My current length is 531 words though the maximum is 500
How does the major you would like to study in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning match your intellectual, academic, and career interests? Discuss any activities you have engaged in that are relevant to your chosen major.
To be frank, Gothic architecture never impressed me much; its flowery displays of sophistication and meticulous attention to detail seemed pretentious, its pointed arches and ribbed vaults, while picturesque, unnecessary. However, flip a few pages back in history books and there you would find the source of my intrigue, the archaic Stonehenge, with its rectangular slabs of rocky medium, minimal and austere, rendering art from intersecting arrangements in space. Its simplicity parallels its beauty. While style is transitory, form is everlasting, and it is timeless.
To me, the term architecture has never denoted buildings at all. Architecture is an arrangement of space to capture the intangible - an emotion, a sensation, a sound - in a concrete form often unattainable by art. As a child, this translated to the arrangement of room furniture so that I could achieve precisely the right experience when entering the area; with school, the organization of books and materials to best support their function and suit my needs, all without interrupting the utility of others. And as I matured, so did my interest. Composition became an art; arrangement, a style.
Life no longer comprised indifference to lackluster repetition of structures, but sparks and fascination at how wall shelves, physical edifices, even the layout of books on a ledge could be as evocative as any painting or sculpture. I was infatuated.
And, ultimately, architecture consumed each of my academic interests: art, math, physics, engineering, each hinging on the arrangement of matter and how it may effect its surroundings, be it supporting structures or viewer perspective. In time, my curiosity even devoured extracurricular activity: leading decorations committees within various school clubs taught me the importance of teamwork and deadlines while, outside of school, I aided in the construction of several houses, including my own; acquired first-hand experience with buildings and the architects in charge of erecting them by means of my occupation in an excavating business; and participated in the repair of low-income Appalachian homes every summer of my high school career, in each case, eager for a glimpse at the inner workings of practical structural design, while retaining attentiveness toward the same assembly of flat planes that had attracted my adoration from the beginning.
I have always been preparing for a future in architecture - one in which I might utilize an education to give life to my own architectural conceptions of form and spatial arrangement - and Cornell, with its respect for tradition and outreach to future ideas, appears and has appeared to be my perfect match to achieve this dream: past and future architecture is only tied together by basic form, my interest. At the college of AAP, I would nurture my own architectural interests while broadening my perspective on the field, itself, to include new the theoretical outlooks of its classes and cultural perceptions of its students. Like all Cornell applicants, I hope to introduce something refreshing to the university, but perhaps what sets me apart is what I intend to present: a new take on the subject itself. The clothing and accessories of the building are not what interest me, but rather its basic building blocks, its skin and form, the skeleton inside.
i would also like to add the sentence
"It's easy to create art in architecture when the walls are your canvas, more difficult when the ground is your canvas and the walls, your paint."
regarding my opinions on architecture, though i am not entirely sure where to put it
How does the major you would like to study in the College of Architecture, Art, and Planning match your intellectual, academic, and career interests? Discuss any activities you have engaged in that are relevant to your chosen major.
To be frank, Gothic architecture never impressed me much; its flowery displays of sophistication and meticulous attention to detail seemed pretentious, its pointed arches and ribbed vaults, while picturesque, unnecessary. However, flip a few pages back in history books and there you would find the source of my intrigue, the archaic Stonehenge, with its rectangular slabs of rocky medium, minimal and austere, rendering art from intersecting arrangements in space. Its simplicity parallels its beauty. While style is transitory, form is everlasting, and it is timeless.
To me, the term architecture has never denoted buildings at all. Architecture is an arrangement of space to capture the intangible - an emotion, a sensation, a sound - in a concrete form often unattainable by art. As a child, this translated to the arrangement of room furniture so that I could achieve precisely the right experience when entering the area; with school, the organization of books and materials to best support their function and suit my needs, all without interrupting the utility of others. And as I matured, so did my interest. Composition became an art; arrangement, a style.
Life no longer comprised indifference to lackluster repetition of structures, but sparks and fascination at how wall shelves, physical edifices, even the layout of books on a ledge could be as evocative as any painting or sculpture. I was infatuated.
And, ultimately, architecture consumed each of my academic interests: art, math, physics, engineering, each hinging on the arrangement of matter and how it may effect its surroundings, be it supporting structures or viewer perspective. In time, my curiosity even devoured extracurricular activity: leading decorations committees within various school clubs taught me the importance of teamwork and deadlines while, outside of school, I aided in the construction of several houses, including my own; acquired first-hand experience with buildings and the architects in charge of erecting them by means of my occupation in an excavating business; and participated in the repair of low-income Appalachian homes every summer of my high school career, in each case, eager for a glimpse at the inner workings of practical structural design, while retaining attentiveness toward the same assembly of flat planes that had attracted my adoration from the beginning.
I have always been preparing for a future in architecture - one in which I might utilize an education to give life to my own architectural conceptions of form and spatial arrangement - and Cornell, with its respect for tradition and outreach to future ideas, appears and has appeared to be my perfect match to achieve this dream: past and future architecture is only tied together by basic form, my interest. At the college of AAP, I would nurture my own architectural interests while broadening my perspective on the field, itself, to include new the theoretical outlooks of its classes and cultural perceptions of its students. Like all Cornell applicants, I hope to introduce something refreshing to the university, but perhaps what sets me apart is what I intend to present: a new take on the subject itself. The clothing and accessories of the building are not what interest me, but rather its basic building blocks, its skin and form, the skeleton inside.
i would also like to add the sentence
"It's easy to create art in architecture when the walls are your canvas, more difficult when the ground is your canvas and the walls, your paint."
regarding my opinions on architecture, though i am not entirely sure where to put it
