All architects present their work by creating a portfolio that will present themselves in a best way. All job and internship applications, school, doctorate and master applications are made with a portfolio. It is impossible for a portfolio to be an undesirable architectural application and interview process. Besides all this necessity, architects need a portfolio to show their work in the best way possible. In other words, even architects who will not apply to a school or apply for a job need a well-prepared and well-designed architectural portfolio. All the architectural work you do together is a strong representation of your architectural identity. Creating a portfolio is a task that should be taken seriously because of such an important representation.
Every student needs an undergraduate portfolio for their internship at the architecture school. Just as every new graduate young architect needs a well-designed portfolio of their best projects, including their graduation project. Moreover, every experienced and even senior architect should have a quality portfolio in which they present their works up to date. For example, the fact that an architect for 10 years has not updated his portfolio shows that he has not done any work for 10 years. Architectural portfolios must be updated as they produce architectural content and projects.
Why We Need An Amazing Portfolio?
We said that everyone needs a portfolio. One of the thousands of portfolios in job, internship or school applications will be your portfolio. So what do you need to do to stand out with your own portfolio? Of course, you can draw all the attention to yourself with a huge portfolio. Your portfolio can put you one step ahead of other candidates. In applications with limited quota and recruitment, you should increase your chances of being accepted by applying with a great portfolio. Also, developing your architectural environment and expanding your vision is about having a good portfolio. We have mentioned 5 ways for you to create an amazing portfolio below.
Select Your Bests
The content of your portfolio is very important and critical to the reviewer. In architecture, preparing a portfolio for both professional life and students begins with deciding on the content of the portfolio. The projects in your portfolio should be the best you have ever done.
Less is more! Portfolios with few projects are easier to review than others. The quality of the projects in the portfolio is important, not the number. When choosing your projects, make sure that they are the jobs that best represent you. Architectural presentations and drawings of the projects in your portfolio should show your architectural identity in the best possible way. We recommend that you pay attention to the resolution and readability of your drawings and the quality of the renders.
Finally, you should not order the projects you have selected chronologically. You should order and number the projects from best to worst.
Keep Variety & Unity Together
If you’ve made your choices in favor of your best projects, let’s move on. Next is the diversity of these projects and presenting them together. Your projects may consist of different scales, types and presentation techniques. The important thing is to present these differences and the projects created with different versions as a unity. Portfolio design is like doing a project in a way. It depends on your design ability to present different elements together with the “unity” rule, which is one of the basic design principles.
Up-to-date Your Works
Keeping your portfolio up to date will be advantageous for you on your website or when applying for a new job or school. Include new works that you think represent you better in your portfolio. At the same time, remove projects that you made more than 5 years ago from your portfolio.
Tell A Story
For a perfect portfolio, do not put content such as classic site plan-floor plans-section-view-render in your portfolio one after another! Design is a long and complicated process and it is up to you to describe this process in the best way possible. When creating your portfolio, create fictions to describe this process.
Promote It
Finally, your amazing portfolio is ready where you present your best work and tell the story of the projects! Now it’s time to promote your portfolio on social media platforms, networks where architects like Instagram, LinkedIN, Issue, BeHance share their work. Promote your portfolio in the best way possible.
Not only digitally, you should promote it physically during job and school applications. Don’t let the answers to the questions asked by the reviewer conflict with the designs in your portfolio. Being consistent is important for every step of portfolio creation.
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