Student Survival Guide

We kicked off the week with a Monday morning meeting to discuss our past week’s and future place for work. For me this meant finishing off most of my research for the University of Birmingham student survival guide including data collection for the Arts and Crafts movement and how its architectural influence can be found in Selly Oak, Edgbaston, Harborne and Bournville.

The University’s own Winterbourne House and Gardens is an example of how this movement impacted the architecture that surrounds us today. Bournville is perhaps the most obvious example of this movement however, with the main architect William Harvey Alexander designing the whole model village in the style. Furthermore, I began to gain an understanding of how the movement came about and began to influence design and architecture and as it turns out Birmingham was one of the starting places for this movement, which perhaps explains why we see such a lot of its influence.

On a completely different note I began to research the different student residences in the area to give me an idea of what options students have when choosing where they want to live. Student accommodation or private housing may be a tough choice for some! In addition, I have decided the survival guide will include a small section on how to sort out bills in private housing as no one ever seems to be taught this in school! We know how to do quadratic equations but we don’t know how to set up a water bill!.

Finally, this week saw me moving into drafting sections for the actual survival guide… nearly gone are the days where I would sit trying to find a very obscure statistic about Bournville that nobody can provide for me.