The Discovery of the ARE Prep Seminars; Site Planning in One Week or Less
Just got back from the Materials and Methods seminar - I have to admit that I have never been to one. Actually for all the work we (IAC / Roisin / AIBC) do in trying to be helpful, will it be most helpful for you to know that you can pass all the exams without all this? Except for Site Planning I never went into www.areforum.org. Didn't go to the Thaddeus course to learn structures. Didn't think these ARE Seminars would be useful. But here's where I'm wrong.For M+M, you will probably read the Kaplan study guide until you are blue in the face with straight information. This straight information will provide the vocabulary and be the building blocks for other exams, in particular the two Structures exams (this is what Thaddeus says - he recommends taking M+M before even taking his course). Many think that this is the best first exam to take. However a word of caution - it is an exam that also has a high failure rate, from the numbers that I've compiled for our own interns the past 2 years. I don't know why this is.
There is a lot of memorization involved, no doubt about that. There are tons of new words, and I suspect that if English is not one's first language there's an added challenge there. Also, the questions on the actual exam are not like the questions on the Kaplan study guides - Kaplan mostly tests your understanding of the material in the study guides. The actual exam is designed to test your competency, over and above knowledge. I think this means that it tests your ability to make judgement calls, understanding of the implications of your decisions that you make - these decisions based on the building blocks of information pieces in the study guides. Or the lack of. How do you "discover" how to do the right thing?
What Tim Ankenman did at the seminar was not go over what you will need to do - i.e. read through the study guides (note that you get more out of these seminars if you've read through them first). He contextualized M+M from, duh, the point of view of an architect - what you need to know about materials and methods as an architect who encounters exciting soil conditions, who needs to explain to the client cost implications of this site versus that site or of this foundation system or another, who looks ahead at potential material failures and designs to prevent disasters and headaches. I though he gave that "extra" step that the Kaplan study guides do not impart that well but is what makes all the difference in preparing for the exam: sharing the decisions he made in real life projects, and why he did what he did.
So unless you've got a good relationship with another architect that shares this stuff with you, this is why you should come to these seminars. The stories are good, and the fact that there is a human involved means those stories stick. He even related something from Stuart Howard, at a seminar 20 years ago when he was an intern.
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I think Site Planning is a good contender for a first exam, just because there is so little reading material to cover. It is also a pleasant feeling to be tested on exactly what you have practiced - there is a one-to-one correlation between the exam and the mock test. But beware, it's also got a high failure rate. Here is my experience, and some tips for the first vignette as it is the "big" one.
Prep yourself. Call it what you will: osmosis, soaking, marinating... you can do this far in advance (i.e. > one week)
1. Read the SP section in the Norm Dorf study guide. I didn't use Kaplan books, so don't know what they have.
2. Download the NCARB vignette, go through the software, and do the first vignette "cold". Prepare to be really discouraged. It took me a shamefully long time to fumble through that first vignette (which you have 1.5 hours to do on the day), but just mess around with it.
Learn strategy and technique. Put the "planning" in Site Planning. This is when your exam is coming up really soon ( i.e. < one week)
1. For the first vignette, download from http://www.areforum.org/guest/Site%20Planning/
- "Dan's Helpful Hints". This gives you a planning strategy and is I think 40% of the game
- the videos on how to draw parking. Unfortunately this is 40% of the game too. The remaining 20% is drawing the site plan as per the program.
2. Practice the "planning strategy" on the different mock programs (i.e. project briefs) - do short-cut tables of 5 at a time to get yourself used to it. Then somehow try sketching out as best you can with imaginary-sized buildings / plazas etc. on the mock site plans - you can at least rough out in big "bubbles" where some elements could go / orient themselves.
3. Practice drawing parking. Understand the dimensions and build it up, so you know what the fixed dimensions are for parking lots with "side" entries as compared to those with "up/down" entries.
4. At this point, you should have forgotten Norm Dorf's examples, so do them without looking at the answers. Do a strategy table, work out a site plan, and rough out dimensions for a parking lot, all on paper.
5. Now go back and do the NCARB software vignette.
Good luck
posted by Lisa @ 9:09 PM
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