Personal Statement

个人陈述

Please mind me starting with a sentence which left me a deep impression. “You need to give creative people ample space and at the same time put them on a long lead. Managing creativity implies a willingness to bend the rules, make mistakes, accept unfinished ideas and to live with ambiguity and chaos.” This paragraph was said by Manfred Kets de Vries from the website of TU Delft, which wake my almost sleeping heart to pursue the career of architecture.

定义了创造力是什么。管理创造力意味着愿意改变规则、犯错、接受不完善的想法, 并接受模糊和混乱。引用了名人Manfred Kets de Vries的名言。

For me, Architecture not only refers to a kind of simple design, but also trying to develop creative and innovative building projects which regard design as a method to deal with technical, social and spatial challenges which we encountered in our life. Just like my final graduation project which can show my strong ability, it discovers and reforms a specific architecture form—Life architectural complex in Shahu Cultural centre in Wuhan. This kind of residential building is the main type of dwelling in modern Wuhan, and it is also called Nongtang in Shanghai, which can be regarded as the most symbolic culture to represent the history and culture of a city. However, with the tendency of economic and political globalization, increasingly more and more old architecture was replaced by residence community or high building. There is no denying that it would result in damaging traditional culture and traditional lifestyle. Therefore, my graduation project has realistic meaning for the protection and renovation of modern historic areas and the development of modern residence design with local characters of Wuhan.

提及了我的毕业设计。“它发现并改造了武汉沙湖文化中心“里分”建筑群的一种特定建筑形式。这种居住建筑是近代武汉的主要居住类型, 在上海又被称为弄堂, 可以说是代表一个城市历史文化中最具象征意义的文化。然而, 随着经济和政治全球化的趋势, 越来越多的旧建筑被住宅社区或高层建筑所取代。不可否认, 它会破坏传统文化和传统生活方式。因此, 我的毕业设计对于现代历史街区的保护与改造, 以及武汉特色现代住宅设计的发展具有现实意义。”

Based on the investigation and discovering of Lifen, my concept of design is to creatively combine the traditional architectural style with modern limited space, at the same time, to maintain the advantages of its character. Therefore we should make sure it have access to inner, while half open to outside, and also involves more people to take active part in it, what’s more important, it cannot be disturbed by surrounding environments, like square, road. By deeply discovering some architectural features of layout, construction, decoration, design, dwelling form, interns of architectural forms and material of this old architecture, we adopt the beam, pitched roof tile, and neat work into our reconstruction, which not only inherit the traditional character of old architecture, but also fuse surrounded environment, providing a more diversity insight. Namely, through designing periscope, external and internal can well be connected with each other. This design is more likely to the way of ancient Chinese garden choosing scenery, which can raise the interest of people.

进一步阐释了毕业设计的理念, 强调了我的设计思考。“我的设计理念是将传统建筑风格与现代有限的空间创造性地结合起来, 同时保持其个性的优势。”

If I have to explain why I choose Netherlands, especially TU Delft to continue my Architecture career, I would say there are mainly three reasons. First reason is that Netherlands is where my dream starts from. The first impression of Architecture on me was the amazing work from artist Piet Cornelies Mondrian, who is a famous neoplasticism artist in Netherlands. When I was still a freshman, my tutor assigned me a project that to convert the square graph from 2D to 3D, which can be the really interesting but tough for me. However, by doing that I found how wonderful and fantasy the architecture world is, and achieved outstanding design which originated from square graph. From that time onward, my great interest is guided by architecture, and I enjoyed too much in the designing process of architecture.

阐述了我为什么要在代尔夫特理工大学继续攻读建筑学的原因。首先, 提到了艺术家皮特·科内利斯·蒙德里安（Piet Cornelies Mondrian）的惊人作品，他是荷兰著名的新塑主义艺术家。并提及了自己大一时做过的一个将正方形图形从2D转换为3D的项目。

Secondly, for me, expanding my knowledge and skills cannot be the only reason for making an application for Master degree, I still want to specialize further in a particular area of the discipline. I know TU Delft has a very good reputation all over the world, it is said that TU Delft’s Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment holds a leading position in its field. At the same time, Delft pays a lot of attentions to the logicality and integrality of person’s profile. This is what I am trying to improve, because in my last work, I tend to convey the spirit and connotation of architecture to the public by focusing on some important details, sometime it makes me forget to take the elements of integrality and integration into account. Thus I need to make up the deficiency to improve my comprehensive ability. Ps: I know the major architectural in Delft is not called Architectural Faculty, It has a very interesting name which called BK City.

第二个原因是“我知道代尔夫特大学在世界各地都有很好的声誉，据说代尔夫特的建筑和建筑环境学院在该领域处于领先地位。同时，代尔夫特也非常注重人物形象的逻辑性和完整性。这就是我试图改进的地方，因为在我的上一部作品中，我倾向于通过关注一些重要的细节向公众传达建筑的精神和内涵，有时这会让我忘记考虑完整性和整合的元素。因此，我需要弥补不足，以提高我的综合能力。”本段突出了学校的优势，以及学校的教育如何能弥补自己的不足。

Thirdly, figuring out the practical problems is also another reason for me to choose TU Delft. In the process of architectural design, the architectural forms and architectural styles of Netherlands have a huge influence on me, offering me a lot of valuable inspiration. Nowadays, among all the work by the talented artists and architect, which inspired me most is the architecture office like OMA, MVRDV. I found a very funny situation that there are many architectures can creatively use design methods to solve social and living environment. It reminds me of some difficult questions which have existed in China for a long time, such as China traditional garden, which is urgently needed to be protected by public. However this kind of situation was still not solved. As a result, as an architect in China, only to rich my architectural theories and understand the comprehensive design system is not enough, I think we have responsibilities to skillfully utilize some advanced design methods to solve existed problems, and can be technically trained by professionals who can develop and implement metropolitan solutions.

第三，解决实际问题也是我选择代尔夫特的另一个原因。荷兰的建筑形式和建筑风格对我产生了巨大的影响，给了我很多宝贵的灵感，譬如OMA、MVRDV等建筑办公室。另外，中国长期以来建筑业存在的一些难题，比如中国传统园林，它迫切需要得到公众的保护。因此， 我希望学成以后在这个方面做出贡献。

Last but not least, as a talented student of architecture, with consistently study in Fine Arts University, I always try to push myself to be better and better in the field of architecture, which makes me closer to my goal and dream. And also in the profile of your website, it says the mission of your faculty is to educate students to become excellent architectural engineers: from building technologists and urbanists to architects, landscape architects, real estate experts and geodata specialists, working at both national and international levels. This is also my dream to possess knowledge of the latest developments in the field of architecture and the built environment which holds a strong promise for future.

最后, 再次陈述了自己的优势, 提到了学校的使命如何与自己的目标相契合。比如你们学院的使命是教育学生成为优秀的建筑工程师：从建筑技术专家和城市规划专家到建筑师、景观设计师、房地产专家和地理数据专家等等。而这也是我的梦想。

点评:

总之，这是一篇非常不错的PS。不仅阐述了自己对建筑的认识，而且介绍了自己的毕业设计，突出了自己的能力。本篇PS尤其值得称道的是其why school部分，从多个方面解释了自己为什么想去目标学校。主要是四个方面：1. 对荷兰的向往和熟悉；2. 代尔夫特大学良好的声誉以及先进的设计理念；3. 代尔夫特能帮助自己解决实际问题；4. 代尔夫特的使命与自己的一致。why school这个部分的写作方法非常值得我们借鉴。