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Tip #6: Keep it Simple and Competent - Top Ten Tips for the Architecture Registration Exam A.R.E.

1,213 views · Published 14 April 2015 · 5:56 · Indexed 27 September 2026

Channel: Black Spectacles · 2015 · Education

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All right, tip six we're going to go through a little faster on some of these. The key in this is on this exam really nobody cares if you're a brilliant designer. I know that's shocking and hard to believe and you've been building up your whole life to prove to everybody that you're the best designer around. Nobody cares. The only person that's going to read this, look at it is the computer. The computer doesn't care. It doesn't get a tear in its eye when you have a beautiful sequence of hierarchy shown.
It's about competence. It's about the health, safety, and welfare of the public. So that means that beauty and all of that does not come into it, and in fact, if it starts to come into it, if you find yourself doing one of the vignettes. You're doing the Schematic Design Vignette and the word beauty or hierarchy comes into your mind, you should just turn the computer off and walk out because you've just failed. You're not going to pass that exam if you're thinking that way. 
What you have to be thinking about is it's a puzzle. The vignettes are puzzles. They have architectural content, but they are not architecture. So it's going to be a bunch of information I'm using it as an example, the schematic design here. There's going to be a bunch of information that's going to come at you. You have to find a way to translate that information into something useful.
So my example that I'm showing here is you make a little matrix. Find a way to jot down on your scratch paper what the key pieces of information are. It's as important to practice how you're going to translate the information as it is to practice using the program. 
It's really important to know how you're going to move through that information. It's at least as important as understanding how to actually draw in that particular program. So it's a puzzle. Think of it as a puzzle and then move through. That's the key of any of the vignettes. 
When you're thinking about the Schematic Design Vignette, you actually know what it's going to be. It's going to be a two-story building. It's going to have double height space in it. That double height space is going to be the truck bay for the fire trucks or it's going to be the gymnasium for the junior high. 
Or it's going to be the reading room for the library, whatever. It's going to be a small institutional building, two-stories. You have to deal with the stairs. You have to make sure the stairs line up. Nothing else really needs to line up. The upper floor doesn't even have to be the same size as the lower floor. That's not what it's about. 
It's a planning exercise. It's not about architecture. So it is not architecture. It is a puzzle about architecture. It will look something very much like this. Don't try to make it anything else from that. If you find yourself... 
Here's an example where you've got, here's a lobby and here's a stair and another stair and I have this nice straight corridor. I'm going to put the big room for whatever program reason they want it there. Oh, maybe that's not a good. Okay maybe I'm going to do it with the stair there and a stair there and have a nice, little L shape with lobby. That's great. It looks all great. 
If I find myself doing something like this, just throw it away. Start again. Simplicity make it simple. It's not simple from the standpoint of being a modernist. That's not what I mean. What I mean is if it's simple to look at, it'll be simple for you to find the mistakes. It'll be simple to make sure everything works. It will be simple to make sure you're not missing anything. Keep it competent and simple and straightforward. 
So the schematic design has the building design and the interior layout. Most people actually have trouble with the interior layout, the little tiny one, not the schematic design one. You have to have a fair amount of time for the schematic design. The interior layout you have a very limited period of time. It seems like it should be so easy. You have to put a couple of offices in, put some furniture in. We've all done that a million times, right? Like, how hard could that be? 
But actually you have to do it really fast and it's pretty tricky and you have to make sure that you're working with the correct accessibility in order for somebody in a wheelchair to be able to open a door. I have a pull side and push side, distances next to the latch. 
I've got the 60 inch circle and all of that stuff becomes hugely important to make sure you get all the work in all those things. You definitely want to spend some time practicing your speed on that one.

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