In the January/February 2021 issue of Architecture Australia, Linda Cheng sat down with six practitioners for a pulse-check discussion about the impacts the pandemic has had on the architectural profession and business. A year on, we’ve seen the states and territories go through multiple lockdowns; at the time of this roundtable, the cities of Brisbane and Melbourne had entered their fifth. Construction sites have paused and practitioners have returned to the work-from-home format. But what about our students and graduating years? What challenges have they faced, and do they continue to face, during the ongoing pandemic? Georgia Birks hears from five students around Australia as they discuss the past, present and future of the next generation of architects.
Georgia Birks: University can be one of the most challenging and rewarding chapters of a person’s life. And with the pandemic overlaid on your experiences, it’s certainly one you won’t forget. What has the university experience been like for you all?
Jake Tripp: It’s been really great as well as very challenging. We went through the first stages of being welcomed to the degree – we were there in person, we were going to have all these workshops and thrive in the studio environment, which are key components of going into architecture practice. It was all normal and then – bam! It was all online and that was tricky. But it had its own benefits as well.
Renee Qin: My experiences are very similar. My first year had that full-on campus experience but second year and third year were all online or a hybrid. There are definitely positives [to online learning] – I think everyone has become more proactive in contacting peers or tutors. I see both good and bad sides of being online, but I do miss being on campus.
Kushagra Jhurani: I came to the University of Melbourne in 2019 for my master’s – it was a two-year course. The first year went very well – I did all the experimental studios that I could. And then COVID hit and it was only online for the whole [second] year.
For me and my housemates, as international students, we come over here to experiment and to meet new people. But this
