UNDERGRADUATE PAGE
Studio Life
By J. M. WELBANK (University College, Iondon).
IN a non-residential university an architectural student has something more than a slim locker in a basement that he can call his very own. He has as well a square yard of bench in a studio. Here, and on his legal plot of adjacent wall, be can decorate and furnish his work-place to his own taste-7a taste varying from surrealist paintings to pin-ups. Express- ing personality, I believe it is called. This bare bench, then, and a high stool, which, in my innocence, I had thought belonged solely to laboratories and Victorian offices, are, for a year, companions to a student's dreams and misfortunes, to his glorious conceptions of cities and to his mundane but necessary details of plumbing. The above unit repeated some fifty times and set in a large room makes up the studio.
The room itself is not an inspiring one to put before the eyes of budding architects. Some hold that it is cunningly chosen to cause in us a reaction away to good architecture. There are windows in every conceivable position, invading even the ceiling, making the room cold in winter and boiling hot in summer. The ceiling lights, too, have a tendency to leak, pouring water with diabolical accuracy onto finished drawings. I have seen men weep at the sight of a wet, buckled, dirtied drawing, after lavishing weeks of loving care on it. Mis- placed radiators, unworkable blinds, awkward sinks, lights which ensure that work is done in shadow are other methods of giving us the correct knowledge and experience to examine the latest technical advances in these fields. By age-old custom no window is ever opened on account of the dirt and draught, and towards end of term the studio acquires a powerful, stale and quite individual smell. In vacation I attribute my inability to work to the unusually pure atmosphere I breathe.
Entering the studio as a fresher, I had the strange feeling that the initial sensations were not unfamiliar to me. Groping for a minute, I realised that for an ex-Serviceman this was a memory of the first half-hour in a new barrack-room—new room, new faces, new equipment, slight apprehension for the future, assessment of the fellows around, aWe for the senior students. Could I ever be at home among these forests of T-squares, these acres of drawing-boards and papers littered with the most delicate instruments ? Only play darts with second-best compasses, we were advised later. The freshness soon wears off, and the nine-to-five complex (or should I say the ten-to-four one ?)—the bane of a non-residential college— never has a chance to set in. As soon as the session's work begins, the strange studio atmosphere grips, and leaving it each day is only accompanied by regret.
The studio and the work become a fetish. Soon everything is architecture. No street is a mere street; no room is a mere room; no people are mere people, but individuals with special architectural needs. If architecture were not the most embrac- ing subject, an architect would quickly become a crashing bore. An architect is the servant of the order of life, the social con- ditions of the time. He cannot alter them; he can only observe them and use them. And, as everything is of interest to him, work to last years or even a lifetime looms ahead. Is this merely youthful idealism ? I think not, for the more hard- headed of our tutors convince us that architecture must be our first and only love. Wives must take second place, and money must not interest us because we shan't have any. Work, hard work—and the reward ? Possibly reasonable results when we are fifty, perhaps good work at sixty, and our magnum opus, in the best traditions of the profession, built after our death. And the birthplace of this strange passion is the studio.
The thorough official criticism of our finished work takes a formal and dramatic turn. The stage is a holy of holies, unused except for occasions such as these, dignified by the title of " crit room." The scene set is a bare wall except for twenty or so drawings hung "on the line." The audience is the year of students, and the single actor to declaim his piece is the professor. The power of this strange drama lies in the personal interest and knowledge of the audience in the matter of the monologue. It has also a unique aspect in the differing climaxes for each student as his own drawing comes, in turn, under discussion. To many this semi-public criticism is a pain- ful ordeal; to some it is a spur to public argument; to others, the criticism causes a mask of heartiness to come upon them. Whatever the external effect, however, the inner feelings of any student are embarrassingly obvious to his friends, and the tension of such gatherings usually results in the most irrespon- sible outbreaks of hilarity afterwards.
Guidance during the course of a project comes from the daily tour of the studio master, leaving in his wake high hopes, broken hearts or ordinary depression. He is there; the student is there; the drawings are there. These are facts, and no talk or waffle can hide the black or white on the board, or, more to our liking, any colour we can lavish on our drawings. The tutor is believed implicitly if he encourages the drawings; he is disputed respectfully if he dislikes them. But how often later, not to the world but in his heart of hearts, a student has to admit the correctness of some advice he obstinately refused to accept. The studio master can be most depressing, as by his comment once after tilting up a board and gazing at it, Well, lad,- I should marry for money if I were you."
A less frequent but more imposing occurrence is the pro- fessor's majestic entry into the studio, attended by a posse of tutors, to save him from lynching as legend has it. A feeling of uneasiness oppresses me whenever I see him approach down the row, dallying here and there, unhappily giving me a few minutes in which, with incomparable speed and brilliance, I spot all the errors in my design. Luckily perception in such cases is usually wrong, and the professor will reward with a smile and the inevitable enquiry as to name. And so he passes leaving behind the fragrance of his cigar—even in the morning. There must be some money in architecture after all. A glance at my board with the professor's peculiar black corrections brings me to my senses. Back to work, to discover that the whole design fails, as a main room has been planned with no windows at all or some other infuriating but drastic omission.
Great patience is required, and for such patience the prescribed stimulant is coffee, continually boiling in any self-respecting studio. How many drawings have been ruined or maybe enhanced by a final wash of coffee ? A neat dun- coloured circle where a cup has been set down is another charming and unmistakable sign of great concentration. We progress, but it is a hard school, for the best way to learn how to deal with accidents, like spilt bottles of ink, is to have it happen to oneself. Some are struck dumb with shock, in which cases we salvage the wreck if possible or prod the unfortunate into a fresh start. I personally run for the fresh air, and regain my sanity by wandering the Bloomsbury streets for half-an-hour or by confiding my troubles to certain exhibits in the British Museum that I regard as personal friends.
Working as we usually are against time, an accident, delay or early miscalculation makes work arduous, calling for quicker decisions and quicker execution. The studio atmosphere be- comes nervous and electric at the end of a programme, finishing with the glorious thrill of tearing a finished drawing off a board, and sinking into a lethargic stupor before begin- ning again. The common dread in these last days of a project is to hear the professor point out some elementary but enor- mous fault in a design. This is the cue for his usual remarks that we are lazy and that we do not work either hard enough or fast enough. From here he slips more genially into an informal studio discussion on architecture in general which, however, always includes the following dictum, "Good archi- tects are always busy building; it is only bad architects that write about architecture, or," he adds with a grin, "teach it."
So I must away to my life's mistress, for the bonds are very strong.
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