Want to take some online architecture courses. Where is a good place? Willing to pay.

September 27, 2009 1:03 AM

Want to take some online architecture courses. Where is a good place? Willing to pay.

I have another 9 months or so before I start an intensive graduate architecture masters program. I would like to take the time out to take courses to prep myself before I dive in, since my first year will be an intensive program before I start my masters courses (I do not have a bachelor degree in architecture). Anyone know any places I can start taking courses online? I live in a place where there are nowhere close by at all to take courses locally. Plus my work schedule does not allow for it. I found this site called Red Vector, are the courses their legit? They charge about $450 per course.

posted by willy_dilly to education (4 comments total)

Not sure if any of them will be advanced enough to suit your needs, but check out the ones on iTunes U.
posted by doctor.dan at 3:06 AM on September 27

The best source for this kind of thing in technical fields is MITOpenCourseWare. Absolutely free.
posted by megatherium at 4:01 AM on September 27

I think you might be best determining the skills you need one by one and tracking them down, rather than trying to find courses to prepare you overall. I'm in my final two years of an architecture programme, and if I were trying to prep for it, I'd go two routes: developing software skills, and reading everything I can about history, theory and current media in architecture - maybe about materials and technologies too if that excites you.

Software:
- CAD (or BIM) software will help a lot, as the more comfortable you are with it, the faster you'll work. Anecdotally, I find that being able to use any CAD program makes it fairly painless to learn another (I'm learning my fourth - Vectorworks - at the moment), so it doesn't matter enormously if your first isn't the best fit for you/your school/your future employer.
- Digital modelling and rendering might be optional or necessary, depending on your school's culture - SketchUp has a gentle learning curve, Rhino/Blender/Maya/3ds Max will be a bit steeper.
- Photoshop is pretty vital (although glancing at your posting history, I bet you're ok there), InDesign will be very useful, and the rest of the Adobe suite depending on your needs.

For the above, I'd do lynda.com courses where available (AutoCAD is there, for one), and just put time into the software. CAD courses are generally priced at professional levels elsewhere, and unless the need is urgent, I'd learn through help files, tutorials or a training book, because practising on sample projects (trace a map, survey and draw up your home, anything) and putting in the time is the big thing.

As for reading, see if you can track down lists for courses (MIT OpenCourseWare might be handy here), and then jump off and follow strands that interest you. A university library is useful but I've found a lot of non-monograph books used on Amazon Marketplace and Powells, pretty inexpensively.

If you search the Archinect forums, you'll probably find threads about this. pushpullbar is different but also excellent and worth exploring if you haven't before.
posted by carbide at 4:08 AM on September 27 [1 favorite]

Boston Architectural College has a bunch of online offerings but isn't cheap.
posted by glibhamdreck at 8:52 AM on September 27