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0:00
hi everybody welcome to hockey marathon it's time to panic kevin there's only like one or two weeks to go there's only one or two weeks to go before presentations are due and you and students all over australia and the world have to stand in front of people and justify their existence panic we've actually got some really good tips and tricks go roll roll intro [Music] so i'm in the jungle so a lot of a lot of the things i learned actually was through presentation uh of my students to me
0:49
being on the other side of the table really changes your perspective on how you understand presentation and at the end of the day you only got so much attention span you're going to go through so many people you just want to know what is it about their project that's unique what's it proposing why they're doing it and how they've done it that's where why how came from that episode so you get really exhausted don't you got so many students your brain turned to porridge
1:14
that's not how you make potty this is how you make porridge let's know how you make porridge what you need to know is the people that are critiquing you want you to do well they actually really do they want you to do what are they interested that's why they're coming to give you critique for free if they're harsh it comes from a place of frustration and that frustration is probably like seriously just tell me what you're actually doing we've said this for and we'll say it time and time again
1:42
when you're a student you've got two design tasks you design your building and you design your presentation that is fundamental you must know that you can't just throw drawings together at the end you have to actually sketch out we have to get run over as always
2:00
okay you have to sketch out your presentation we used to have that as a task when we were tutoring like to scale draw out your 4a1 boards yeah and you sketch that out i want to have my sections at the bottom or when i have my diagrams on the left whatever it may be but why why do you do that because what you want to do is you've had this explosion of thinking of designing and you know there's that saying art is never completed it's abandoned but with one or two weeks to go you sh you should
2:29
have abandoned your project ages ago now is the time to sit down and work out in this explosion of thinking what is actually most important the main thing what is the main thing it's an editing process and you need to have the discipline to abandon so much that's where party came from the word it means decision made decision made and you've probably made 10 000 decisions but what the panel needs to hear in your eight minutes is the three good ones so you've got to have discipline you've
2:57
got to sketch out what you want to present and get down to those fundamental points don't try to jam everything in because it becomes lost and also the other thing is that becomes your work list of knowing what you actually need to do so you know between now and your final presentation because the end of the day of the design at university level the product the end product is the presentation yep and the folio it's it's unbuilt you're never going to build that
3:22
building so whatever you draw is the representation of the project and this this is a stop touching the mic so this was a huge revelation to me i used to try to solve everything in the building i thought i would just have to solve everything but then i realized no you don't you don't solve everything it's like it's basically like a competition yeah you tell us what's actually great about it and these are the bits that are important and i'll spend time working on those but the rest is
3:53
not as important you know you don't have to solve every single bit about the toilet details absolutely you think about it to put it in really simple terms you think about getting a town planning application what information what critical thinking do i need to put in to this to get to that point well a fair bit but what information do i need to present to secure the town planning permit they're two different things so the same goes with your design is you've been challenged all the
4:18
way along to think of very broadly it's in a sophisticated way about this building but you cannot present all of that and and we are required we are communicators architects are professional communicators through both words and drawing and we need to learn to economically communicate very sophisticated ideas and i would point everybody to cursed cassatt videos which take very complicated scientific ideas and explain them in the most beautiful little snippet videos and they
4:48
even say in in those videos we're oversimplifying slightly here but there's all this other reading so for presentation verbal presentation i think that's a starting point to actually start to think as you are producing moving into presentation mode now okay presentation mode you're still designing you're not stopping design but you're just focusing on your design focusing where to spend energy on the right medium that you can spend energy on so the verbal presentation is important because it
5:17
goes hand in hand with your project so you need to work out how are you going to communicate your project and think about everything you do as it is actually supporting the verbal presentation so if you're saying things think about the medium that mediums that you're using whether withdrawing or model or models are they helping support that point if it doesn't or put it in there if it's really not going to be there then don't mention it yeah because when you're actually physically
5:48
presenting usually the first sentence of first sentences is setting up people to go okay this is important i'm going to pay attention and think about this yeah and we see that so many times in presentation students go on about these things and research about this really interesting topic and then they go off and the project is completely different that is the biggest mistake you can make is to read a thesis about your project but you do need to think you think about
6:14
it in terms of marketing and advertising i know they're dirty words but what those industries work on is trying to convey complex ideas as quickly as possible so one or two sentences that's where you've got to get the hook in yes um to engage with some very tired people that are donating their time and probably very quickly we want to be somewhere else and also the important thing is people want to know what you can do not what you can't do that's important one
6:41
so show us your skills not your don't apologize for things you haven't done yep do them and second thing is the real measure is we can only look at architecture as almost as a language it's like i'm trying to do these things and this is what i come up with so you really need to be coherent between um what you're saying versus what you're doing because that's the ultimate test really you know if you are saying i want to do this thing about community yeah but then you basically design a fortress
7:10
yeah it may be a beautiful fortress and by itself it's like yep sure if it was meant to be a fortress it works really well it's beautiful uh but what you said is actually about community so it's like well actually if you say that's what you're trying to do you have no control over the architecture therefore and maybe therefore that that leads us on late november that leads us on to another point which is you've got to own you've got to abandon your design and then own what you've got
7:40
so if the agenda is to make the perfect design no such thing so if it's turned out to be the fortress you need to then own that and then actually find ways of communicating um to the panel why that's a valid decision what's great about it yeah because you know you can either change your design you're at the point you can either change your design which you have no time for or you change what you say yeah so easier to just change what you say but again this is a process of thinking
8:08
that requires time yeah and you can say oh hang on is that being dishonest is that being misleading is that close justifying that's an over moralistic oversimplification really this is your students you're learning you need to be able to put as kev said the visuals and the words together look at ted talks you guys are actually so lucky the age you live in where again very sophisticated ideas that are meant to be delivered through words and images that go together seamlessly in a very
8:33
short time frame heaps of precedence for this so a red flag that you hear from students quite a lot is this time of year what drawings do we need to produce you know what's the drawing list and we used to say if you can do it in one drawing go for it yeah actually you can don't that question shows people don't understand how to communicate clearly like it's not a test in terms of producing these outcomes and it ticks for them you again are designing the way that you're communicating so therefore
9:02
if you can do any one drawing if you can do it in a model doubt you can if you can do it in a diagram you need to think about what is best and that's why we go and sketch out and design our presentations and often sometimes universities will ask for a certain scale and you know and always complain about oh it doesn't quite fit on the page or whatever well at the end of the day what the reason why the answer is in scale is so that you are thinking at that level so it's actually about
9:28
resolution then it is about scale so sometimes you realize well that drawing is just taking up way too much space it doesn't need to it's almost diagrammatic in the sense it can be much smaller it's guidance they're offering guidance they're not seeking compliance because at the end of the day design and architectural education is about helping you be a critical thinker compliance is not part of critical thinking but each drawing is or each medium i keep saying using intermediate
9:54
because you know they are different mediums different scale drawings different scale models they do different things a section it's not same as elevation it's not the same as perspective section it's not the same as a perspective they all have the strength and weaknesses and they do different things now that list that you produce as as a result of your layout that has different mediums on it and they hopefully do different things and telling different aspects of the
10:20
project rather than repeating the same information because that again is wasted time time is it's all about time episode yeah time is important so you really need to think about what is each medium just trying to say don't repeat it's okay to overlap so that people can orientate i understand okay that space there is that space in that drawing you know that helps but definitely don't just have another drawing that tells pretty much the same thing but just tiny little bit of
10:51
difference such a waste waste of time you think about models i've always been very critical of models just in terms of time investment what is the model doing for you like really think about like are you producing a model because you've been told to if so produce it quickly and get on with the things that will communicate the best unless you think it is the model but so many people get lost in the laborious task of creating a model again what is its value in terms of
11:14
communication and your time and the scale it is too you know if it's a one to 200 scale it's actually talking about context and tectonics and where it's you can actually do a much bigger scale model of a space because you can talk about spatial quality people can can hold it put their put their head in it pretty much you know that's that's a different medium and has different purpose and also you know there are people who actually have different skills i mean we all have
11:40
different skills some are very good at making models yeah and maybe it's actually capitalizing on the skills that you do have and work on those and flock that office yeah as you know and flaunt that basically it's critical thinking if that's your strength it's about time management what's the most economic way of using your time think critically about it if you're great at model making forget it sewing sew something as long as it communicates i've seen that people sewing drawings on
12:08
on paper nice running lines of stitches it's beautiful in terms of also where you invest and how you overlap and not repeating information that then also extends onto how you deliver your presentation you've got to think about it like it's a performance so we i i'm a big fan of we read from left to right yes so we should start over here and then we should walk across the series of drawings until we show um until we get to the end it's this crescendo this beautiful you know render um
12:41
but you think about the way you set up your panels i will come back to delivery online think about the way you present your panels and your model you see a lot of people that have thought about what each individual drawing is doing but then they don't think about how it's laid out so suddenly they're having a fit of like if you look here and somebody asks questions you're like oh if you look down there look at that and if you look at that and so you're sitting there trying to digest this
13:06
the magic word's didactic didactic is one plus one equals two make it so they can follow along and this is how you present you make it so easy for yourself and you follow this sum until you get to the end but that's also something that probably at the start so you know just knowing even where to stand there's a whole performance of knowing where to stand yeah in the drawing yeah and where to point to so performance is a scary word but what we're really advocating for is is
13:33
being organized and holding yourself and communicating in a way that puts you and the audience at rest again we've talked about this before everybody watching wants you to do well nobody wants to watch a chain train wreck and i'd actually before you present remind yourself of that i'm actually in a supportive place the people giving the critique might be tired and therefore not might be avoiding their niceties because they're exhausted but remember they actually all want you
14:00
to do well remind yourself of that and try to put yourself in a bit of ease but remind yourself that they are going through many people if you ever have given critique and trying to pay attention to one crit and be put in position to say something your brain goes to much pretty quickly especially if you're rambling you know so important thing is i i'd say i usually give students three minutes three minutes three to five max but three minutes to present everything yeah the reason being
14:27
is that you have more time if it's succinct and actually have thought about that's about the attention span that people usually have and if it's well executed you can captivate the audience and you've got plenty more time for discussions and questions and things anyway so they will ask the right kind of questions but you need to bring the attention to what you want people to focus on what is the main thing what's the main objective what are the main things you've done that's actually
14:54
worthwhile have a conversation yeah talking about different mediums one thing that i find students spend way too much time on are plants yeah plants are actually the easiest thing to amend and easiest thing to adjust and probably least amount of time to draw compare to the other mediums such as perspectives sections um renders um models they all take time but they're the ones actually gets a lot more emotional qualities and explanation of the design than just
15:23
a plan yeah so often you see if you are spending too much time on a plan then you are not spending enough time on the other stuff because they are still part of design you should be adapting and changing those views as if it's a you basically designed a view you basically design that section you design that elevation and then see what that feeds back into your plan oh that's a great point never try to finish a drawing here on the next one you know back in the day the drawing board was
15:51
the plan with elevations and sections shooting off from it you update one thing you update the rest it's exactly what you should be doing um not because as soon as you go and go right that drawing's now finished i'll do the next one a you'll run out of time and you'll have one overly detailed drawing you'll have one overly detailed drawing and the other ones as you run out of time just get dumber and dumber and you know you're usually leaving the hardest but the most valuable to the end that's
16:19
probably because you're avoiding it most the ones you need most but that's an important point is that the list of drawings that you have put out as a layout you know i would put a hierarchy on that's a very noisy train so what i would do is i would put a priority to the hierarchy of drawings that's there the most important ones that will really communicate the design and down to the the least important to the point that if i have more time if i have time it'll be great to have it if i
16:47
don't that will be the first one to go yeah and there will always be those ones yeah when i was in woodwork in high school i can remember having to tighten up a bunch of screws and i tightened the [ __ ] out of the first one and then my teacher said whoa you tighten each one gradually so you get this even pressure over it you don't tighten the first one because then you know it'll you'll just end up with a warp of pressure and i think about drawings that way
17:11
you put all your effort into putting the first one and getting it done and you completely skew your communication you should bring each one up at equal level so tight tight tight tight tight and then go around again work your drawings up in equal measure even-handedness too because guess what when you run out of time you go guess what they're all at 75 and they're not going to be finished anyway yeah don't try to finish things try to communicate things another point about the plan is
17:36
presentation actual verbal presentation time and to see that people present and spend too much time just rubbing their hands all over the plants it just means that usually means that they are just plan driven in terms of the way they think um and they haven't really so much time with the others even though there might be some beautiful drawings somewhere else they spend way too much time explaining the project in front of plants yeah that's don't do that you know and that leads to the whole um
18:04
online presentation now when you have the panels in front of you it is performance as you said but what happens is people you know you see bit you often see that people sometimes they get up and start looking at the drawings in the middle of your verbal presentation that's usually a cue of saying they're bored they want to know and understand what your project is because you're not communicating you're not captivating them so they have to take their own liberty to go and stand up and look at
18:32
what's actually being presented and they're trying to be helpful they're trying to understand your project because you're not explaining it properly yeah you don't have that luxury now if you if you're presenting online you don't have the luxury of sort of arming your panel with all the information so they can save you if you get off track or they can refocus you yeah but because we're the hostage of looking at exactly what you're showing yeah and we're seeing that people are
18:59
spending way too much time and rush through the last bits which are the most important drawings that you can spend most time on but we've been looking at stupid charts and stuff because of your research than the actual project yeah and that's the thing you invite them to come back and look at your research you need to sum up your research in a couple of minutes i've never spent lots of time on it but say it's on there right my premise is this right that's my premise
19:22
here's my architecture here's my building it's not your building that episode so you're presenting online it's unfortunate you don't have that old school here's everything this buffet but it actually empowers you to really control the presentation the narrative yeah it means you've got to be on your game though if anybody's ever attended um the institute of architects uh presentation to juries we've got projects we've worked on for three years that we have to present in eight minutes
19:54
it is the most wonderful discipline to be able to do that and you can see the people who are good at the people that are bad at it the shorter the presentation the more organized you need to be so you've got to get complex thinking and get it right down and it's actually a gift to you it is but you have to do that if it's an online presentation your first slide has to engage them your second slide has to start delivering didactic clear information and to entice them as well and you can't
20:20
get to the end and you've got to practice this is where you've got to practice your time because if you get to the end and there's all these half a dozen renders that you've spent so long on and somebody says you're out of time you're like oh [ __ ] and you just start flicking through them how much have you just shot yourself in the footlight that's heartbreak it happens all the time you've got to practice so that's why you've got to stop drawing and rehearse and you've got to rehearse
20:39
physically rehearse that's what all the professionals are doing to get their eight minutes tight for their uh presentation to juries if you're going to do an all-nighter do it now um you know if you think you are you don't have enough time and there is an all-nighter in your future do it now a week out like i'm totally against all-nighters as per that episode totally against it but if you're out of time hit it hard now come in really really hard and do that even
21:06
distribution of tightening the screws a little bit bring all of your um drawings that you've already decided on what's most important now yeah and then actually have your stuff to present to your peers hopefully um so that you can actually get a discussion going and they can tell you no that's [ __ ] like i don't buy that yeah and you can change what you say and change what you do in the last minute with you know with just tweaking it rather than um hearing all of that after you've done
21:32
your final presentation yeah you should have said and you spent too long on this did you do it now we would do that our last time we taught at melbourne uni we got everybody to sketch out their a4s which were scale drawings of our a1s and then we got them to present like this little micro version of it so we got to critique them on how they focused information but also where they were pointing their drawing and they got to then redesign their layouts yeah and that layout is their drawing list
21:58
yeah and the thing about the layout as well use what you've got at the moment use the drawings you've got at the moment and you can say lines on the page and graphically sometimes you might find a render or something it'd just be like too heavy graphically and everyone's just thought you know this particular drawing everyone just gravitates towards that so you need to going back to this whole even-handedness sort of presentation as whole needs to read in a way that actually belong to each other
22:23
you don't know until you put it on paper until you sketch it out like you would in your preliminary design stage literally stick it on scan it put it on yeah look at it look at it two meters away yeah at least if you are physically presenting design is not linear you've got to start and stop you've got to you know go down all these rabbit warrens and come back it's the same with presentations that's why we practice that's why we do multiple drafts if you think it's just a drawing list
22:51
and you draw one you produce one after the other and it'll magically fall together totally wrong a week is so much time yeah so much time i would usually say three to four weeks yeah yeah into university or 50 30 to 50 of your project as a whole it's dedicated to thinking about presentation i totally agree with that because at university that gives you time to then get feedback to bounce things back and forth where you know in an office scenario we're kind of it's a bit of a machine so
23:20
we can do that very quickly so i agree at the moment there's only a week left for most people yeah it's still a huge amount of time but these two or three days coming up are the most important in terms of production and the last three or four should be about purely rehearsing communication refining drawings so to sum up is don't go doing about it blindly plan it do it with conviction and do it well just like your design give your well thought out critically composed
24:00
design do it justice by having just as much thought and critical thinking in the way that you will communicate don't just hope it'll all come out especially when you sleep deprived and linking back to our essential what why how episode so basically you've locked in the what or at least clarify what you're proposing in terms of form and formal proposition and why those moves why are you making those moves and the focus now is understanding those and then working out how it all works
24:31
and the focus is in the drawing in the development beyond just a diagram basically and give your start with time allocations on each of those questions
24:44
he likes the show he's liked he's commented and subscribed all from the cd's car yeah he's actually looking at his phone instead of driving he may kill some children
24:56
think about your time as a budget too so the what why how is really good give yourself like two minutes on each another thing about the eight minutes presentation to jury actually i'll rewind on that one no not two minutes in each the what should be just 30 seconds max just going this is what the proposal is it's that that that but why is the big question and how is the big question that's good communication even the way you delivered that think about it as hooks
25:21
boom this is what i want to know more about that well coming up soon after this an eight-minute presentation to juries i will try to get down to seven minutes i will allow for time i will allow for maybe i'm at the end of the day and the jury are just over it and they're gonna ruthlessly look at the time even though they're running late maybe like that's your cut-off time don't practice and suddenly get it down to nine minutes for eight minute presentation hoping somehow that minute
25:49
will evaporate three minutes yep three minutes good five is luxury and really at the university level i think i think that's plenty ah because it's so many people would have to turn through so many people and you you will be rewarded for that for the clarity of thought the jurors will have a sigh of relief and be like this person has really thought about process they've given it a red hot crack that's what you're actually getting assessed on it's not the quality of building but the
26:19
quality of your process and don't forget the presentation is you're not selling it you're opening up a conversation about the project to orientate people to sort of understand what is it about the project that's actually worthwhile and so they will ask if it's captivated enough they will ask questions and it would lead to more discussions on your project so you know you don't need to have to script everything it's just that get those time right and then move on and so that it will
26:49
just come naturally so you know we're not talking about so much the actual graphical skills and all those things in presentation because there are some great channels that do that for example show it better and upstairs they do really good stuff so you know great but the mindset of thinking about the presentation as a package yep that we needed to talk about [Music] hecklers endless hecklers yeah designing start sketching out your presentation now which is still designing yeah go on
27:31
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