Courtesy of Enlace Arquitectura.. Image© Photo Stock

In this article, originally published as “¿Qué es un portafolio de proyectos y cómo se hace?” (What is a portfolio and how do you make one?) from blog Enlace Arquitectura, the author shares a series of suggestions and steps on making a suitable and convenient portfolio for when you’re job hunting. The basis of these recommendations is to correctly understand what a portfolio is and what it should contain. It also details how to maximize creativity in the representation and execution of architectural projects when included in a portfolio.

Entering the workforce is a big challenge for young architects, there’s a lot of competition and you must be able to demonstrate and defend your abilities as a professional. A basic aspect to get you started in the field or if you are looking for a job is to always have a portfolio of previous work. Many employers and professional firms will request one along with a presentable resume.

What is a portfolio?

A portfolio is an architect’s introduction letter that not only shows work experience but is also an instrument that reflects the style and personality that differentiates him from the rest. If you are a student or recently graduated and don’t have any work experience, you can also build a portfolio with academic work and make the most of your creative abilities when designing it. It can include projects done in school workshops, participation in competitions and other complementary activities like photos or publications in magazines or newspapers.

If you’ve never made one before, here are some steps that will guide you in designing or improving your portfolio:

1. First, gather all the visual content from your past projects and choose the most relevant ones to best organize the content. That could include blueprints, drawings, sketches, perspectives and diagrams that best illustrate your skill and style as an architect. Think quality over quantity, the goal isn’t to show the most creative projects, but the ones that best showcase your talents.

2. Once you’ve got your visual content in order you need to choose a presentation format. Currently, the digital portfolio is the most used since in addition to being able to send it immediately, it also makes it easier to edit and update subsequent projects. Consider a format that makes it easy to read and print on different paper sizes, like A4 format.

3. Design a template, making sure that the background doesn’t distract from the content. We recommend using neutral colors to highlight graphic elements (drawings, photographs, renders, sketches, construction details). It’s not necessary to saturate a page with content, remember that less is more, go for austerity and simplicity above all else. 

4. An architect expresses herself visually, so avoid overloading your portfolio with text, it should be something that speaks itself. It isn’t about selling renders, the content should also reflect your freehand skill, layout, constructive vision, space perspectives, photographic quality and convey professionalism. 

5. A simple and sophisticated cover to present the portfolio will suffice. In the first few pages, you can include a brief description of your resume and relevant contact information, such as telephone and email. If you want your work to look more organized, also include an index. Save the file in PDF format and you are ready to send it to a recruiter or print it.

Recommendations:

• For better quality images you’ll need a large scanner and a good camera.
• You can use design programs such as Photoshop, Illustrator, Corel Draw, Adobe In Design or web design software Behance, Issuu and Calaméo that can give you a web magazine look.
• Order and neatness are very important. Check all the little details in the writing and presentation in things like captions, margins, texts, and fonts.
• Save in PDF format and make sure that the file size isn’t bigger than 10 MB to so you can email it.
• To make your CV and portfolio more professional you can add a cover letter.
• Don’t hesitate to compare your portfolio to those of your colleagues, ask a friend or expert for their opinion.
• It’s worth taking the time to put together your portfolio well and have the best possible presentation.

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Raymond Hood Skyscraper Bridge. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

This article was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as “An Incredible Journey into the New York City that Never Was.”

Imagine the waters surrounding the Statue of Liberty were filled up with land. That you could walk right up to Lady Liberty herself, following a path from Manhattan’s Battery Park. Believe it or not, in 1911, this could have been.

In Never Built New York, authors Greg Goldin and Sam Lubell (foreword by Daniel Libeskind) describe with irony, and sometimes nostalgia, the most significant architectural and planning projects of the last century, projects that would have drastically changed the city—but never did.

Cover of Never Built New York featuring Zaha Hadid's project for 425 Park Avenue. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

The book organizes over one hundred projects in a geographic way, starting with citywide plans to projects located in Downtown, Midtown and Uptown Manhattan, Bronx and Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island. Some are well known, such as the long-lasting battle for the design of the United Nations headquarters or the tragic collapse of an ambitious master plan for Ground Zero. Others are unexpected and surprising—see Moshe Safdie’s Habitat New York residential project or radical as Koolhaas’ tower for 23 East 22nd Street. A few are pure flights of fancy. Most really could have been built; for reasons often financial and political in nature, however, they never saw the light of day.

“The book taps into a part of all humanity—the what if. What if I had done that. What if I had married her? What if I had moved there? Everybody thinks about that,” says Lubell.

T. Kennard Thomson, "City of New Manhattan." The plan consisted in extending Manhattan for four miles into the Upper Bay. This 1,400 acres addition would have stretched the city from Battery Park all the way to the Statue of Liberty and beyond. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

Just as compelling as the extraordinary collections of drawings is the vivid language the authors use to tell the projects’ stories. Goldin and Lubell, whose editorial tone ranges from sarcastic to critical, introduce the reader to the people behind these visionary projects, giving us glimpses of their dreams and obsessions.

Raymond Hood Skyscraper Bridge. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

Raymond Hood, the architect behind the Daily News Building and the American Radiator Building, is one such protagonist. The authors recount how, in 1925, Hood designed a 10-thousand-foot-long bridge that was also a skyscraper. The design included two residential towers 50 to 60 stories tall, which functioned as pillars to anchor the suspended bridge.  

The megastructure would have accommodated space for 50,000 people, shops, theaters, and esplanades. Elevators would grant residents access to the waterfront for boating, swimming, or other aquatic activities. Hood defended the scheme as a feasible solution to traffic congestion: “Serious minds have claimed that the project is not only structurally sound but possessed of unusual advantages, financially.”

Office of Metroplitan Architecture, 23 East 22nd Street. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

Traffic congestion was also a source of vexation for Robert Moses, whose 1941 Mid-Manhattan Expressway project was part of a major scheme to build five crosstown expressways. At a height of ten floors above the street, the expressway would have run through a densely built mid-town, literally breaking into existing buildings. Moses envisioned commercial and parking spaces on top of the viaduct, and buildings hanging from the highway “like barnacles on some great seagoing bark,” in the authors’ words.

Rufus Henry Gilbert Elevated Railway. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

Another protagonist, Rufus Henry Gilbert, felt the city needed more mass transit. In 1870 he envisioned a train propelled by compressed air that would run inside “atmospheric tubes.” These pneumatic tubes would be suspended on top of a slender gothic arch, supported by fluted Corinthian columns. Gilbert battled with all his force to see his project come true, but was defeated by lack of fundings and power maneuverings. According to Lubell and Goldin, he died “impoverished and broken.”   

The non-built New York informs the one existing today. In some cases, it underlines the city’s lack of audacity; how else would one characterize the ditching of Mies van der Rohe’s sleek modernist tower cluster, south of Water Street, for one of the bulkiest office towers in the city–One New York Plaza? In others, it shows an urban nightmare narrowly avoided— what if, for example, Moses’s crazed Midtown-Expressway and 5th Avenue extension through Washington Square Park had been given the go-ahead?    

Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe Battery Park Apartments. Image Courtesy of Metropolis Books

Never Built New York is ultimately a guide to the city that goes beyond what’s immediately visible. It helps compare the New York that “is” with the one it could have been, and what it might one day be. As Goldin and Lubell put it: “this trek through the distant and recent past is also a journey ahead. Never Built New York is about the power of ideas to shape the future. Indulge and imagine.”

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Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

Frei Otto (1925-2015) was best known for his innovative lightweight structures, even naming an institute after them at the Stuttgart Technical University. His speciality in tension and membrane structures were, and still are, not only beautiful, but also incredibly modern for his time, creating forms that were entirely new to the eye. One of his most notable creations is the Multihalle, which he contributed towards with the architects Carlfried Mutschler + Partner in 1975; it still remains the largest freestanding wooden lattice structure in the world.

Following the award of the Pritzker Prize to Otto shortly before his death in 2015, the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe is hosting an exhibition of his works in order to introduce “new perspectives on the work of Frei Otto” while “formulating present-day questions concerning the future of our built environment.” In service of this aim, architects FAR frohn&rojas created an exhibition design both reminiscent of Otto’s deceptively simple structures, and carefully calibrated to show the huge archive of work to great effect. Read on to find out more about the exhibition and its design.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

Description from exhibition architects FAR frohn&rojas:

Frei Otto. Thinking in Models

Frei Otto (1925-2015) is one of the best known and most innovative international German architects of the 20th century and is a key figure in the architectural culture of the federal state of Baden-Württemberg. In 2015 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Architecture for his work, also known as the Pritzker Prize, and is the highest honor for architecture in the world. The biggest exhibition on the oeuvre of Frei Otto is a shared project between the Archive of South West Germany for Architecture and Engineering (saai) of the KIT and the Wüstenrot Foundation in cooperation with ZKM | Karlsruhe. Projects that are both known and completely unknown are presented. The material encompasses over 200 models, approximately 1,000 photos, drawings, sketches, plans and films as well as a large-scale media projection. In the 1950s Frei Otto was a major presence at garden shows with his marquee designs, offering the emerging West Germany a diversion from its post-war reconstruction. In 1964 he founded the Institute for Lightweight Structures at Stuttgart Technical University, which he made into one of the leading research institutes for environmentally aware architecture and engineering sciences in the world.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

The newly open Germany

With the German Pavilion at the Expo 1967 in Montreal, which he realized with architect Rolf Gutbrod, he created a symbol for the newly open Germany. This impression was further strengthened by the roof-scape for the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich, which he created together with the architects Behnisch & Partners. Over the following decades Otto participated in the completion of numerous buildings such as the Multihalle in Mannheim, which was designed by the architects Carlfried Mutschler + Partner in 1975. The Multihalle remains the biggest free-standing wooden lattice construction in the world, and was awarded heritage status due to its sophisticated, materials-minimizing construction in 1998. Several surveys plan to subject the “wonder of Mannheim” to a general refurbishment. The partial upkeep of the hall and its dismantling are presently being discussed. In 1997, together with Frei Otto, the architects Ingenhoven, Overdiek, Kahlen and Partners won the competition for the refurbishment of Stuttgart Central Railway Station. Otto designed the chalice-shaped pillars which characterize the overall appearance of the station. Otto developed the optimum design of the pillars using numerous models. Otto distanced himself from the project in 2009. In the year 2000, Otto designed the Japanese Expo Pavilion in Hanover with the architect Shigeru Ban. The exhibition consists of four central positions which fill each atrium to spectacular effect and guide the visitors through the wide ranging archive material which the Archive of South West Germany for Architecture and Engineering (saai) has prepared especially for this exhibition.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

Thinking in Models

Frei Otto’s approach expresses itself in its willingness to experiment, in which methods that straddle architecture, science and art can be found. He developed instruments for researching self-organizing processes, measurement tables for determining force flows, equipment for researching pneumatic design forms and tools for the analysis of sophisticated network models. His tireless experimentation with models served the purpose of researching causal contexts and was simultaneously part of the formgenerating design process. In this way Frei Otto provided the foundation for a culture of experimentation between academic observation and artistic skill which remains relevant to this day — a form of technical-intellectual self-alignment in which design can represent the development of individual knowledge as well as a starting point for a collective discourse on the future of the built environment.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

With Frei Otto, the architectural models do not function as “static objects” but as “dynamic objects”, or as process models for the entire environment. They embody an “operational aesthetic” (Georg Vrachliotis) which alternates between the precision of scientific objects and the imagination of artistic instruments.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

The innovative potential in Frei Otto’s oeuvre is based on the dramatic interdisciplinary nature of his thinking that straddles architecture, technology, science and society. He consistently addressed the example provided by nature, and throughout his life, tried to make use of it for architecture and engineering. The goal of this exhibition is to convey new perspectives on the work of Frei Otto and to serve as a basis for new discussions on the future of the built environment between architecture, technology, sustainability and society.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

Four central positions

The exhibition consists of four central positions which fill each atrium to spectacular effect and guide the visitors through the wide ranging archive material which the Archive of South West Germany for Architecture and Engineering (saai) has prepared especially for this exhibition.

1. “Frei Otto’s Model Landscape”

All of the models are organized to scale, placed in their content-related and historic context, and presented on an approx. 50-meter-long table construction. The technical and design context of the individual models and projects is supplemented by the original plans and detailed picture material. In this way, the researching character and aesthetic continuity in Frei Otto’s thinking becomes evident. The visitors gain the impression that they are exploring a “horizontal cabinet of curiosities”.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

2. “Frei Otto’s open archive”

A key component of the exhibition is the “open archive.” This consists of 18 over-sized archive shelves which are constructed in a circular form around both courtyards and therefore provide the exhibition with spectacular cohesion. With the use of selected original plans, photos, books and reproductions, the users are guided through the key events in the life of Frei Otto — the Development Institute for Lightweight Building in Berlin, the world-famous Institute for Lightweight Structures in Stuttgart and his studio in Warmbronn, to ground breaking projects like the German Pavilion for the Expo 67, the Multihalle in Mannheim and his initial research into Stuttgart 21. The shelves of the archive function as a freely accessible storage area and a place of knowledge that straddles presentation and storage.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

3. “Frei Otto’s Cosmos”

Throughout his life, Frei Otto collected and archived photographs of structures from the natural world. They served as a source of inspiration and free association to him and were also definitive source of research. The key factor in this respect is that Frei Otto consistently addressed the example provided by nature and tried to make use of it for architecture and engineering. At 18 tables — which are inspired by the tables in Frei Otto’s studio in Warmbronn — visitors are able to see large-format photos of studies of nature, spiders’ webs, sand structures and soap bubbles. A sophisticated world of images is opened to them which provides insights into the poetic and scientific cosmos of Frei Otto’s thoughts and imagination.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

4. “Frei Otto’s Projection”

Frei Otto’s innovative potential is based on the dramatic inter-disciplinary nature of his thinking that straddles architecture, technology, science and society. The image and technical media dimension play a major role in this respect. In a projection which is over 25 meters in size, this thinking is conveyed in terms of its aesthetics and power of media-based visual expression.

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

• Title: Frei Otto Exhibition / design by FAR frohn&rojas
• Type: Exhibition
• Website: http://ift.tt/2gRnBDW
• From: November 05, 2016 12:12 AM
• Until: March 12, 2017 12:12 AM
• Venue: ZKM_Lichthof 8+9
• Address: ZKM, 76137 Karlsruhe, Germany

Courtesy of FAR frohn&rojas

Exhibition design: FAR frohn&rojas Berlin, Santigo de Chile and Los Angeles
Team: Marc Frohn, Mario Rojas Toledo, Max Koch, Daniel Stanojevic, Leonie Weyrauch, Maximilian Kessler

Curator: Georg Vrachliotis
Co-curators: Marc Frohn , Martin Kunz, Joachim Kleinmanns
Project assistant: Julia Schiffer
Graphic design: Lukas Feireiss Studio with Floyd E. Schulz
Media partner: ARCH+

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© Luc Boegly

• Architects: 5+1AA Alfonso Femia Gianluca Peluffo
• Location: Roma Tiburtina, 00162 Roma, Italy
• Architect In Charge: Alfonso Femia, Gianluca Peluffo, Simonetta Cenci
• Work Team : Alfonso Femia, Alessandro Bellus
• Area: 75000.0 m2
• Project Year: 2016
• Photographs: Luc Boegly

• Client/Owner: BNP Paribas Real Estate
• Project Directors: Alessandro Bellus, Marco Corazza, Gabriele Filippi, Francesca Raffaella Pirrello
• Design Team: Alfonso Femia, Gianluca Peluffo, Simonetta Cenci, Annalura Spalla, Alessandro Bellus, Marco Corazza, Gabriele Filippi, Marzia Menini, Sara Sartini, Maria Michela Scala, Daniele di Matteo, Sara Massa, Vanesa Carbajo Fernandez, Roberta Nardi, Francesca Zampetti
• Collaborators: Gianmatteo Ferlin, Michela Lucariello, Paolo Oliva, Eleonora Zinghinì, Etienne Bourdais, Stefano Cioncoloni
• Net Usable Area: 39.000 m2
• Cost: 83 M euro
• Environmental Certifications: BBC Classe A Cened Certi cation Leed Gold

© Luc Boegly

From the architect. The design of the new headquarters of BNL is part of a particular and unique context. Unique because the nature of the context is a layering of infrastructures that are separated by two important urban areas of the city of Rome, thanks to the construction of the station for high-speed rail, which leads to a new role, not only in terms of services service but also as “urban place”. Particular because the area where the new building will stand, due to its geometric shape and topography and its relative orientation, suggests to design the building according to the principle of “Janus”. We consider it important that the new building develops a dialogue with the adjacent complex of Tiburtina railway station, with its main features characterized by size and horizontality. The dialogue does not necessarily have to be direct, but should have references both to perspectives and to the different levels of the station, and also a different role (the horizontal stratification) in the new urban landscape.

© Luc Boegly

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© Luc Boegly

Our goal is to meet the functional needs with a building that is capable, in its autonomy and identity, to belong to the urban context of the Tiburtina Station and at the same time to be representative both for the city of Rome and for its users.

© Luc Boegly

From these considerations, a proposal is made for a building that is able to relate differently to the north-west with the district Pietralata and south-east with the Tiburtina Station complex. Dynamic, reflective and fading, where its perception is mainly dynamic and different meter after meter (from the train, from the station, from the different areas of the city), almost as if it was moving, comparatively, where the context is urban or “slow”, facing North, the perception is static transparent and material.

© Luc Boegly

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© Luc Boegly

The building thus assumes different roles leading our imagination to important works of contemporary artists and filmmakers who have treated the themes of perception and “reflection” of reality.

© Luc Boegly

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