Cambridge Architecture Interview Questions and Mock Interviews

A photograph shows the end wall of a small timber-clad house beside the sea. The boards under the wide roof overhang are still a warm honey colour. The boards lower down, facing the wind and rain, have turned silver-grey, and the lowest row, near the ground, is dark and stained. What is the photograph telling you about the weather and about the building? Was something done wrong, or could the architect have planned this? How would you design the wall differently, or choose to leave it alone?

A town decides that its new fire station should look unmistakably like a fire station, with big red doors and a tall tower, while its new library may look like anything. Is that a sensible rule? Should the outside of a building tell you what happens inside? Argue the case for and against, and then say where you land.

An architect designs a house with bare white walls, a bare concrete floor and no shelves, meaning every room to look calm and empty. The family who buy it paint the walls yellow, hang pictures everywhere and fill the rooms with furniture. Has the house been spoiled, or finished? Who is the real author of a lived-in building?

A new glass extension is to be added to the back of an old stone market hall. One group says it should copy the stone and the arches so that it blends in. Another says it should look clearly new. Which would you defend, and what does your answer assume about what makes the old hall worth keeping?

Can a building be good architecture if nobody involved cared how it looked? Think of a bus shelter, a substation or a warehouse that you can picture. Argue that it can, then argue that it cannot, and say what, if anything, would have to be added for it to count.

Is a city better when it is planned all at once, on paper, or when it grows bit by bit over a long time? Argue one side as strongly as you can, using a street, district or town you know or can imagine, and then say what the other side would reply.

A government builds its offices behind a broad flight of steps, tall stone columns and an empty paved plaza with no seats. Another builds low, with a cafe on the ground floor open to the street and no steps at all. What might each building say about how its government sees the public? Could the same building be read in different ways by different visitors?

A council says its new pedestrian square has made the town centre busier. As proof it shows two photographs: one of the old street on a wet Tuesday morning last winter, and one of the new square on a sunny Saturday afternoon this summer. What can the photographs show, and what can't they? What would you measure instead to test the council's claim, and how?

You have to record, in a single drawing, how a small public square is used between breakfast and lunch. You may add labels but no sentences. What would you put in the drawing, what would you leave out, and where would you stand to draw it? What could a viewer learn from your drawing that a single photograph might not show?

Imagine standing outside an old stone farmhouse. The front window on the left is much bigger than the others. A vertical line runs from roof to ground in the wall, where the colour and size of the stones change. A tall chimney stack is attached to one end of the house, as if it was added afterwards. What can you work out about the building's history from these clues, and what could you not settle by looking at the outside alone?

A brochure claims that its brick houses stay warmer in winter than timber-framed houses. Before you believed it, what would you want to find out? Describe a fair way to test the claim, saying what you would keep the same between the houses, what you would measure, and what might still fool you.

A friend says the clock tower in the middle of town is exactly twice as tall as the front of the town hall is wide. You are not allowed to climb anything, and you have no instruments except a long piece of string, a short stick and a notebook. How could you check the claim, and how sure could you be of your answer?

Imagine the passenger lift had never been invented, so every building had to be reached on foot by stairs or ramps. Reasoning from what you know of how cities and homes are used, how would the height of buildings, the places people choose to live and the shape of city centres be different today? What would stay the same?

Suppose the main street of a market town you know had been built twice as wide as it is now. Using what you have seen on streets of different widths, what would be different about the traffic, the shops, the noise and the feel of the place? Would anything be better?

What if, by law, every new building in your region had to be made only from materials that come from within fifty kilometres of its site? Reasoning from the buildings you know, how would houses and public buildings differ from place to place, and what would become harder to build?

Suppose every roof in Britain had to be flat by law. Using what you know of rain, snow, wind and building materials, what would change in the way buildings are built and looked after, and what would you notice walking down an ordinary street? Could flat roofs ever be an advantage?

Choose a piece in your portfolio that you are least happy with. What went wrong, what did you learn from it, and what would you do differently if you started again?

Think of a building you have been inside that surprised you. What did you expect before you went in, and what did you find? Which of your senses told you the most about the space: sight, sound, touch, smell or something else?

Tell us about a book, film, exhibition or place that changed how you look at the spaces around you. What do you notice now that you did not notice before?

Pick a piece of your own work where the material most shaped the result, such as a model, a photograph, a painting or a sculpture. If all your work is drawing, pick the piece where the paper, pencil or ink most shaped the outcome. How did you choose the material, and in what ways did it resist what you wanted to do? What did you learn from making it that you could not have learned from planning it alone?

A developer wants to build twelve new homes on a plot of waste ground. The only way to keep a large old oak tree in the middle of the plot is to build two fewer homes. Who should decide, and what should be weighed? Would your answer change if homes in the area were very hard to find?

A school building from the middle of the last century is draughty and needs a great deal of energy to heat. It could be repaired and upgraded, or knocked down and replaced by a new building that would use far less energy each year. How would you compare the two choices for the climate? What other things besides energy should be weighed?

A town centre replaces its benches with ones that have a central armrest, so nobody can lie along them. The council says this keeps seating available for people who want to sit. Who does this design help, and who does it push out? Whose responsibility is it when a design makes a public space less welcoming for some people: the architect's, the council's or someone else's?

An architect is asked to design a block of flats. The client wants as many flats as possible on the plot, which means that some flats on the lowest floors would get almost no direct daylight. The architect can comply, push back or walk away. What should they do, and what does an architect owe to residents who are not yet there and who will never meet them?