architectural design - Quif Studio

Tips on Time Management

March 23, 2020 Mariya Aminu Kabir

“Time waits for no man”. That is a common saying that many of us know quite well. The very concept of time management is to help us plan to achieve certain goals whether short-term or long-term goals. Many students, professionals, or people in general have poor time management skills. Today, I will be giving you some few tips on how to manage your time effectively.

Leverage Deadlines

This tip is based on Parkinson’s law which states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This simply means that the more time you have, the more time used in completion of any work and vice versa. We usually have the tendency to underestimate our work, thinking that as a deadline approaches, we can finish on time which is sometimes not the case.

We can trick our minds and set deadlines for ourselves to complete our work even faster. The way this works is by setting incentives. For example, you can reward yourself with your favorite meal, movie, or activity upon completion of your task, or you can set a punishment for yourself when you fail to complete a task on time, like taking a lap around the house. This trick only works when you set your mind to it.

Pomodoro Technique

This is similar to sprints or workouts. It requires you to work as furiously as you can for twenty-five minutes and rewarding yourself with a five-minute break. This will help establish good habits for blocking out distractions and pushing ahead on difficult tasks. You can always turn your phone off or switch to airplane mode. You can use this technique to get ahead in different tasks. For example, spending time on task A for twenty-five minutes, take a break and spend another twenty-five minutes on task B.

Pareto Principle

The Pareto principle states that 80% of your results come from just 20% of your effort. That simply means that the tasks that make the most of your results at the end of the day, mainly come from the effort put into that specific task. Your tasks have a specific value or impact or priority. You can determine the scale of the priority of your work using the following steps:

Write out your to-do list. Below is an example of my to-do list for the day.

Add two columns next to your list and name them priority and effort.

Staring from the priorities, rank your tasks from 1-4, 1 being the most and 4 being the least. Rank them in an order you feel best.

Then do the same for the effort. Rank your tasks based on the effort it will take you to complete each task.

Now you have your tasks ranked based on their priorities and based on the effort you need to put in to complete them. I bet your asking; how do I make sense of all this? It is simple. You need to draw a box and divide it into four quadrants like in the diagram below.

Make a graph like diagram outside the box, including your negative and positive signs. On one axis write down priority and on the other, effort. Proceed to name your quadrants based on their locations on the graph.

The quadrants will include:

High priority, low effort (1^st rank)
High priority, high effort (2^nd rank)
Low priority, low effort (3^rd rank)
Low priority, high effort (4^th rank)

From your first table, you should be able to fit each task into a quadrant. For example, cleaning my room is my highest priority and it would take me the least effort to do. That means that it will fall under the high priority, low effort quadrant. “Completing chapter one” task is of the least priority but would take me some effort to complete, therefore it will fall under the low priority, high effort quadrant. Floor plans for client would take the most effort but its not of much priority, while writing a blog post is of some priority but it would not take much effort to complete. Ranking these two would be done based on effort as that is the essence of the pareto principle, therefore the former would fall under the high priority, high effort quadrant and the latter will fall under the low priority, low effort quadrant.

From this, you can now generate a new to-do list that shows you what tasks to do first. My new to-do list would be to clean my room first, draw the floor plans for my client, write my blog post, and finally complete my chapter one.

I personally like this principle as it helped me a lot when I was doing studio projects. You can have a list of sheets you would want to complete in a day, but you may end up not completing them because you placed much value on a sheet that isn’t as important as the rest and you may end up not reaching your goal for that day.

These tips are just a few tips out of an ocean of ideas, but these 3 are what I have tested out and found to be effective. I came across these tips on YouTube and you can watch the full video here. You can always search for more or develop your own techniques. Thank you for reading, be safe and stay tuned for more posts.

Education, Tips and Tricks

How to get the best out of the studio (studio culture)

January 6, 2020 Mariya Aminu Kabir

The studio is a place where imaginations and ideas come to reality, it is a place where ideas are born, where creativity finds its place, it is the sanctuary of the architecture student. To get the most out of it, one must relate with his/her colleagues. The one thing you share in common, which is the most important thing is design. Although, one’s measure of creativity varies by far or less with the other, the main aim is to learn, to learn to share, to experience, to interact, to get comfortable and engage in each and every studio activity.

I remember when I was in school, at the studio there were so many different personalities. Everyone had different taste in almost everything, and design was not an exception. At the beginning, being in the studio was almost boring, but then we began to understand each other, bit by bit, we interacted, we understood our differences, we began to learn from each other, and eventually we became friends with each other. Everything else turned out to be fun. We helped each other, not with our designs only, but with ideas as some of us had better experience at so many things than the others but we learnt the most out of anything together.

The point here is don’t refuse to interact with your colleagues. Don’t isolate yourself from your colleagues, because you’ll miss out on so many things. Here are some tips to get the most out of your studio:

Never fail to learn, engage, and interact.
Learn to plan: make a studio timetable, know the hours to spend at the studio, know when to take a break and let off some steam, know when to continue and when to stop, but never quit.
Learn to make good research, and case study of your design, talk about your ideas with our lecturers.
Do not refuse to improvise, always.
Always have in mind that the design isn’t just about the drawing, it’s important to always learn about the philosophy of the design first, then the process to develop your own idea from it, then the ability to put it down perfectly.
Never refuse to heed to meaningful corrections.
Whenever you think about an idea, put it down on paper.
Take your design seriously, and always make time for it, it should be on your top priority list.
Learn to make neat and presentable sketches, especially of new ideas, or imaginations.
Always go for consultations and make the corrections.
Learn to make a good presentation of your design.
Take good care of your drawing tools/instruments, and do not misuse them.
Lastly, have fun!

These are some few tips (from experience), to make the best out of your studio, and bring out the best in you. Be part of the studio, for it is your home too, it’ll help build and shape your initiative. As they always say, “failing to plan, is planning to fail”. I hope you find this helpful and learn from it.

Stay tuned for more posts like this from Quif Studio. Thanks.

Education, Tips and Tricks

What to expect studying Architecture in Nigeria

December 30, 2019 Mariya Aminu Kabir

Personally, what led me to architecture was the mere thought that it was mainly a combination of mathematics, physics and art. I love mathematics, weird right? I love anything that deals with calculations and experiments. What’s funny is that I was interested in being a medical doctor, but I hated studying. I hated being in front of books for long hours, I would definitely doze off. So, I had to decide and by doing some research I came across architecture. It had the 3 things I loved; mathematics, physics and art (or so I thought).

Architecture is a course that is both a science and an art. Along the four-year journey, courses like history, sociology, psychology, law, geography, engineering, mathematics, and physics are what you would likely encounter. There might be other courses from other related fields such as quantity survey, estate management, urban and regional planning, environmental management, and project management. I know what you’re thinking right now. How are these courses related to architecture? How does one cope with learning all these in just four years? What about design? Well ladies and gentlemen, design is a single course on its own. When you think studying architecture is just about design, trust me you are wrong.

In the first year, you mainly deal with general courses like mathematics and physics which every science student usually takes. There are some basic architecture courses like fundamentals of design, graphic communication, introduction to architecture, sociology for architects, etc.

The second year digs a bit more into the field. Architectural design starts from the second year. Building construction, building material science, history of architecture, building physics (building structures), model making, psychology for architects, environmental management, urban and regional planning are mainly dealt with in this year.

The third year is a bit more practical. As one of my lecturers always likes to say, “Architects are made in level 3”. Design is on a larger and more complex scale. Courses are a bit more realistic and practical. Construction, building structures, building climatology, urban design, building services such as acoustics, ventilation, electrical and mechanical services, fire safety and others, are what to expect.

The fourth year is mainly preparing you for life after graduation, life in the field of practice. Building economics, contract and arbitration, and professional practice are the focus of your final year. Your final year project including a written essay and a design project will mainly be what you are focused on.

I know it might seem a bit overwhelming, and don’t even get me started on the long hours of manual drafting in the studio, model making, the enormous workload, assignments, and presentations. One thing you get to take away from all this apart from achieving your dreams of becoming an architect, is that you get to be part of a family. Your classmates become more than your friends, they become your family. A family made in the studio.

Architecture isn’t only about the career, it changes and shapes your way of thinking, your imagination. It makes you see things better, makes you more observant of your surroundings. It also boosts your initiative and sense of creativity. So, let it flow through you, for it is a lifestyle.