Month 1 - Hello Blockchain

The Sndbox team have set a theme for each month of the Incubator program, with this month’s theme entitled “Hello Blockchain”. Over the coming month each member of the cohort has been tasked with (re)introducing themselves, their work and their aims to the rest of the program, and also to the wider community.

This is an exciting prospect, firstly I am looking forward to learning more about my fellow cohort, from only a few days of getting to know each other in the chatroom there appears to be several people with a background in architecture, and many other interesting individuals from other fields such as photography, music and writing (the list goes on). Secondly, until now CritDay has remained primarily anonymous. The platform has gained a reasonable following on Instagram, but the purpose and aims behind it have never been discussed in open forum, let alone anything about “the team” behind it. I hope sharing this information will give CritDay greater focus, direction and lead to more meaningful engagements.

Sndbox have started off the Incubator program by asking the cohort members five questions:

Rather than skim over these quickly in one post, my aim is to focus on each question in detail, giving a greater insight into CritDay and what drives the platform.

Question 1 - Who are you and what drives you to explore the blockchain world?

Let’s start first with who (what) is CritDay.

CritDay is a platform dedicated to sharing exemplary pieces of work from architecture students (and occasionally practices) from all over the world. Since the first post on Instagram in May 2015 the audience has consistently grown to become a source of inspiration and resources for students.

The journey of architecture school is not an easy one. Hours are spent perfecting drawings, considering context, satisfying the brief, hours and hours of hard work. The culmination of all this work is normally a crit/pinup/review, where the project is presented to a panel of tutors and/or professionals, within a university setting. CritDay opens up this process to celebrate the drawings, models and visuals produced by students, bringing the projects out of the university setting, and celebrating them on the CritDay platform.

CritDay works on a process of submission and curation to serve the purpose of sharing posts. Submissions to the platform are usually received in one of four ways (using #critday, tagging CritDay, sending a DM or via email). Anywhere from 50 to 100 submissions are received on a daily basis. These submission are then curatored, with roughly two to four posts a day. The aim of this process is to share the highest quality work, or projects which are unique, in order to inspire fellow architecture students.

Whilst Instagram has been the primary tool for sharing work to date, CritDay is also on Facebook and Twitter. The CritDay website (http://www.critday.com) is also a popular part of the platform, where Top 5 posts and guest articles draw considerable attention. I’m sure it goes without saying the intention is to expand CritDay to the Steem network.

CritDay is currently managed by founder Dan Bagnall. I’m an Architect from work the UK, working full-time in practice and running CritDay in my spare time. CritDay is about the fantastic work of students, rather than me so until now I have remained fairly anonymous. I find it hard to take credit for CritDay because to me it isn’t something I have created single handedly. Instead I see my role as a curator, identifying the best student work from around the work and sharing it with the growing community.

Why explore the blockchain world?

To me it is quite simple, blockchain is the future. It is clear that blockchain technology has potential to change the way financial, aviation, insurance (etc etc etc) institutions work but there is little conversation about blockchain and architecture (or the built environment).

As a practicing Architect I am interested personally on the impact blockchain can have on the design process, public engagement and construction. As the founder and curator of CritDay I am interested in using blockchain technology and platforms such as Steem to celebrate architectural education.

Thanks for reading.

Dan @ CritDay

Do you have an interest in architecture? Let’s start a conversation. Get in touch in the comments.