The clock strikes 5 a.m. and the students of the School of Architecture are still awake, still slaving away on their studio projects. Right about now, a hard wooden bench becomes the ideal place to fall asleep.

DesignIntelligence, a company that awards prestigious rankings to Architecture and Design schools, ranked the Syracuse University School of Architecture undergraduate program No. 2 in the nation. The students in the five-year program prove the school is deserving of its status by working day and night.

In an average day, Stefan Kaiser, a second-year architecture major, wakes up at around 8:30 a.m. By 9:30 a.m. he arrives at his first architecture class of the day. His day carries on routinely through his classes. He returns back to the architecture studio as the sun begins to set, where he will stay until 2 a.m. on a typical night.

Four hours a day, three days a week, architecture students must attend their studio class.

‘You’re never supposed to miss one,’ Kaiser said. ‘Not only do we have our studio class, but toward the end of the semester, basically there will be people in the studios 24/7.’

During his freshman year, Kaiser stayed up for 80 hours straight by pulling three consecutive all-nighters to finish his studio final project.

‘It was the hardest I’ve ever worked and the least amount of sleep I’ve ever gotten,’ he said. ‘When you work so hard on something, you really put yourself into the project. A lot of effort, time and yourself goes into it, and it all comes down to your actual presentation.’

Kaiser presented his final project to guest critics that included architects from Cornell University and the SU School of Architecture.

Toma Berlanda, assistant professor in the School of Architecture, said the way each individual tackles their workload is their own responsibility and this is not something they stop thinking about.

‘You don’t say, ‘OK, I’m turning off my brain at 5 p.m.,” Berlanda said. ‘One is constantly enrolled in it, it’s not quantifiable in terms of hours or days, it’s a passion, either one wants to deal with it or they don’t. It’s not required to put in the hours but its expected that the effort to put in the design is constant.’

But the constant workload comes with some territory.

Luke Lanciano, a sophomore political science major, was the roommate of an architect student during his freshman year. He said his roommate was never hanging around the dormitory like the rest of the guys on the floor.

‘It was difficult because I never got to hang out with him,’ Lanciano said. ‘He definitely had to make sacrifices, especially during finals week when all the architecture kids seem to just not even sleep. I wanted to have the freshman experience with my roommate, but it was a little frustrating because his major is just so hard.’

Laciano is not the only roommate of an architecture student to feel this way. Hali Stark, a junior sport management major, said that sometimes she will be awake until 3 a.m., around the same time her roommate arrives home.

Last semester, Stark was leaving Syracuse at 5 a.m. to catch a flight. Just as she was leaving, her roommate, Jen Zachon, had just returned from the studio. Events like that are not rare for Zachon and Stark.

‘Last weekend, one night we all went out and Jen still had work to do,’ Stark said. ‘There have been times that we have begged her to come out, but she just has too much work to do.’

Stark said she doesn’t think she could handle the workload that many of the architecture students encounter. Her roommate, Zachon, said that she spends about 35 hours a week outside of class working on architecture-related assignments, and most architecture students take 18 credits each semester.

Zachon said that after three years of hard work, she has learned some techniques to prevent all-nighters. ‘Through doing work you realize better ways to do things, which makes you work faster,’ Zachon said. ‘You learn to manage your time better. You want to sleep, you want to get your work done, so you take less breaks and work a little harder.’

During Shaun Selberg’s freshman year, he experienced five consecutive days of getting less than three hours of sleep. The current second-year architecture major said that in addition to those nights, he pulled around 10 all-nighters throughout the first year.

‘Some people definitely did 20 all-nighters,’ Selberg said. ‘During finals week the building livens up. Right now, it depends on what projects you are working on, but the final couple of weeks are serious times when the whole school is filled with people all hours of the day.’

Though the architecture students could be sleeping, hanging out with friends or going to parties instead of working on their projects in Slocum Hall, they know the work they are doing now will pay off in the long run.

Kaiser said that when SU architecture students graduate, it seems that with their classroom experience they should be able to take a test to become an architect, pass it and open up their own firm. But without work experience, that becomes hard to do. He said most people work at an already-established firm after graduation to get work experience.

Selberg came to SU planning on continuing the lifestyle he had in high school. He used to go running in his free time, but when he began taking his architecture classes and working in the studio he realized that his major and the work he was doing was more important.

‘I’ve made these choices and they are worth it,’ he said. ‘Choosing an education over hanging out and watching TV like other college students, yeah, I’m giving up things I love to do, but in return finding something else I love to do.’

rltoback@syr.edu

Published on January 27, 2010 at 12:00 pm