:: I am considering architecture school after an eight year career in :: Academia teaching studio art
Kickass, good for you.
:: professor there who was very encouraging. But I would like to have :: some advice on putting together the portfolio in terms of images.
What school? Which program? What do they recommend?
Bear in mind, I'm totally winging it here, but on the other hand, my portfolio DID get me in to Archie school. A school that will admit most anybody sure, but that's not what we're talking about here, cough cough.
Sculpture is generally thought of as the perfect thing in space. Think Brancusi. Architecture is not unabout form, but it's rare enough for successful architecture to be a tidy closed unified form. Architecture, in its utilitarian role and at its best emotionally/aesthetically is about space. Don't get hung up on arguments about Serra, just accept that this general split exists. Sculpture : thing, architecture : space. It's not all there is to say, but it's a big part. Given that, see if you have anything that shows your own interest in space. "I can't help it, I was BORN to make inhabitable space!"
Not saying you shouldn't include your "precious things on a table" work, especially if it's your good work. Just consider including the spatial, even if your Pink Guitar Series does technically surpass it and you're running out of pages.
Design is not about making the perfect thing. It's about analysis and exploration; back in the day at RPI they called it "critical inquiry," at the BAC now they say "the iterative process." As such, if you can show an idea developing, that's good. I think my porfo had a few pages with "finished work" [tsk tsk, gruhn, it's never finished!] on the right and smaller bits of development on the left; just my "thinking" sketches. My next portfolio will have better developed process, but that's because it's what they look for after 2nd year.
A variety of work.
A consistent identity.
Unless it's your gig, don't pile on the computer work thinking that's where the hot now edgy modern stuff is. There ain't nothing the matter with digital but it still has a degree of frowning sent its way. I just got a studio evaluation back praising me for my comfort and facility with analog and digital media and saying to keep up the mix.
If you have a visual outlet different from your daily grind, throw in a bit of that. Show off your eye and your broad interests. You in to photography? Water color? Sandcastles?
I'd be inclined to include a couple sketches, ink, perspectives, from around town (or pencil or charcoal) as an "I can do this" sort of statement. Incoming students aren't expected to be able to draw, there will be a drawing course unless you pass out. In my freehand class we had a fella who was a working sculptor recently out of ... darn, Mass Art of the MFA school who was there pretty much because he couldn't find his drawings from when he took it five years earlier. He started out better than I finished (or maybe just a little worse ;-) and better still than, oh say, at least half the class finished. I say a couple because I think as a presentation just one floating there in all the rest looks bad. All by itself it looks like a nonsequitur.
A bit of drafting if you have some. No worries if you don't.
Your goal is not to show that you are a full fledged capable architect or even an accomplished architecture student. Your goal is to show that you might be worth taking on; that you might have a visual analytical mind and an innate caring for the topic at hand.
We spent much of first year abstracting ideas; having a solid Big Idea and working within that bound. One kid in my last studio started with The Running of the Bulls and presented a four story museum with a particular organization and peculiar structural system [sort of. cut me some slack]. It involved no running and no bulls but followed an analysis from point A to point... well, maybe E ;-) all the while sticking close to ideas he pulled from his original analysis. I do not know if this kind of approach is typical pedagogy or not. From it, let's pull - a demonstration of the ability to abstract. Say you've got two bronze spheres titled "The Turmoil of Friday Night," that might be a good inclusion.
Why is this important? Architecture isn't about making pretty houses. School tends to spend much more time on the more academic theory side of life but even in practice a client will come to you and say "I want a nice place to get away for the weekend with my goat lover and a large collection of Captain America comics. In 800 sq. ft. Oh yeah, and the goat needs absolute quiet to sleep." You can't just make a pretty Queen Anne box and call it a day. You need to understand what a guy and his goat living together need; what "getting away" means, how the comics change the picture, how the comics will be used, what kind of environment will be needed for the various activities and how you can support, accomodate, encourage, blend with these ideas... using some sticks and a bit of plaster board. There's something earthy and practical about sleeping with a goat and there's something ultimately fantastic about superheroes - maybe the bedroom is on the ground floor, or even sunken to hide from the noise of the nearby highway, and the comic reading room is up on the second floor in a fantastical treehouse room...
Analyze, abstract, apply.
My own advice to classmates (many of whom have yet to fail out) is that you aren't trying to make a "picture" of joviality (say) but rather you are trying to make something which imparts joviality. Again, not the whole truth but a solid part of it. Sculpture can still get away with depicting a kiss where architecture (student) is more likely to need to create the feel of or place for kissing. (not that sculpture hasn't gone there in the 20th C also, hence my use of "get away with")(and not that there isn't architecture which doesn't try to tell little stories.) So, if you have work that manipulates or accomodates the audience, that might speak more strongly in your favour than work which simply illustrates.
Again, this school and I don't know that I speak for others (but suspect I do) likes the abstract. Oh, say... a low door to humble a person is better than a guy at the door saying "dude, you suck." A partially glass floor to make you feel nervous is better than having bulls gore you in the spleen. Low ceilings and dim light to make you feel cozy and secure are better than a big bed shaped like a poofy cloud. Because, in the end, you are not making knick-knacks for Franklin Mint reproduction, but rather you are designing spaces that will be used by people yet may have an atmosphere, promote an emotion, enable a feeling per your specifications (in concert with the end goals of the client (usually)). So, work which goes beyond the mere "it's a banana, see how it's long and skinny and dual pointed and lightly pentagonal and yellow" representational is probably good.
From the do as I say... department - not a lot of words. It is there to show your work, emphasis on show.
Your name.
At school they are pushing commercial clear sleeve portfolios on us for use to get jobs etc. To get in to school I had mine small spiral bound at Kinko's with an extra heavy cover. Mine was strictly digital (analog work was scanned and made pretty in PShop). Everybody at school is going the same route. With a good but cheap printer you can put together nice product that comes across better than a bunch of sleeves with photographs. I _suspect_ that it makes a difference but is not yet critical.
While your school work for the next n years may be thrown together at the last minute, don't let your portfolio look so, no matter what format it takes.
I don't know how much is too much. (Duh.)
I don't think this is a situation for student work. Maybe a quick one page collection and one page standout?
Drop shadows are effective. Extremely overused.
Choose good type.
Black papers in sleeves for physical portfolio looks good.
Black printed digital pages look like "ooo, I'm gonna be edgy and new" crap. AND the black bleeds in and makes your type illegible. Avoid it unless you know what you are doing (at which point it can be nicely effective).
Professional work up front. Personal work in back. Personal work that's different from professional work even more in back.
Show that you aren't stagnant.
- gruhn