrative Design Studio Read more: https://soa.utexas.edu/work/new-prototype-collective-housing

Austin is a city that faces extreme housing pressures. This problem is framed almost exclusively in terms of supply and demand, and the related question of affordability. For architects, however, a more productive question is: Will this new quantity produce a new quality of housing? 

How do we live in the city, how do we create individual and collective identity through architecture, and what are the urban consequences? This studio investigates new urban housing types, smaller than an apartment block yet larger and denser than a detached house. Critically assessing existing typologies, we ask the question: How can the comforts of the individual house be reconfigured to form new types of residential urban fabric beyond the entropy of tract housing or the formulaic denominator of “mixed-use.” The nature of the integrative design studio allowed for the testing of material systems and construction techniques that have long had an important economic and ecological impact.

“A New Prototype for Collective Housing” addresses collectivity in both a formal and social sense, existing between the commercial and residential scales present in Austin’s St. John neighborhood as it straddles the I-35 corridor; a normative American condition. A diversity of programs, and multigenerational living, create an inherently diverse community. Additionally, a courtyard typology is used to negotiate the spectrum of private and shared space. Volumes, comprising multiple housing units ranging from studio apartments to four bedrooms, penetrate a commercial plinth that circulates both residents and mechanical systems. The use of heavy timber ensures an equitable use of resources while imbuing the project with a familiar material character.

ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE? by Brenda (Bz) Zhang, University of California at Berkeley, M.Arch ’20

Advisors: Andrew Atwood and Neyran Turan See more: https://www.brendazhang.com/#/elsewhere-or-else-where/

“ELSEWHERE, OR ELSE WHERE?” is an architectural fever dream about the San Francisco Bay Area. Beginning with the premise that two common ideas of Place—Home and Elsewhere—are no longer useful, the project wonders how disciplinary tools of architecture can be used to shape new stories about where we are.

For our purposes, “Home,” although primarily used to describe a place of domestic habitation, is also referring generally to a “familiar or usual setting,” as in home-base, home-court, home-page, and even home-button. As a counterpoint, Elsewhere shifts our attention “in or to another place,” away. This thesis is situated both in the literal spaces of Elsewhere and Home (landfills, houses, wilderness, base camps, wastelands, hometowns) and in their culturally constructed space (value-embedded narratives determining whether something belongs, and to whom). Since we construct both narratives through principles of exclusion, Elsewhere is a lot closer to Home than we say. These hybrid spaces—domestic and industrial, urban and hinterland, natural and built—are investigated as found conditions of the Anthropocene and potential sites for new understandings of Place.

Ultimately, this thesis attempts to challenge conventional notions of what architects could do with our existing skill sets, just by shifting our attention—Elsewhere. The sites shown here and the concerns they represent undeniably exist, but because of the ways Western architecture draws thick boundaries between and around them, they resist architectural focus—to our detriment.

In reworking the physical and cultural constructions of Homes and Elsewheres, architects are uniquely positioned to go beyond diagnostics in visualizing and designing how, where, and why we build. While this project looks specifically at two particular stories we tell about where we are, the overall objective is to provoke new approaches to how we construct Place—both physically and culturally—within or without our discipline.

Share this entry

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share by Mail

You might also like

About Study Architecture

Selected Architecture Thesis Projects: Fall 2020

Clockwise from top left: “Citing the Native Genius” by Taylor Cook, “Pair of Dice, Para-Dice, Paradise: A Counter-Memorial to Victims of Police Brutality” by Calvin Boyd, “The Magic Carpet” by Goli Jalali, “Stacked Daydreams: Ceiling-Scape for the Neglected” by Zai Xi Jeffrey Wong, and “Up from the Past: Housing as Reparations on Chicago’s South Side” by Isabel Strauss

Five films showcase a selection of Fall 2020 thesis projects from the Department of Architecture.

Pair of Dice, Para-Dice, Paradise: A Counter-Memorial to Victims of Police Brutality

This thesis is a proposal for a counter-memorial to victims of police brutality. The counter-memorial addresses scale by being both local and national, addresses materiality by privileging black aesthetics over politeness, addresses presence/absence by being more transient than permanent, and lastly, addresses site by being collective rather than singular. The result is an architecture that plays itself out over 18,000 police stations across America and the Washington Monument at the National Mall, two sites that are intrinsically linked through the architecture itself: negative “voids” at police stations whose positive counterparts aggregate at the Mall.

The critical question here is whether or not the system in which police brutality takes place can be reformed from within, or if people of color need to seek their utopia outside of these too-ironclad structures. This counter-memorial, when understood as an instrument of accountability (and therefore a real-time beacon that measures America’s capacity to either change or otherwise repeat the same violent patterns), ultimately provides us with an eventual answer.

Author: Calvin Boyd, MArch I 2020 Advisor: Jon Lott , Assistant Professor of Architecture Duration: 11 min, 2 sec

Thesis Helpers: Shaina Yang (MArch I 2021), Rachel Coulomb (MArch I 2022)

The Magic Carpet

The Persian Carpet and the Persian Miniature painting have served as representation tools for the Persian Gar­den and the idea of paradise in Persian culture since antiquity. The word paradise derives from the Persian word pari-daeza meaning “walled enclosure.” The garden is always walled and stands in opposition to its landscape. This thesis investigates the idea of a contemporary image of paradise in the Iranian imagination by using carpets and miniature paintings as a tool for designing architecture. The garden, with its profound associations, provided a world of metaphor for the classical mystic poets. One of the manuscripts describing the Persian garden is called Haft Paykar – known as the Seven Domes – written by the 12th century Persian poet called Nizami. These types of manuscripts were made for Persian kings and contain within them miniature paintings and poetry describing battles, romances, tragedies, and triumphs that compromise Iran’s mythical and pre-Islamic history. The carpet is the repeating object in the minia­ture paintings of the manuscript. This thesis deconstructs the carpet in seven ways in order to digitally reconstruct the miniature paintings of the Seven Domes and the image of paradise with new techniques.

Author: Goli Jalali, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Jennifer Bonner , Associate Professor of Architecture Duration: 8min, 28 sec

Up from the Past: Housing as Reparations on Chicago’s South Side

Do people know what the Illinois Institute of Technology and the South Side Planning Board and the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois and the United States government did to the Black Metropolis? If they know, do they care? Is it too hard to hold these entities accountable? If we held them accountable, could we find justice for those that were displaced? What would justice look like? What comes after Mecca? What types of spaces come after Mecca? Are they different than what was there before? Are they already there? What defines them? Can Reparations be housing? How many people are already doing this work? How many people are doing this work in academia? On the ground? Is the word “Reparations” dead? What do we draw from? Who is this for? Do white men own the legacy of the architecture that defined the Black Metropolis? How personal should this work be? How anecdotal? How quantitative? Does the design need to be inherently spatial? Or atmospheric? What should it feel like? How do I draw a feeling in Rhino? What are radical ways of looking? How do we reclaim racialized architecture? Do we? Should we even talk about these things?

Author: Isabel Strauss, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Oana Stanescu , Design Critic in Architecture Duration: 4 min, 4 sec

Soundtrack Created By: Edward Davis (@DJ Eway) Production Support: Adam Maserow , Evan Orf , Glen Marquardt Collaborators: Rekha Auguste Nelson , Farnoosh Rafaie , Zena Mariem Mengesha , Edward Davis (DJ Eway) Special Thanks: Caleb Negash , Tara Oluwafemi , Maggie Janik , Ann Whiteside , Dana McKinney Guidance: Stephen Gray , John Peterson , Chris Herbert , Cecilia Conrad , Lawrence J. Vale , Ilan Strauss , Mark Lee , Iman Fayyad , Jennifer Bonner , Mindy Pugh , Peter Martinez Collage Credits: Adler and Sullivan , Bisa Butler , Carrie Mae Weems , Dawoud Bey , Deborah Roberts , Ebony G Patterson , Ellen Gallagher , Frank Lloyd Wright , Howardena Pindell , Jordan Casteel , Kerry James Marshall , Latoya Ruby Frazier , Lelaine Foster , Lorna Simpson , Mark Bradford , Mickalene Thomas , Mies van der Rohe , Nick Cave , Njideka Akunyili Crosby , Romare Bearden , Sadie Barnette More Information: architectureofreparations.cargo.site

Stacked Daydreams: Ceiling‐Scape for the Neglected

Elderly Care Adaptive Reuse of Hong Kong’s Vertical Factory

This thesis operates at the intersection of three domains of neglect:

• In the realm of building elements, the ceiling is often considered as an afterthought in the design process.
• Across building types, the vertical factory sits abandoned and anachronistic to its surroundings. It spiraled into disuse due to Hong Kong’s shifting economic focus.
• In society, the elderly are often subjected to social neglect, seen as a financial burden, and forced toward the fringes of society.

These parts experience obsolescence that led to indifference, and subsequently to boredom. I intend to draw the parallel of deterioration between the body of the elderly and the body of the vertical factory. Using a set of ceiling parts in the manner of prosthetics to reactivate the spaces into elderly care facilities, revert boredom to daydreams, and reimagine the concept of elderhood as an experimental second stage of life.

Author: Zai Xi Jeffrey Wong, MArch I AP 2021 Advisor: Eric Höweler , Associate Professor of Architecture & Architecture Thesis Coordinator Duration: 4 min, 53 sec

Citing the Native Genius

Reconstructing vernacular architecture in Hawai’i

For over 120 years, Americanization has tried to demean and erase Hawaiian language, culture, and architecture. In contemporary discourse, the vernacular architecture of Hawai’i is mostly referred to as ancient and vague. As with many Indigenous cultures, Western perspectives tend to fetishize or patronize the Hawaiian design aesthetic. Within this hierarchy of knowledge is a systemic assumption that Hawaiian vernacular architecture cannot effectively serve as a precedent resource for contemporary architects. Those who do reference the original vernacular will often classify it as utilitarian or resourceful. Regardless of intent, this narrative takes design agency away from the people involved. As a corrective, a respectful use of vernacular domestic form would benefit designers that are struggling to connect with Hawai’i’s cultural and architectural traditions.

Mining the European gaze and influence out of revivalist publications, archeological surveys and historic images reveal unique characteristics of Hawaiian domestic space. Geometric quotation and symbolic referencing are the foundational instruments in applying the discrete components, form, and organizational logic of the vernacular. The result is a design process that creates an amalgamation of decolonized form and contemporary technique. This residential project intends to revive Hawai’i’s erased domestic experience by revisiting the precolonial vernacular form and plan.

Author: Taylor Cook, MArch I 2021 Advisor: Jeffry Burchard , Assistant Professor in Practice of Architecture Duration: 5 min, 13 sec

Special Thanks: Jeffry Burchard, Cameron Wu, Kanoa Chung, Nik Butterbaugh, Carly Yong, Vernacular Pacific LLC More Information: www.vernacularhawaii.com

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the galleries in Gund Hall have been turned ‘inside out,’ with exhibitions shown through a series of exterior projections on the building’s facade. View some images from the screening of these films below:

Your Architecture Work Sample Isn’t Your Portfolio. 10 Creative Tips To Keep in Mind When Job Searching

In many cases, your work sample is the first visual evidence you will offer a prospective employer when applying for a new architectural position . What you include in your sample, as well as how you structure and present it, is therefore important for creating a good first impression and increasing your chances of progressing through to an interview and job offer.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to work samples, just as there is no one-size-fits-all approach to design. Your own work sample will be influenced not only by your preferences and tastes but also by the medium through which you are presenting it, the type of firm you are applying to, and the stage of your career. 

The following set of ten tips on creating your work sample is, therefore, not a rigid prescription but answers to common queries we hear on the topic, suggestions based on the experience of our team and community , and questions to ask yourself as you assemble your own work sample to aid your next job search.

Do you have further advice for creating an architecture work sample while searching for your next role? Let us know in the comments.

Understand what the purpose of a work sample is…

In essence, your work sample is a visual snapshot of your architectural career. While your CV will contain the highlights of your architectural skills and experience in written form, your work sample translates these highlights into a visual format. The goal of your work sample is to present your strengths in a concise, visually appealing, and easy-to-digest format that gives a succinct introduction to your architectural capabilities, using a selection of your best work from practice and/or education.

In many cases, your work sample is the first visual evidence you will offer a prospective employer when applying for an architectural position. Employers will review your work sample alongside your cover letter and CV to help them decide whether to begin a conversation, such as inviting you to submit further work or attend an interview.

Think of your work sample as a way of getting your foot in the door of the interview room, in order to use your portfolio as the vehicle for the interview itself.

…and how it differs from a portfolio

While a work sample and portfolio are both designed to showcase your skills and experience, crucial differences exist between the two. The most significant difference is in size. While a design portfolio can span many dozens of pages with complete accounts of several projects, a work sample may be as little as five or six pages in total. A work sample is, therefore, not intended to document a project from start to finish as a portfolio might but should instead capture the essence of a carefully curated selection of projects and how they embody your skills, experience, and approach.

A portfolio and work sample are also likely to feature at different stages of the job application process. Your work sample is frequently used in your initial application alongside your cover letter and CV, while your portfolio will play a more dominant role in later stages, such as an interview. Think of your work sample as a way of getting your foot in the door of the interview room in order to use your portfolio as the vehicle for the interview itself.

Tailor your work sample to the firm you are applying to…

In a recent feature article on creating an elevator pitch for an architecture firm , we noted that one should develop several pitches to cater to a variety of audiences. The same applies to work samples. When applying to a particular firm, take time to research the practice and understand its design philosophy, values, and key projects.

Your research should begin on the firm’s website but may also include searching media outlets such as Archinect firm profiles to study where the practice has gained coverage and acclaim. Tailor your work sample document accordingly, prioritizing material that you feel will resonate with the firm.

If the firm you are applying to exhibits an interest in timber architecture, for example, seek to include projects and drawings that showcase your own experience with the material. If the firm specializes in construction stage work over concept design, emphasize construction-stage projects you have worked on in the past, or in the case of a recent graduate, technical drawings from your thesis project or building technology modules.

If you are in doubt, do not be afraid to call or email the firm to clarify.

…and pay attention to the job ad for clues and direction

When curating your work sample, pay close attention to the details of the job ad you are responding to. Given that your work sample is likely the first opportunity you have to showcase your abilities, the content of the work sample should align with the roles, responsibilities, capabilities, and experience requested in the job ad.

If the firm is seeking an individual with prior experience in retail projects, for example, your work sample should include high-quality material that either directly or tangentially relates to retail design. If the firm emphasizes a particular representational skill, such as physical modeling or photorealistic rendering, your work sample should similarly be tailored in response.

The job ad may also include specific information on how to apply, including the number of pages to be included in work samples or file size limits, all of which you should note and adhere to. Keep in mind that when a firm uses phrases in its job ad such as ‘sample portfolio’ or ‘mini portfolio,’ they are likely referring to what we are calling here a ‘work sample.’ If you are in doubt, do not be afraid to call or email the firm to clarify.

Be ruthless on quality…

While aligning with the firm’s profile is important, the decision of what to include in your work sample should primarily be driven by quality. Your work sample should first and foremost include what you believe is your best material, ideally with a variety of media such as sketches, models, renders, 2D and 3D drawings, completion photographs, and, if appropriate, a variety of project typologies to demonstrate versatility. Avoid the mistake some make of ‘saving your best work for the interview.’

When showing material from your time at a previous firm, it is also likely that your best work was done as part of a team. Architecture is an inherently collaborative act, and you should not shy away from showing material with multiple authors in your work sample if the quality is high enough. In this case, state clearly and briefly what your role was in the material or project.

The quality of your supporting text also matters. Do not copy and paste descriptive paragraphs of text from your portfolio into your work sample. Instead, keep text descriptions short but clear, written in an engaging style that sets the scene for the visual material and evokes interest and curiosity in the viewer.

The more pages you add to your sample, or the more material you add to each page, the more you dilute the impact of each individual image.

…and cautious on quantity

As mentioned earlier, a work sample is not a portfolio. You do not need to narrate the full story of each project, and should instead focus on providing quality highlights to be unpacked and expanded upon in a portfolio interview. In many cases, a prospective employer will use your work sample not to meticulously study the details of each project but to gain a preliminary understanding of your background, skills, and experience. Narrating your ability is, therefore, more important than narrating the full story of a project.

Unlike in a portfolio interview, where you will likely find yourself measured against a handful of other candidates, your work sample will also be competing with dozens, perhaps hundreds of other applicants, meaning the person viewing your sample will not devote extensive time to unpacking your material. The more impactful your sample, the more it will stand out. Therefore, remember that the more pages you add to your sample or the more material you add to each page, the more you dilute the impact of each individual image.

Play with balances and contrasts…

As mentioned previously, a primary goal of your work sample is to make each individual element sing. In the literary world, writers will commonly employ the tactic of structural contrasts, alternating between long and short sentences in a paragraph to keep the reader engaged. The same goes for images. If your sample contains contrasts such as hand-drawn sketches versus photorealistic renders, or basic concept diagrams versus detailed construction drawings, a layout that alternates between these contrasts can heighten the impact of each image. This can work both between and within individual pages.

In addition, use white space effectively to create a clean, professional appearance. If your sample does benefit from having a page filled with many images and little empty space, consider bookending this page with less cluttered neighbors to offer breathing room for the material and reader.

Following these rules may not gain you any points, but failing to follow them will almost always lose you some.

…but establish consistent rules and structures

While the material across your work sample may vary, it is advised that you still establish clear formatting rules. Without these, your sample may appear unprofessional or rushed in the eyes of the reader, regardless of the material quality. This includes consistent or proportional margin and spacing widths across pages, consistent rules on font types and sizes, consistent placement of labels, and flexible rules on page composition, such as the ratio of text to images, a family of height/width image ratios, and motifs for where images do and do not appear on pages.

While many of these rules are open for interpretation and adoption, some rules in your work sample are non-negotiable. Do not use low-resolution images, which will detract not only from themselves but the wider sample. Always perform a proofread and spellcheck on text. If you are attaching your work sample to an email or uploading it to a website, give it a clear and professional file name and study carefully how the material (particularly detailed drawings) appears on a computer screen versus being printed. Following these rules may not gain you any points, but failing to follow them will almost always lose you some.

Allow your work sample to evolve in response to your career…

As your career progresses, your work sample should evolve. As a recent graduate, your work sample will likely be heavily reliant on thesis projects, individual competitions, and extracurricular work. As you accumulate years in practice, however, the thesis material in your work sample should gradually be phased out in favor of more recent experience.

While the source of our material will evolve, so will our skills and interests. It is always worth returning to your work sample periodically to ask yourself if the material shown most accurately conveys your passion and abilities or the prevailing experience or capabilities sought after by employers.

The longer we spend laboring over our work sample, the more difficult it is to imagine the impact of the material on a first-time observer.

…and in response to feedback

Given that your work sample is designed to be viewed by an external party, your network of architectural colleagues can become a valuable source of feedback on your material. In practice, this may include coworkers and industry acquaintances, while for recent graduates, you can approach classmates and professors.

The longer we spend laboring over our work sample, the more difficult it is to imagine the impact of the material on a first-time observer. Your network of peers, therefore, serves as a valuable proxy for potential employers.

Finally, follow our ongoing  Archinect Tips  series for advice and guidance on navigating your architectural career.

Similar articles on Archinect that may interest you...

About the Author

Niall Patrick Walsh

Niall Patrick Walsh is an architect and journalist, living in Belfast, Ireland. He writes feature articles for Archinect and leads the Archinect In-Depth series. He is also a licensed architect in the UK and Ireland, having previously worked at BDP, one of the largest design +  ...

No Comments

Block this user.

Are you sure you want to block this user and hide all related comments throughout the site?

This is your first comment on Archinect. Your comment will be visible once approved.

• Back to Features List...
• » Architectural Issues
• » Culture
• » Architects
• » Design
• » Academia
• ↓ More
• » Buildings
• » Business
• » Employment
• » Technology
• » Film/Video/Photography
• » Urban Planning
• » Sustainability
• » Events
• » Landscape
• » Web
• » Competition
• » Furniture
• » View All
• × Search in:
• All of Archinect

50 Best Architecture Portfolio Templates (Download Now)

A great architecture portfolio helps you stand out and break open a world of opportunities as an architect. However, it isn't always easy to create one so we've handpicked 50 stunning InDesign architecture portfolio templates that you can customize.

Using any of these architecture portfolio templates, you can present your story, past projects, processes, and architectural skills in a captivating way. After that, don't forget to pair your portfolio with one of our top 100 InDesign resume templates .

No time to scroll? Use this search bar to find the styles you prefer:

Professional Architecture Portfolio Templates

1. the grey palette.

A monochromatic paradise! In addition to the gray color palette, there is a practical layout, a clever picture placement, and an overall structure that  will keep the reader engaged.

2. Simplicity over Everything

Sometimes less is more and this architecture portfolio template is here to prove that. The white space between the elements is used smartly and allows the accent to be put on the content. A portfolio should reflect skill and experience, to that end, this well-balanced template is perfect for any professional.

3. Catalog Layout with Grey and Gold Accents

This template is exceptional because of its neat organization and classic combination of colors. Above all, its flawless structure will satisfy every perfectionist's needs.

4. Black and White Portfolio Layout

Put your work in the best light with the help of this black and white architecture portfolio template. It has an effective layout, a simple design, and powerfully used white space.

5. The Neutral Prowess

Make your designs stand out with neutrality. This template maximizes the colors black, white, gray, and brown to bring out a minimalist aesthetic that's sure to please the eye. Format-wise, this style is a match for almost any design.

6. The Modern Edge

Highlight your edge with a modernist template. This allows you to present your designs with ample space for visuals. Moreover, it is readily editable to accommodate your text descriptions and images.

7. Deep Into Contrasts

Directing the eyes to the focal points of images and texts, this portfolio uses  just the right amount of contrasts between colors. Bring out the best in your designs with a minimalist yet stylish take using this template.

8. Portfolio Layout with Grey Accents

Don't be afraid to show you are a rounded and knowledgeable architect with this simple, clean, and striking template with dominant grey accents.

9. The Elegant Minimal Layout

Elegance with a bit of an edge. That's what this unforgettable template has in store for you! The simple color palette, the professional appearance, and the striking layout all come together in an elegant design.

10. The Structured Portfolio

Presenting your work in a powerful and appealing way has never been easier. This template frames your text and photos with basic white backgrounds and bold headings.

11. The dominance of the Pink and Blue Accents

This template features: a landscape orientation, bold typography, and a wonderful color palette. Furthermore, the layout allows a neat organization for each project, a creative line element, and great text placement. Overall, it is a well thought-out template.

12. The Professional Template

Simplicity and professionalism over everything! This template stands out with its tasteful and uncluttered look. It's hard to find such and elegant and professional design amid all the different architecture portfolio templates.

13. Just The Right Light

Let your portfolio pop with light colors without overpowering your designs. Use this template to showcase your work against just the right tones of blue, red, and yellow. At the same time, flip through a variety of layout options ready to hold and highlight your visuals.

14. Simply Straightforward

Your style will speak for itself with this simple and straightforward template. Avoid clutter and unwanted elements that might distract the eyes. No overwhelming texts and lines; just pure focus on your designs. Because that's what your portfolio is about, right?

15. Plain White Spotlight

Place the spotlight on your designs by keeping the plain white stride. Take the minimalist style with a template that's provident in text but rich in visuals, allowing you to achieve a neat and pleasing landscape portfolio.

16. Bold Is Better

Strike strong with deep blue and black hues to back your bold designs. Along with straightforward texts that help deliver your concepts neatly. Use this template to showcase your work in as easy as 1, 2, 3 — just place, edit, and print!

17. The Grayscale Superiority

You can never go wrong with black and white, especially when it comes to a dapper portfolio. With dark lines and font styles that complement the plain background, this template will surely give your designs the superiority they ought to have.

18. Towards The Visuals

Skip detours and direct the focus on your visuals with a foursquare portfolio. This template is space-rich for your images but does not compromise necessary texts. And with a grayscale base, the pages pop to a bright orange that will enhance your designs' appeal.

19. More Black, More Impact

If your stock is mostly black, a white portfolio with black and beige accents is your way to go. Use this template to flash the beauty of your concepts and designs with maximal impact thanks to the balanced arrangement of visuals and texts on every page.

20. The White Dominance

Present your work under the perfect light — white! With this landscape portfolio template, you get the space your visuals need and the text styles that complement them. This way, your designs will hold the gaze of your readers with relaxed eyes.

21. Skies For Heights

Achieve greater heights with a portfolio that perfectly showcases your designs. This landscape template has a blue undertone with yellow accents that give off a cooling appeal. Here's your best match, especially if your visuals are enhanced by skies.

22. Foursquare Freedom

Deliver your concepts and ideas with a text-rich and visuals-dominant portfolio. Use this straightforward square template to present your designs on point while sharply laid out on plain pages. And feel free to customize the font styles, colors, and more!

23. Neon Perfection

Set your neon visuals to flight with a portfolio that is boldly black and white. Customize this square template with your own images and texts to showcase your best designs against pitch black and pristine white fonts and backgrounds.

24. All About Clarity

Lay your designs and ideas straight to the point using this cleanly organized template. With blue and yellow accents, here's a portfolio that is sure to feature the best of your works. Make it your own by editing the texts and adding your images!

25. Bright Millennium

Focus on the bright side of your designs with this magazine-style template. Flip through pages of fun fonts and eye-catching visuals with yellow accents. All you have to do is edit the texts, add your images, and personalize the portfolio to your liking!

26. Eyes On The Black

Arrange your designs on black background and patterns that take contrast and focus to the next level. Best for images with defined lines and minimal light, this template will give you an edge when it comes to architecture portfolios.

27. Minimalist White Elegance

Showcase your work in a classy white portfolio that uses minimal texts, bold titles, and finely placed images. Achieve that neat look that never goes out of style by personalizing this template with your designs!

28. Modern B&W Snaps

Give your portfolio a modern getup using this well-arranged template. More fitting to black and white images, this template features subtle blue and yellow accents to give your designs a mood lift. Just edit the texts and add your images, then it's ready for printing!

29. Black To The Future

Top the portfolio game with an all-black attack. With grayish brown accents, this template gives a futuristic class that will make your designs appear top-notch. It's ready to hold your images and carry your texts in just a few clicks!

30. Nature Meets Style

Dive into the warm vibes of nature as you feature your designs using this simple yet stylish template. Don't fret about effectively placing your images and texts because the layout is all ready to present your work. Just place and print!

31. Pale Green Photo Album

Meant more as photo album, this InDesign template is just a few customizing clicks away from an architect portfolio.It has a rather impressive design that allows you to make a powerful presentation of your work. All in all, it's definitely worth your time!

32. The Orange Accents

This template has: versatile A4 spreads, interesting colors, customizable elements, and practical sections. Minimal and simple yet effective and user-friendly.

Architecture presentation templates

33. the black elegance.

Unlike most classic portfolios, this template has a black background. This seemingly small detail adds sophistication and elegance. Choose this template and take your content to another level.

34. The Elegant Portfolio Layout

This template shines with simplicity and elegance.  The images take the spotlight, while the text placement is limited. The color palette is basic. Its overall feel is very polished.

35. Subtle Sophistication

Go for a clean but sophisticated look by using this square portfolio template. It is composed of mostly white pages with subtle blues and grays. Play with the palette and choose the best tones to complement your designs.

36. Dark Blue and White Landscape Book Layout

Well structured and versatile with an elegant choice of colors. This InDesign template is the superior tool you need to visually showcase your experience.

37. Landscape Portfolio Layout

In a profession that revolves around aesthetics, a sleek visual presentation of yourself is necessary. This portfolio provides that and more: versatile layouts, great picture placement, carefully-placed text, and creative circle elements.  In other words, for all other architecture portfolio templates, this is the one to beat!

38. Grey Photo Album Magazine Layout

Subtle, delicate, and detailed. Structured, convenient, and easy to customize. Choosing this template means showing your work in an efficient and straightforward way.

39. The High-Class Architecture Portfolio

Choose this template and play it safe! With its polished appearance and powerful presentation, you will keep your readers engaged.

40. The Unique Landscape Design

This design is innovative and unconventional. Its unique picture element really stands out. Each page allows you to tell your story and your creative process, from the idea and primary sketches to the final execution.

41. Visuals Dominant Portfolio

Instead of long paragraphs and complicated explanations, let the images, renderings, drawings, and diagrams speak for themselves. This template will allow you to do just that‚ visually present your experience and your work in a professional and powerful way.

42. Square Architecture Portfolio

Minimalist, chic, and elegant at the same time. This architecture portfolio template will impress you with its simple yet effective design.

43. The Colorful Combination

What makes this layout unique and eye-catching is its striking color palette. Dare to go where few other architecture portfolio templates have gone before!

44. Landscape Portfolio Layout with Bright Colors

Redefine the classic portfolio. This template's bright and refreshing color palette and its neat layout really make it stand out. It's the right choice for any professional ready for success.

45. Graceful Layout

Minimalism goes often hand in hand with architecture. For instance, in this InDesign Template . The pages are simple, the text placement is limited, and the colors are in greyscale. However, the layout is versatile, stylish and timeless.

46. Minimalist Portfolio Layout

Are you looking for a layout that will allow you to display your sketches, images, renderings, drawings, graphs, and diagrams in a simple and uncluttered way? Click on this template and your search will be over.

47. The Creative Structure

What makes this template unique is the creative picture element on every page, though the pages themselves are versatile. The different projects can be neatly organized, the headlines are bold and clear, and the typographic style is easy to read.

48. The Refreshing Portfolio Design

This InDesign template will win you over with its refreshing design and overall layout. The content is easy to read, the picture placement is appealing, and, above all, it allows you to tell your story at a glance.

49. The User-Friendly Portfolio Layout

This template is outstanding thanks to its user-friendly layout. The overall design is uncomplicated and easy to understand, the colors are basic, and it has everything you could ever need.

50. The Subtle Artsy Layout

Contemporary and edgy, this template has bold typography, plenty of picture placeholders, and a lot of space for text. Explain who you are in a modern and artistic way.

Find your favorite template

We carefully curated all the templates you can find in this list. However, if you don't see a template that you like, try using the form below to search among 28,000+ InDesign templates .

Portfolios can be complicated to put together. I believe these architectural portfolio templates can help you focus on what's truly important: highlighting your talent and your projects .

Instead of worrying about the layout, structure and colours, just pick a template and customize it to your liking. I'm confident these InDesign templates can help you advance in your career!

All the best,

Stefano Bernardi is the Co-founder of Redokun. For the past 11 years, Stefano has been an active contributor to the InDesign community and the translation management industry.

His work focuses on assisting marketing managers in simplifying complex translation processes, enabling them to speed up the translation of marketing materials up to three times faster .

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.

More from the blog

65 free and paid indesign proposal templates (2024), 50 versatile indesign cookbook templates (2024), streamline your translation workflow with zero downtime. discover how..

⚡ Hurry! Last Chance for Scholarship - Enroll before Sept. 15 ⚡️

Hire From Us

Career Counselling

BIM for Architects

Master computational design, bim for civil engineers.

Become a Mentor

Join thousands of people who organise work and life with Novatr.

10 Award-Winning Architecture Thesis Projects From Around The World

Neha Sharma

8 mins read

It is always interesting to see the architecture thesis projects students come up with every year. With each passing batch, there is more knowledge passed down and a better base to begin. The result is a rise in innovation and creativity by students, and overall a better mix!

Architecture thesis is an ordeal all students are intimidated by. From choosing an architecture thesis topic all the way to giving a great final thesis review , every step is equally challenging and important. It is that turn in an architecture student’s life that pushes them to churn out their best. Therefore, it is inevitable to come across some life-altering design solutions through architecture theses across the world.

To identify and appreciate these exceptional final projects by architecture students, many organisations across the world like Archistart, Council of Architecture, etcetera, award recognition for excellence in architecture thesis and also grant financial support for further research to the projects worthy of being realised.

Read through the list of 10 such award-winning architecture theses across the world with links to study them in detail!

1. ISTHME // Le CHAOS SENSIBLE - Dafni Filippa and Meriam Sehimi

ISTHME // Le Chaos Sensible - Architecture Thesis of the Year 2020 (Source: www.nonarchitecture.eu)

Starting from the most recent one, the award-winning thesis is a proposal of a mixed-use building in the capital city of Ghana, Africa, that aims to cater to a large spectrum of functions of the Ghanaian community, especially living, commercial, sports and leisure.

This culturally thoughtful architecture thesis project is an honest effort to celebrate the African spirit and empower the local community, which reflects in the ‘sensible chaos’ of the design.

2. INFRA-PAISAJE: New Landscape Architecture - Luis Bendezu

INFRA-PAISAJE: New Landscape Infrastructure for San Juan de Marcona - Special Mention: Architectural Thesis Award ATA 2018 (Source: www.archistart.net)

Landscape architecture manifests the connection between humans and nature. The landscape thesis project proposes a series of technical elements for the creation of a seamless landscape between the urbanised territory of San Juan de Marcona in Peru and the suburban parts, thus forming a cohesive townscape which converses with the coastline and brings active life to the otherwise desolate expanse of the region.

3. Water Exploratorium - Satyam Gyanchandani

Water Exploratorium - Ace of Space Design Awards: Outstanding Student Thesis Award (Source: www.architectandinteriorsindia.com)

Water is a life-giving resource and considered sacred across many cultures. To sustain life on earth, it is important to save and use it with utmost efficiency. The architecture thesis project showcases experiential design through and for water. It also tackles design challenges like infotainment by educating visitors on water conservation and creating a static built form for an element as fluid as water for a wholesome sensory experience.

Want to know how to come up with such fascinating thesis topics? Read: 7 Tips on Choosing the Perfect Architecture Thesis Topic For You

4. Architecture for Blind People - Mariagiorgia Pisano

Between Light and Shadow: Architecture for Blind People - 1st Place: Architectural Thesis Award 2017 (Source: www.archistart.net)

Inclusive design offers a wide-spread net of research opportunities and is gaining much-needed recognition today!

Design for people with disabilities is dealt with empathy in this architecture thesis project, where the focus is exploring innovative design solutions for the visually deprived and getting the design of rehabilitation centres as close as possible to meeting their needs.

5. Mosul Postwar Camp - Edoardo Daniele Stuggiu and Stefano Lombardi

Mosul Postwar Camp - 1st Place: Architectural Thesis Award ATA 2019 (Source: www.archistart.net)

War does permanent damage to a person’s mental health. The survivors experience trauma, loss and even destruction of self-identity. The architecture thesis project proposes a postwar camp at Mosul, Iraq, aiming to create a place where people of various backgrounds can peacefully coexist and build a community based on humanitarian values to prevent war in the future.

6. Consolation through Architecture - A New Journey through the Abandoned Landscapes of Varanasi - Navin Lucas Sebastian

Consolation Through Architecture - COA National Awards for Excellence in Architectural Thesis 2016 (Source: www.coa.gov.in)

The intangible aspects of design are tough to pinpoint but necessary for the essence and feel of it. This urban design thesis project shows light on architecture’s influence on one’s emotions with the holy city of Varanasi in India as the backdrop. With a focus on issues arising due to the city’s cremation grounds, the thesis explores innovative and sustainable solutions for the same.

7. Unfinished Tor Vergata Scenario - Carmelo Gagliano

Unfinished Tor Vergata Scenario - 1st Place: Architectural Thesis Award 2020 (Source: www.archistart.net)

When it comes to building projects, the trend of the ‘unfinished’ is something Italy has been increasingly seeing in the past few years. The most popular unfinished public work is Calatrava’s Olympic Stadium, which is the main object for reuse in the proposal of a science museum at Rome Tor Vergata.

This architecture thesis project explores the existing building trends of the region, aims to reinvent the iconic building and become a scientific attraction for tourists and locals.

8. Chachapoyas Peri-Urban Park - Nájat Jishar Fernández Díaz

Structures for Incidents in Nature: Chachapoyas Peri-Urban Park - Special Mention: Architectural Thesis Award ATA 2019 (Source: www.archistart.net)

Growing urban areas are a concern as they slowly consume the ecology surrounding them. Chachapoyas (forest of clouds) in Peru faces a similar problem from the expanding urban confinements which are slowly taking over the beautiful landscapes for which the place is particularly famous.

The project aims to mend the damage by connecting every speck of open land available in the region and converting it into a network of green corridors, making for an interesting urban planning thesis!

9. Garden of Reconciliation, Kashmir - Jay Shah

Garden of Reconciliation: Miniature Drawing - COA National Award in Excellence for Architectural Thesis 2018 (Source: www.uni.xyz)

Cultural and political unrest in a region has always been the glue for controversies, leading to public tip-toeing around such topics. This bold architecture thesis project looks at the conflicted region of Kashmir, to analyse its cultural, social and artistic practices and then come up with an architecture program best suited for the region. This is traversed in the form of a mixed-use landscape that aims to find a solution and is not the solution itself!

Such theses usually require intensive site studies. Read: Site Analysis Categories You Need to Cover For Your Architecture Thesis Project to know more.

10. Adaptive Reuse of STP Grain Silos - Alila Mhamed

Poudrière Community Hub - 2nd Place: Architectural Thesis Awards ATA 2020 (Source: www.archistart.net)

Adaptive reuse of spaces that have been uninhabited for a long time does true justice to the core values of architecture and design. This thesis project explores the creative redefinition of the old STP Grain silos complex, the first mill constructed as a part of the Poudrière industrial park in the present-day city of Sfax, Tuscany, Italy, by converting it into a mixed-use hub for art, commerce, trade, administration and collaboration.

Numerous amazing architecture thesis projects come to light every year and the list is not limited to this one! At the learning stages, people have the power to unleash their creativity without any limitations and such scenarios might just lead to the right solutions for the time and society we live in.

Giving your architecture thesis project? Check out our A-Z Architecture Thesis Guide!

Stay updated with interesting insights and episodes on architecture thesis projects with Novatr's Resources !

Join 100,000 designers who read us every month

Related articles

7 Tips on Choosing the Perfect Architecture Thesis Topic For You

Site Analysis Categories You Need to Cover For Your Architecture Thesis Project

How to Give a Fantastic Architecture Thesis Review That Stands Out

All Articles

Your next chapter in AEC begins with Novatr!

Ready to skyrocket your career?

As you would have gathered, we are here to help you take the industry by storm with advanced, tech-first skills.

Privacy Policy

Terms of Use

Architecture Student

The definitive guide to an epic architecture portfolio – part i.

• by Michael Riscica

This article is the first entry in a special three-part series entitled, ‘The Definitive Guide to an Epic Architecture Portfolio.' These posts have been written by guest writer, Michael LaValley of Evolving Architect . Each part will take you through the process of how to successfully build your portfolio from the ground up.

“Definitive Guide to an Epic Architecture Portfolio”

Part I / Finding Your Purpose (this post)

Part II / Developing Your Content Strategy

Part III / Producing Your Epic Architecture Portfolio

‘Finding Your Purpose,' focuses specifically on laying the foundation, defining the reasons why you're creating the portfolio in the first place, and the initial steps you can follow to make sure your portfolio is a triumph.

Part I / Finding Your Purpose

By Michael LaValley

PORTFOLIO 101

Whether you're looking for a new job, a new college, or a career change within the profession of architecture, your portfolio is one of, if not the most important, devices you have to establish yourself to others.

But don't let that scare you.

An Architecture Portfolio is simply a document that conveys the story of your professional experience through imagery, text, composition, and format. You can learn a lot about yourself in the process of creating a portfolio, just as you can understand more about your peers if know how to ‘read' theirs.

A portfolio is nothing if not personal.

A good portfolio will justify why it exists, but a great portfolio will introduce someone to who you are.

Like people, portfolios come in all shapes and sizes. They can be completely digital, completely analog, or some combination of the two. The requirements you have for your portfolio may change between purposes entirely. A human resources department at a firm may require digital only submissions that you provide through an online portal. At the same time, an advisory board at a University may insist upon a physical binder with copies of your work inside.

Here we'll take a closer look at just what it means to build a portfolio that matters. If you're seeking the path to an epic portfolio, you've come to the right place.

STEP 1 / IDENTIFY YOUR WHY

Why do you need an architecture portfolio.

It may seem like a simple question, but the reason you actually need to create a portfolio is probably the most important question you must understand above all. The answer will provide the foundation for everything you do moving forward. Every image, every line, every word will be dictated by your purpose. Otherwise, you'll end up with a portfolio that is disjointed and clumsy – something that will be more than apparent to your audience.

So, what's your answer?

If you're not sure, here are the top 4 reasons you might have to create an Architecture portfolio.

1. Professional Experience

Whether you're looking for a new job or establishing a body of work for new opportunities in your career, an architecture portfolio can establish your skill set, professional interests, and extracurricular endeavors. The portfolio can quickly identify for an employer if you have the necessary skills they require you to have for the position in question.

• Changing Jobs
• Job in Academia
• Annual Review
• LinkedIn Integration

2. Academic Experience

Especially in the architectural profession, a portfolio is almost always a requirement when starting a new program at a college or university.  Depending upon the level you're applying for (undergraduate, graduate, PhD), the specific requirements may vary. However, an architecture portfolio of work is a key document that will establish for an academic institution whether or not you present a good fit for that program.

• Undergraduate  Applications
• Graduate Architecture School Applications
• PhD Program Applications
• Scholarships

3. Record Architecture Projects

Even though you're fairly confident that all of your work is as clear in your head as the day you created it, a portfolio can be a fantastic way to catalogue your architecture projects from time to time. This can work in your benefit for two key reasons: 1. the portfolio creation process pushes you to organize your work in a coherent way and 2. the very fact that you have a portfolio will allow you to adapt to unforeseen situations (job loss, award submission, or recommendation) as they present themselves.

• Archive of Past Work
• Format Current School Work
• Experiment with Presentation
• Learn How to Make a Portfolio
• Present a Single, Important Project

4. Personal 

Does your Grandma know what you do? I bet she does, but she likely doesn't have the technical background that you do as an architect and a designer. Your portfolio can be the simplest way to explain to others outside the profession what you actually do. Think coffee table book. This type of portfolio can provide a straightforward look at work. It relies primarily upon photographs, diagrams, and sketches to explain basic ideas to others.

• Something to Show Relatives and Friends
• Coffee Table Version of Your Work
• Record of Your Career Achievements to Date

While there are undoubtedly more reasons for you to create a portfolio, these are likely the most relevant.

However, do NOT go any further in this process until you've at least identified what your own reason for creating a portfolio is. It may be a mix of some of the reasons above, but a clear purpose will be the one thing that you'll need to remind yourself of most as you move forward.

STEP 2 / TARGET THE RIGHT AUDIENCE

Who are you creating this for.

If you think about it, the audience you're gearing the architecture portfolio towards is most likely a direct corollary to your purpose for making it in the first place. A future boss might look at a professional portfolio, a professor may look at an academic one, you may be only person interested in the portfolio for your records, and your friends and family may be wow'd by your personal portfolio.

So if it's that simple, why do we even need to talk about this? It's straightforward enough, right?

No. No, it's not.

ALL AUDIENCES ARE NOT CREATED EQUALLY

Take a look at your options again. If you were to say, interview for a job at a small, boutique firm that specializes in high end residential work, you probably wouldn't use that same portfolio for an interview with a commercial developer looking to build up their in-house architecture staff.

See what I mean?

We can't generalize when it comes to the audience. In fact, it's quite possible that you may end up with entirely different versions of your portfolio when you're done. Now, that doesn't mean that you will, just that you could.

Another example. Say that you're just starting your career. You need a architecture portfolio for admission to a college/university.

But wait, you haven't even spent a day in studio yet!

Don't worry, your portfolio doesn't have to be at the same level as a recent graduate of that program (Hint: that’s why you’re going to architeccture school!) It's more likely to focus on the work you did in High School, with an emphasis on your ability to draw.

That type of academic portfolio is nothing like something you'd submit to a PhD program. You would need research work, projects that speak to your intended specialized study. I doubt that you'll find an academic board in the world holding you to those types of standards before you’ve obtained an Undergraduate degree.

SO HOW DO I KNOW WHO THE AUDIENCE IS?

As a way to establish your audience, imagine a person (as best you can) that represents who you'll be speaking to. If you know of the actual person in real life, think of them.

Identify an actual human-being that will review your work. In the end, they could be very different in personality, tastes, and preferences, but they'll be more apt to understand how you're speaking to them because it's a manner they are familiar with.

Knowing who you will gear your portfolio to is the next step you need to complete before moving forward. Take some time and write down their description noting details related to their position and influence. After you’ve done that, you can begin to think about how to talk to them.

STEP 3 / ESTABLISHING TONE

You are you, not someone else.

At the end of the process, your architecture portfolio must still reflect who you are. Now that you've established who you are writing to, begin to consider how you will address them. Just because there are general rules and suggestions regarding how to build your portfolio, that doesn't mean that your personality should be brushed aside for something robotic and emotionless.

What kind of person are you? Or better yet, what kind of personality are you trying to convey through the presentation of your work?

Here's an example.

THE SUMMER THAT YIELDED A FANTASTIC PORTFOLIO

The summer before I submitted applications to Undergraduate architecture programs, I knew that I hadn't really been one of the ‘artistic' kids in High School. I loved sketching and drawing, but it wasn't something I pursued in formal classes. Rather, they were usually just sketches in the corners of my notes from math, science, or history.

When it dawned on me that the doodles from calculus probably didn’t scream ‘future architect,’ I had a minor panic attack.

At the same time, I knew then that my best bet was to present my personality. I wasn't going to have elaborate watercolor paintings, anatomy sketches, or sculptures to add to my portfolio. Instead, I experimented with my skills and ended up with pieces that represented my favorite things at the time – Star Wars, Video Games, Rock Music, Cartoons, and History. I know, quite the eclectic set of themes.

I didn't worry about what wouldn't be in my architecture portfolio. Instead, I made sure that every piece spoke to something about me. Each was in a style that tested my abilities and even helped me get better. By the end of the summer, I not only had a fantastic portfolio (for a High School student), I had a portfolio that could only be mine.

In the early Fall, I was required to meet for interviews at some of the architecture schools I was applying to. I distinctly remember walking one of the professors I met with through each piece. I didn't hesitate. I could explain each with great detail because I had considered what they had meant to me and my reasoning for including them.

Shortly thereafter, I ended up going to that program for 5 years, in part, because I created something that proved I had a voice that was mine. I would bet it wasn't the usual fair they were used to seeing. But then again, that might be why it was so successful.

TONE AND PERSONALITY WILL HELP YOU STAND OUT

Establishing the tone of your work begins with knowing who you are. Do you have certain design tastes? Is there a word or a phrase that can describe your personality succinctly?

If you're worried that you can't be yourself, think about your portfolio in more abstract terms for a moment. You should still maintain things like good grammar, spelling, and the absence of swearing, but your portfolio should speak to the type of person you are beyond just the work.

Treat your portfolio as an extension of yourself. In many cases, the person on the other end will not be able to meet you in person beforehand or begin to grasp the nuances that speak to who you are.

“The one thing that you have that nobody else has is you. Your voice, your mind, your story, your vision. So write and draw and build and play and dance and live only as you can.” Neil Gaiman

You have the opportunity through design to explain to someone else what you're all about, what is important to you, and why they should care.

Give them that reason to care.

You are you.

STEP 4 / RESEARCH, RESEARCH, RESEARCH

Finding architecture porfolio examples that speak to you.

After you've established what the architecture portfolio is for, who it's for, and what makes you unique, it's time to search for architecture portfolio examples that speak to your intentions. I wouldn't recommend researching prior to this step because it will confuse the message you're trying to send to your audience.

WHERE TO FIND ARCHITECTURE PORFOLIO EXAMPLES?

You may have noticed that it can be difficult to find exactly what you're looking for. There's a really good reason for that.

It actually doesn’t exist.

It doesn't exist because you haven't created it yet. Even so, you can look for precedents that mildly work with your intended tone and overall purpose. Here are a few places to search for precedents that could help you understand your options for your own portfolio.

A company of Adobe, Behance is an online portfolio site that lists individual projects by creatives in everything from architecture to graphic design, animation, drawing, advertising, and more. If it's a profession based primarily in creative work, you'll be able to find it here. I would recommend this as a first place to start because it allows you to search by categories and can get you to very specific results of people's  digital portfolio very quickly.

Issuu is an online publication service that is geared towards the open syndication of online magazines and similar formats. You can easily perform search for ‘architecture portfolios' and come up with some immediate results of great online portfolios.

Somewhere you may not have thought to look is LinkedIn . LinkedIn is a professional social networking platform that allows you to connect with other professionals inside and out of your profession. Its modular profile builder also allows you to incorporate your own online portfolio directly into your profile.

If you're looking to compare your own portfolio to someone else's, you should consider researching your peers' profiles to see if they've already uploaded their own. You could also look to professionals who are a bit more experienced for their portfolios as well.

Image Background via Metropolis / July-August 2016

Architecture Books / Magazines

As a designer, I'm fairly certain that you have accumulated a lot of architecture publications over the years (probably more than you'd care to admit). Dust off those books, those magazines you only flipped through once or twice because they were cool and really try to understand the big-picture composition styles and layouts. Some great portfolio examples that come to mind are Dwell , Architect , Architectural Record , and Metropolis . If you're searching for books, often the ones that catalogue an architect or firm's overall body of work will be filled with great portfolio examples as well.

College Career Services

When I was in my Undergrad, I had a fantastic, career services department at my disposal. Some physical copies of portfolios and thesis books were archived in the architecture school's library. As a requirement in the program, all architecture students were also able to create resumes and portfolios with the help of faculty. Resumes and sample pages were then compiled online for reference and for possible job interviews held at the school.

Reaching out to your alma mater and finding out what they might have as reference could be invaluable to your own process.

Your Peers / Colleagues

You could know a lot of people in your situation. Why not find out if they have a portfolio of their own that you could look at? You could even offer to show them yours once it's been complete or even have that cup of coffee you’ve been meaning to with an old friend who could give you feedback.

WHAT YOU SHOULD BE LOOKING FOR

…something that goes ‘vrrrooom'.

This may surprise you, but in many ways, you'll actually be better off not looking for an ‘architecture' precedent at all. I know, you might be a bit confused right now. Why would I give you a bunch of resources only to suggest not looking for architecture portfolios?

It comes down to something fairly simple. If you look too hard at what everyone else is doing, you could end up on someone else's path. Remember, this is about your portfolio. You want every detail to feel like it's your own.

Now, that doesn't mean forget research altogether. Instead, take a look outside the industry. A professor I had in college used to love gathering car brochures from local dealerships and use them as inspiration for composition, tone, and layout. I always thought that was a clever way to look at precedents without overloading yourself.

Think about it for a second. Car manufacturers spend ungodly amounts of money every year, every quarter, every month to sell you their cars, their trucks, their SUV's, their services. And I'm not talking about those cheesy-as-hell advertisements that you see on the highway or on your T.V. I'm thinking of the brochures and handouts they won't let you leave without.

Their advertising agencies have graphic designers lining up to wow you. Let them. Take what you can from their brochures, their pamphlets, their postcards. Imagine that each car they want to sell you is another project from your archive. They can't wait for you to test drive the latest dream on four wheels and you should feel the same way about the work you present when it appears in your own portfolio.

If you're looking for more inspiration, try searching for these key terms:

• Editorial Design
• Brochure Design
• Pamphlet Design
• Portfolio Design (emphasizing non-architecture results)

STEP 5 / WHAT'S THE PLAN?

Set your portfolio goals.

So now that you've established what and who you're portfolio is for, defined your intended tone, and begun to understand your options, you need to start laying out the goals you want for the final product.

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO YOU?

If you could put into words what this portfolio would mean for you, what would they be?

Assuming you've gotten this far, you probably have a strong reason to create the portfolio, but what do you want it to do for you specifically?

• Are you expecting it to tell your story without you being in the room
• Does it need to speak to a side of yourself that is difficult for you to convey?
• Should it explain ideas you've yet to realize in previous projects?
• Is it simply a record of what you've done?
• Is it more?

HOW LONG DO YOU HAVE TO MAKE IT?

Have you thought about the time it will actually take to create a portfolio? As Architects, we tend to assume a given amount of time it will take to perform a task. We've done things like this before and deem ourselves as the keepers of time. I don't know why we assume that the time will be what it is, but somewhere along the line, most of us gave in to this mindset.

So, what will it take you to make one portfolio? It can't be that long, right?

Well, ever since my last portfolio expedition, I've always thought up a reasonable number… then I doubled it. 30 hours you say? No, now it's 60! Ha!

It’s difficult to say for sure. Unfortunately, it all depends upon three factors:

• When do you need it by?
• How good do you want the overall quality to be?
• How much content do you have to work with?

If you've planned ahead, then the first factor becomes fairly irrelevant. But I'd guess if you're making a portfolio like most people, you only have a limited amount of time to work with here. Your quality may suffer, but you could still get the job done efficiently.

If you have a lot of content to work with, the time it will take you to construct a decent portfolio will go down. If you've only got a single project to work with, but it's well-realized, you could still be okay.

If you have no time, no work to speak of, and you don't care about the quality, you may want to re-evaluate. Otherwise, everything is probably manageable.

If you still feel the need to assign a value to it, I would recommend at minimum assuming 30 hours (aka 60 hours) from start to finish for a decent portfolio that is digitally based. You need to assume time for brainstorming, research, layout, copywriting, publishing, as well as time that will inevitably go to nothing more than that good ol' time sink, loss of focus.

Plan out your intended schedule ahead of time and block out specific periods of time (2-3 hours minimum) that you can completely dedicate yourself to the task at hand. If you need it immediately, the final result may not be quite what you dreamed of, but listing out your actual time will at the very least help you deal with the looming deadline.

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Finding your purpose.

By now, you've gone through all of the initial steps you need to so that your portfolio's foundation will be strong. If you consider each of the steps in the order they've been presented, each building upon the last, you have the tools at your disposal to succeed in the second phase of this process, the actual design and layout of your portfolio.

Finding the purpose in your portfolio should allow you to do great things moving forward. Without that crucial planning, your portfolio could still be interesting, but it won't be yours.

I hope that you were able to not only determine a trajectory for your work, but also to learn a bit about yourself in the process.

Join me in the next phase where we'll pick it up a notch and get you thinking about the framework of your portfolio, the structure it will need to stand out above all the rest.

NOW, LET’S GO AND BUILD THE REST OF YOUR EPIC PORTFOLIO!

Make sure you check out the other posts in this special three-part series that will take you through the process of how to successfully build your portfolio from the ground up.

Part III / Producing Your Epic Portfolio

A sincere thank you to Michael Riscica for allowing me the opportunity to write this guest series. Michael has been an inspiration to my career and my writing for the past couple years. I couldn't think of a better way to repay his generous outpouring of content that has moved me, made me laugh, and helped me pass the ARE  with his posts for all the fantastic Young Architects out there.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Michael lavalley, aia, leed ap, evolving architect.

A native of Buffalo, NY, Mike is the registered architect, career strategist, and entrepreneur behind the blog, Evolving Architect . For the past few years, he has helped many creative professionals evolve their passion for architecture and design into successful, epic careers. His E-Newsletter, ‘Evolution Weekly' provides actionable insight every Sunday to help you take your architecture career to the next level. You can learn more about Mike here and connect with him on LinkedIn and Twitter .

Michael Riscica

Hi I’m Michael Riscica.

My goal is to help as many people as I can PASS their exams and succeed in their architecture careers.

This is accomplished with the following offerings:

Related Posts in Category:

5 tips for finding best architecture graduate school, cdt certification: why all aec professionals should have it, architecture puns …and a few cheesy construction puns, the definitive guide to an epic architecture portfolio – part iii, programs & events.

• ARE Boot Camp
• YA Conferences
• YA Coaching

Terms • Privacy Policy • Affiliate Endorsements

• Hispanoamérica
• Work at ArchDaily
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Cookie Policy
• Architecture News

12 Tips For Making an Outstanding Architecture Portfolio

• Written by Gabriel Kogan | Translated by Matthew Valletta
• Published on February 01, 2016

Getting a job or internship at an architecture firm doesn't only depend on your skills as an architect (or student). The way you present your skills plays an essential role. At a time of great professional competitiveness and with resumes becoming more globalized, assembling a portfolio may seem like a chore and often very involving: Which projects do I list? What personal information do I add? Should I include my academic papers in professional portfolios?

Brazilian architect Gabriel Kogan has shared with us a list of twelve tips on how to build a good architectural portfolio, ranging from graphic design to the type of personal information and content that should be included in your resume. Read his guidelines after the break, and if you have any other tips share them with us in the comments section.

1. Just Say "No" to Stand Alone Resumes

Never (ever EVER) just send your resume without a portfolio of your work. That's rule number one, without a doubt. Plain text resumes are rarely looked at and won't stand out when compared to others. Where you graduated from is much less important than your actual ability in the profession.

2. Your Portfolio's Presentation is Just as Important as Its Content

Visual composition can make or break your portfolio. This shows your grasp of an essential skill: graphic design. Even portfolios with amazing projects tend to be overlooked or become invisible when compared to ones with more attractive presentation. Very cluttered pages can hide content. The images need to breathe. Do not overload your portfolio with a lot of information to make it look more full: the more concise and attractive the layout, the better. Usually the people looking over these documents  can tell what information is relevant and what is just filler. The font, margins, structure and proportion of a page say a lot about your ability as an architect as well.

 3. Include Lots of Personal Information

An architect's work is multidisciplinary. For virtually every practicing architect it is important to have general knowledge that transcends the technical design or building project. Personality is critical to the job. If your poems are good, if your drawings are cool, if you write well, if you like art, if you take great photos; there is no reason to hide any of that in your architecture portfolio. Offices almost always seek architects who think for themselves. In addition, this information can make the portfolio more fun. They should also appear visually. Your photo ID or a selfie of a group of friends on the beach aren't really appropriate, but a photo - even abstract - that shows your personality and how you present yourself  or represent your interests may add a nice touch: images that reflect, most importantly, your personality and your interests.

4. A Long Portfolio Isn't Better Than a Short One

On the contrary. Some offices receive dozens of resumes a day and so it is important to be short and sweet; straight to the point. Portfolios with lots of pages are rarely looked at fully.  Put your best projects first. Close with something attractive too, but the first impression is the one that counts. If you have many projects that you think are good, don't put them all; only the best of the best. Mediocre projects - ones you aren't proud of or have any  doubts about - leave out, they may have mattered to you, but don't hang on. It's better to have two excellent projects than 10 average ones. It's better to have two excellent projects than two excellent ones plus 8 mediocre ones. There is no rule for the number of pages, but a 40 page document already seems too long. Remember: at first the document will be looked at for no more than one minute before being passed on.

 5. Choose Projects that Work with the Office's Profile

You need to make slightly different portfolios for each place you're applying to. Certain designs, for example, may suit some offices, but would get thrown out of another. Study the company, get to know little of their philosophy and create something unique for them. This doesn't  mean that you shouldn't include "unusual" projects. On the contrary, offices are usually very open to new architecture styles, as long as they are well-founded. Be careful not to mirror projects of the office where you're trying to work. Few things are more annoying to an office to than to see a copy of a project or their "style"  in a portfolio they receive. Being original and thinking for yourself are fundamental characteristics.

6. Attach a PDF With a Maximum of 15 Mb

Online platform portfolios are not cool . Again, online platform portfolios are not cool. They're always very slow and with interfaces that are difficult to navigate. It is important for the office keep the file on their server because in the future they may be interested in something that there was no opportunity for in the past. A PDF makes it easy to search your portfolio. Sites with their own domain and architectural visual programming can be very well received, but do not replace the old PDF. Google Drive and large file sending platforms should be avoided.

7. Make Your CV Page Appealing

Despite its limited importance compared to the works and images, the CV page should contain clear data. Which city do you live in? What languages ​​do you speak? What software do you use? This information can be placed in an exciting fashion, with infographics, for example. Your ID number, Social Security Number, marital status, home address and the like are irrelevant data and therefore don't need to be included in an initial contact. But be sure to put information about foreign language! This is often a necessary skill for offices doing work abroad, and its absence could make your portfolio immediately eliminated.

8. Theoretical Projects

Nothing shows an architect's potential better than theoretical and academic projects. University is the time to create the start of a portfolio and these works are worth a lot. Worth as much as real projects, by the way. Research on architectural history or the like, when fully developed, demonstrates fundamental knowledge for day-to-day projects. Demonstrate the intellect behind a process and more sophisticated analytical capabilities. Architecture is becoming more and more about research, therefore a mastery of theory is crucial. It should be evident - obviously and succinctly - in the presentation of your work.

9. The Inclusion of Technical Drawings Can Help, but Can Also Distract

Submitting a portfolio isn't that same as submitting construction drawings. You don't need to explain everything thoroughly, with plans for all the floors and dozens of sections. But it's important to get the general idea of ​​the project (the concept) and to show your skills. If you are called for an interview, then take something more detailed. Including many drawings, and particularly, many technical drawings, can only hold your portfolio back; It takes up valuable space. It can be charming, however, to include a 1: 1 or 1: 2 architectural detail that shows your attention to the construction and the precision of the design, but without exaggeration.

 10. Duties for Each Project

Be clear and truthful about your contributions in each project. The real contributions! Even if you were an intern, put what you've really done, "detailing frames," "preliminary project concepts," "compatibility", "supervisory work", etc. This will show your actual experience. Architectural design is always a collective work and therefore, even on work of your own jobs, you probably didn't do it alone. Be honest.

11. Cover Letters

The text in the body of the email is important. It should be brief and attractive. No big speeches. In any case, this is also an area to be a little less impersonal.  Honest and poetic letters are better than very formal letters. In fact, nothing sounds worse than formal letters. Unless you are trying to get into an office with hundreds or thousands of employees (in this case, all of the recommendations in this article don't seem to work well in general). The famous letters of recommendation from other architects are falling out of favor. They're almost always written by the architect himself  and just signed by the architect making the recommendation. These letters should only be included if the office asks for them within the process. Also, be careful not to forward the same e-mail to all offices that you intend to look for a job at. E-mails with "fwd" in the title or an open list of addresses are usually deleted before the process even begins.

12. Most Importantly, Always Tell the Truth

Don't invent or exaggerate anything in your portfolio or resume. Honesty is the best policy. You can even get a job, but lose it afterwards because you lied. The truth comes out quickly. Just be yourself.

• Sustainability

想阅读文章的中文版本吗?

关于做出一份优秀建筑作品集的12点建议

You've started following your first account, did you know.

You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.

Architecture Undergraduate Thesis Portfolio | 2018 Muhyuddin | University Of South Asia

Architecture Thesis Portfolio | 2018 Muhyuddin IN Portfolio we learn how to represent the Thesis portfolio of Architecture I am a student of architecture Batch 2013-2018 B-18073 Muhyuddin Portfolio includes bank square project, urban vllage project, hjotel project,hospital projecft,some residentiaol projects some freelance Dont forgot to subscribe our channel How to Speed Up Your Windows 10 Performance best settings https://youtu.be/a7NOVhP7Cwg lumion 8 setting Nvidia performance 100% working https://youtu.be/E6TxAfG9KBg Lumion 8 rendering animation tutorial A to Z https://youtu.be/sxw3D5IKmi4 for business query : www.behance.com/muhyuddin [email protected] Make an architecture portfolio, architects portfolio, architecture portfolio tutorial, architect (profession), architecture portfolio ideas, architecture graduate portfolio, architecture portfolio, undergraduate student, architecture student, architecture student portfolio, architecture portfolio tips, architecture portfolio cover page, architecture portfolio samples pdf, architecture portfolio cover, howtoarchitect, what an architect does, architecture students, architect, architecture, design, FORE MORE CONTACT ME WWW.BEHANCE.COM/MUHYUDDIN [email protected]

Architecture Thesis Portfolio | 2018 Muhyuddin IN Portfolio we learn how to represent the Thesis portfolio of Architecture I am a student of architecture Batch 2013-2018 B-18073 Muhyuddin Portfolio includes bank square project, urban vllage project, hjotel project,hospital projecft,some residentiaol projects some freelance Dont forgot to subscribe our channel How to Speed Up Your Windows 10 Performance best settings https://youtu.be/a7NOVhP7Cwg lumion 8 setting Nvidia performance 100% working https://youtu.be/E6TxAfG9KBg Lumion 8 rendering animation tutorial A to Z https://youtu.be/sxw3D5IKmi4 for business query : www.behance.com/muhyuddin [email protected] Make an architecture portfolio, architects portfolio, architecture portfolio tutorial, architect (profession), architecture portfolio ideas, architecture graduate portfolio, architecture portfolio, undergraduate student, architecture student, architecture student portfolio, architecture portfolio tips, architecture portfolio cover page, architecture portfolio samples pdf, architecture portfolio cover, howtoarchitect, what an architect does, architecture students, architect, architecture, design,

10 mistakes to avoid in your architecture portfolio

An architecture portfolio is simply a resource used to promote and exhibit the talents and services that an architect or an architecture student may deliver to a possible employer, whether it’s for a position for an architectural firm or a private venture directly related to a client. An architecture portfolio is a ticket to the professional world. Hence, it would be advisable for the ticket to be specific about the destination and describe the passenger accurately.

A portfolio is a timeline and record of experience that illustrates its designers’ architectural abilities, processes, and competencies through the thoughtful selection of drawings , photos, text, and photographs. Here are 10 possible mistakes to avoid in your architecture portfolio:

1. Plan your portfolio | Architecture Portfolio

A portfolio is a collection of works that you have accumulated over time, it becomes extremely important to prioritize your work . It is an undertaking that requires elaborate thinking and planning of projects as well as time. Planning gives structure to your portfolio and helps you keep organized. Setting specific deadlines at uniform intervals of time will help you keep yourself in check and make the process more productive.

2. Be yourself

Your architectural portfolio is a reflection of yourself, when you send in your portfolio, it creates the first impression of yourself. An excellent portfolio is enhanced when it includes information about who you are as a person, your past, your narrative, your interests, and your way of working, it helps to build a personal connection. You are telling your story, put your best foot forward and personalize it according to your taste. 

3. Dare to describe | Architecture Portfolio

The reader needs to understand or get an idea about what you want to convey, giving some context helps in imparting clear understanding to the reader. Along with your work, you are projecting yourself into the portfolio . Do not shy away to get personal or to describe something you are passionate about and elaborate your experiences in your CV. 

4. Give context

A lot of thought and work goes into a design project . It’s futile to merely upload graphics without explaining the process of their development. Elaborating on the context of your work would help the reviewer to develop a profound understanding of the resultant design, and gain an understanding of your working style.

5. Be consistent | Architecture Portfolio

A reviewer goes through an architecture portfolio in around 20 to 60 seconds. Hence, there should be a consistent approach in design layout and arrangement that would make the portfolio easily readable. You can develop your own template, customize it according to your requirements, and have fun while you are at it! Along with it, you should also be consistent with the quality of work you put in, to create a lasting effect on the employer.   

6. Sequence smartly

Your portfolio is a medium of marketing your skills, it is a narrative about your skills, abilities, and experiences, not a chronology of your work. Review your work from a broad perspective to identify what themes emerge, then add those selective projects that add value to your story. Select the best quality of work as well as a wide range of media and projects to demonstrate your varied skillset and talents. Let the sequence form a relationship with your work, the reader, and you.

7. Text to image ratio

The reviewer might not have time to read long paragraphs of text while reviewing your portfolio. There has to be a healthy balance of texts and graphics , they both can be used to support one another. If either of them overpowers the other, it might affect the overall readability of your architecture portfolio.

8. Grammatically correct | Architecture Portfolio

Text is as important as the graphics you present, coming across a grammatical error might be off-putting while reading a portfolio. It is advisable to write the text first in M.S word or run it through a grammar analyzing software such as Grammarly to avoid such mistakes.

9. Digitally Compatible

It is a high possibility nowadays that your architecture portfolio is reviewed on a mobile device by prospective clients or employers. It becomes increasingly important for a portfolio to be digitally compatible in terms of its size, as well as it should be well-proportioned to be viewed on a small screen.

10. Keep on updating | Architecture Portfolio

We as humans are always on the lookout for better opportunities, better work, and better life. We are always moving, and good skill is always valued and rewarded. You might never know when the next opportunity is going to pop up, or who is going to offer you the next job. It is a necessity to update your work from time to time, to not get stagnant in this fast-moving world .

Vrushti is an undergrad architecture student, who believes that design is where expression meets intention, her perception of the world has evolved as she delved into the possibilities of art and philosophies. She now believes that the world is a delicate balance of logic and emotions, she tires and oftentimes fails to do justice to both perspectives.

10 Smart Gadgets that have Revolutionized the Digital World in 2021

9 Architectural Events that happened in 2021

Related posts.

Social Media: A Boon to Businesses

Building Brands: Nike

Innovative Waste Management Solutions for Construction Sites

Role of Social Welfare in Business

Creative Techniques in Museum Design: Merging Functionality with User Experience

The Intersection of Spirituality and Geometry in Asian Sacred Spaces: A Comparative Study of Mandalas, Vastu Shastra, and Feng Shui

• Architectural Community
• Architectural Facts
• RTF Architectural Reviews
• Architectural styles
• City and Architecture
• Fun & Architecture
• History of Architecture
• Design Studio Portfolios
• Designing for typologies
• RTF Design Inspiration
• Architecture News
• Career Advice
• Case Studies
• Construction & Materials
• Covid and Architecture
• Interior Design
• Know Your Architects
• Landscape Architecture
• Materials & Construction
• Product Design
• RTF Fresh Perspectives
• Sustainable Architecture
• Top Architects
• Travel and Architecture
• Rethinking The Future Awards 2022
• RTF Awards 2021 | Results
• GADA 2021 | Results
• RTF Awards 2020 | Results
• ACD Awards 2020 | Results
• GADA 2019 | Results
• ACD Awards 2018 | Results
• GADA 2018 | Results
• RTF Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2017 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2016 | Results
• RTF Sustainability Awards 2015 | Results
• RTF Awards 2014 | Results
• RTF Architectural Visualization Competition 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2020 – Results
• Designer’s Days of Quarantine Contest – Results
• Urban Sketching Competition May 2020 – Results
• RTF Essay Writing Competition April 2020 – Results
• Architectural Photography Competition 2019 – Finalists
• The Ultimate Thesis Guide
• Introduction to Landscape Architecture
• Perfect Guide to Architecting Your Career
• How to Design Architecture Portfolio
• How to Design Streets
• Introduction to Urban Design
• Introduction to Product Design
• Complete Guide to Dissertation Writing
• Introduction to Skyscraper Design
• Educational
• Hospitality
• Institutional
• Office Buildings
• Public Building
• Residential
• Sports & Recreation
• Temporary Structure
• Commercial Interior Design
• Corporate Interior Design
• Healthcare Interior Design
• Hospitality Interior Design
• Residential Interior Design
• Sustainability
• Transportation
• Urban Design
• Host your Course with RTF
• Architectural Writing Training Programme | WFH
• Editorial Internship | In-office
• Graphic Design Internship
• Research Internship | WFH
• Research Internship | New Delhi
• RTF | About RTF
• Submit Your Story