On March 23rd, a group of freshmen students from the architecture club presented their midterm presentations on re-imagining the Small Pox Memorial Hospital Ruin to Walter & Melvin Architects. This was a great opportunity for the students to receive feedback from professionals in the field of architecture.
Student Reflections:
Ifteza Linath
Throughout the whole presentation, I learned many things. I have learned about how each person views this project. I have learned where my team is compared to all the others. I also have learned where my team’s project needs improvements and where to concentrate on the most. I learned a lot from others’ feedback. There were times when I was able to give feedback to others when I thought they needed improvement. While presenting, I have found my own weaknesses and have been able to reflect on myself on how presentable I was. This experience has helped me understand the concept of many architectural skills and also has helped me set up personal goals.
Christian Luna 
I think the presentation to the architects could’ve been better but still went well. My team and I could’ve made a better first impression if we had more factual information in our presentation. For example, if we knew that you could change the shell of a historical building then we could have put it into the slide. If my team and I had finished the 2nd floor design we could have given the architects an idea of how the 1st and 2nd floors would look. Most of the slides we presented, we could’ve explained further rather than reading directly off the slides. Learning from this, I will make sure that later parts of the project are factually supported and are fully finished and as accurate as possible.
Alexa Medina
I have to say that I am glad that I got to go on the trip for the smallpox ruin presentation. My fellow group members and I, and other members from other groups, shared our knowledge and our ideas for the future design of the ruin. We also got to hear opinions and feedback from real experts who have experienced presentations like ours, and who have more prior knowledge about the area that we are dealing with. I have to be very thankful to my teachers, in other words my mentors, for such opportunity because I and other designers would have known nothing about what to fix in our designs or what to add in our presentations or how to prepare for our next presentations.
Yu Feng Zhou
My experience with the professional architects made me really want to try to become someone like them. They gave comments to my group, and those comments really made me have a new view about this project. This new view is that this is not a ordinary project but is a “person” who needs help to restructure and have a new purpose. This is the architect’s job to reconstruct and reassign the purpose of it.
Sean Guadron
This project was unique and pretty difficult. Trying to find out which was which and trying to find out how it can or will be done. Receiving the acceptances and critiques were challenging but were well thought out. In my opinion, this project was a team effort. It was hard but fun. Going to this trip also taught us a lot on how things should be done. Now we know how a presentation shall be done and how to react when sent back to the drawing board. So, this was a great experience to reflect on.