In the following post, Quiller Augustin shares his experience in the College Now program at The City College of New York. If interested in pursuing such an endeavor, students should speak with their guidance counselor.
During the summer I took a College Now class at City College.The class was Architectural Expressions. In that one month period, we did three separate projects. We also studied and learned about drawing objects in different methods and practiced drawing objects in said methods. Our first project was making a model that would protect an egg if we dropped it at a certain height. Our second project was to draft the shape of a vegetable that we brought in. Our third project was to take a window space and construct an object that would play with the sunlight. I enjoyed the class immensely and it gave me new insight into the world of architecture.
I learned about this class when our school took a tour of City College. Once I sent in my application, I had to go through an interview process, which included a series of questions about my interests in architecture as well as if I had previous experience with architecture programs. Because of my experience at WHSAD and through the ACE mentorship program, I was able to reply with great confidence that yes I do in fact have an experience in architecture based programs. After the interview, I had to wait until I got the acceptance email. I was overjoyed when I finally got it. About a month later, we had an orientation the week before where we got our first homework.
I learned a lot about architecture from this class and enjoyed it. It allowed me to make connections within the CUNY system and gave me credit for college. The work has benefitted me as it is portfolio ready and is advanced work that colleges like to see. Taking this class has allowed me to expand my knowledge of architecture.
Quiller’s artist statement on one of his projects:
Moonlight
My inspiration for this project came from a fractured moon from my favorite show. I was interested in the way light reflects off the moon and wanted my screen to show light coming from several moon shaped holes. After bouncing from idea to idea, I ended up cutting out 5 moon shaped holes into several pieces of cardboard. At first I wanted to make crescent shapes using the circles I cut out. But in the long run that turned out to be messy and the board wasn’t able to stand on its own. In the end, I combined all the pieces and tilted the boards so that they gave an illusion of something called a moongate.