Created by Carleton University architecture student Odessa Boeham, this drawing was one of over 400 pieces submitted to the school?s annual Director?s Project drawing competition. Odessa Boeham?s drawing, which won a $1,000 Murray & Murray Prize in the competition, describes the story of 2020 through a ?billowing smoke cloud.? She writes that ?it also expresses the ending of the old world with the hope for a new beginning.?
Ten years ago, on my first day of architecture school, I walked into a lecture hall filled with Apple laptops?something I could not afford?and felt an overwhelming sense of inadequacy. I asked myself: do I belong here"
This was perhaps my first encounter with how privileged the underpinnings of both the education and profession of architecture really are. I had stepped into a profession that took pride in its students flying to Europe to intern for renowned architects for no pay?and then celebrated this fact upon seeing it on their resumes. This idea of ?success? contributed to a culture of competitiveness in the school, which, along with a primarily Western, Eurocentric bias to theory and practice, would have a lasting impact on my architectural education. On completing my undergraduate degree in architecture at the University of Waterloo, I had not yet reconciled the education I had received with my path forward to become an architect. I realized that I lacked a meaningful relationship to architecture. Yearning for this connection, I began ...