Art students. You can pick them out easy as pie. Converging towards Emily Carr University, it’s the pink/purple/green/blue hair that is the biggest giveaway. REALLY big pants. Shoes that look like candy. Extremely introverted looking kids, dressed in extremely extroverted looking clothes. Kind of an endearing juxtaposition. Like they would die if someone noticed them, but are screaming to be seen.
A car drives by, rolls down the window, “It’s not Halloween girls!”. A girl in a BlackPink t-shirt under a neon corsette looks mortified. Her friend (muted in a monochromatic unicorn onesie, including hood and feet) flips the bird at the driver. They laugh. All the weirdos gravitate towards the school. Once within a 100 metre radius of campus, they are in the safety of the clan.
First session, architecture. What architecture is memorable to you? I think of the skinny houses on Lombard Street in SF, the steps outside the Gerkin in London, that museum in Paris where all the things that are supposed to be on the inside are on the outside, my grandmother’s house. We talk about scale, we learn about different types of architectural drawings. We have homework. We are going to build models.
Next class. Jordi asks, “What is design?”. Um. Design is creating a plan to make something. Thinking about how that thing looks, how it feels, how it works. We explore Frank Ghery, Zaha Hadid, we look at Bauhaus. Ew Bauhaus. If someone were to ask me, what is ‘Bauhaus’?, I would reply, it is German for ‘uncomfortable chair’. Hm! We are going to design chairs!
I can picture the exact type of people you described in this passage! I love how you described their style in metaphors and other ways aside from the physical appearance of the clothes.
I like how you describe art students because it is accurate in a certain way. It’s always the ones with the most extroverted eye-catching-looking outfits but with the most introverted personalities that you can’t really talk to them that easily. And I think it’s funny how you pointed that out.