MSA portfolio request plus 450 word statement

January 27, 2020

MSA portfolio request plus 450 word statement

A 450 word (in total) statement discussing why you want to study architecture at MSA; your own review of a recent exhibition or building that you have visited; a statement about your favourite architect or building; and a work of architecture which you would like to experience in person

To me, studying architecture at MSA would be the perfect gateway into a field that deeply intrigues me. As a young black woman entering a male-dominated industry, I think MSA will give me excellent resources and guidance, being such a well-established, highly acclaimed university, surrounded by the urban dynamic of Manchester as a city. The architectural scene in the city of Manchester will benefit my understanding of modern architecture and how it lives in harmony with historical styles. Examples like Farrell’s The Green Building, which reflects current environmental architectural concerns, against Neo-Classicist monumental buildings like Manchester’s Central Library, especially draw me to the city and I believe living in such a city will spark inspiration simply by just stepping outside. Recently, I was fortunate to visit the Guggenheim Museum in New York and I was fascinated by the amount of psychology that went behind the building to properly construct its illusion. I found it interesting how you can truly see Frank Lloyd Wright’s ideas and philosophies creep through each facet of the building's exterior and interior, from the unnerving, obtusely angled rooms, to the post-Modernist shapes of the outside that starkly displays against the New York skyline. Ecology and nature’s impact on the landscape of the world is something that attracts me to the aesthetic and functional development of modern architecture, and so I find myself mainly attracted to architects who use techniques and ideas drawn from the past and reinvent how they are utilised and exhibited in the modern age. This is why I am moved by the works of Antoni Gaudí, and I dream to one day interact with a building of his, such as the incomplete La Sagrada Família or Casa Mila, and witness how he mimicked nature to enhance the functionality of his creation, which is exactly what I would like to integrate in my own future work, throughout each stage of the process.

- 318 words