Course: Portfolio Preparation:

Course Coordinator + Professor

Parsons Bachelor of Fine Arts in Interior Design + Architectural Design: Fall 2011-2015.

A portfolio reflects a depth and breadth of work. The primary focus of this course is the representation of educational growth as preparation for graduate program or employment applications. This class involves a careful manipulation of the portfolio as a tool of visual communication as well as a focused restructuring of the work within the representational format. Emphases are on the development of basic page layout skills, visualization, organization and representation.

The production of the portfolio investigates diverse strategies for communicating architectural concepts as well as process narratives. The focus is on not only how to best edit, organize and present the evidence of work (drawings and models), as well as how these representations and their configuration can communicate the underlying ideas and processes that generated them - while expressing the interests and possitions of the author. The portfolio should exhibit the qualities of any successful representation; it should combine visual interest and explanatory power that are consistent with a communication and representational strategy.

This course requires students to investigate conventions of spatial representation - how they operate, what they convey, and how they might be challenged, reconfigured and inventively manipulated — and develop a strategy for presenting their work in a physical and digital form. Technical means of reproduction, material options and model photography are considered along with graphic techniques, formatting, notational systems and methods of integrating image and text.