Work Experience
Posted on February 19, 2020
This year, as a part of the school’s work experience program, I was given the opportunity to intern at an architecture firm. Although the work experience program only lasts for a week, the following story chronicles my journey and the extension of this amazing opportunity to two weeks. In my choices for internship options, I settled upon engineering and law. While contemplating journalism as my third choice, my parents suggested architecture. Initially, I was skeptical as I had never before considered working in architecture. After asking older students, I was told that journalism wasn’t the best option for an internship. Therefore, I selected architecture as my third choice. To my surprise, I received an internship from an architecture firm known as Concept International Design, or Concept I. After my initial disappointment, I decided to keep an open mind.
My first impressions of the office were nothing like I had imagined. I envisioned architecture to be dull and therefore pictured an office with drab colors and disinterested people not interacting with each other. To my amazement, I walked into a tastefully colored and decorated office where people were constantly interacting, even during breaks. When I was introduced to them, they were all passionate about their work and the company. We (my classmate Liam and I) were taken to a long desk with three other people, who introduced themselves as college interns. We were introduced to our task, which was to make presentation drawings for the three major projects the company was taking on. Essentially, they required us to do some basic site analysis in terms of weather, sunlight, precipitation, and wind throughout the year to see if there were any problems with the design. We were each assigned a project. The college interns focused on the Mesa project in Antalya, Turkey, Liam did the Citystars project in Cairo, Egypt and I got the Giants on the Quayside project in Newcastle, England.
Almost immediately, I ran into a roadblock. In the preliminary presentations for the projects, there was no address or indication of the location of my project. Mesa and Citystars were renovation projects for existing malls, but mine was an entirely new project. The person in charge was away on a business trip, so despite my inquiry, nobody else could tell me. Determined to continue my task, I decided to take a different approach to find the location. I looked more closely at the presentation drawings and noticed that the site was at an intersection of two branches of a river. There were still many different locations that had this characteristic in Newcastle. I realized that the project would have to be near a quay from the project name, so more research led me to the Quayside neighborhood, where I noticed only one location following the shape of the building and met the other requirements. Later on, I found out that the location I had determined was actually the correct one and received a lot of praise from my superiors.
At the end of the first day, we had finished the preliminary drawings and showed them to our internship supervisor. Although he praised our research skills, he told us that we had made templates rather than presentations. According to him, it was not our fault as school presentations had taught us to focus on the content. He explained that in the world of architecture, aesthetics and content were of equal importance. Although we had delivered relevant content, the Google Slides templates would look sloppy and unprepared to their discerning client. We tried again the next day by polishing the presentations and were applauded in the next meeting for our quick adaptation in terms of aesthetic presentation.
In this meeting, we were shown different diagrams and asked to interpret and evaluate them. I received one which had writing that was much too small, making it hard to read. Undeterred, I still did my best to interpret it without knowing the purpose of the diagram. I concluded that the diagram predicted the circulation of people in the spaces of a prospective project. The CEO, who was passing by at the time, asked me my age and told me that I was a “future rocket scientist” for reaching my level of interpretation at first glance without prior knowledge of that type of diagram. I was over the moon at the praise coming from the CEO. We continued to have daily meetings with our supervisor for feedback on our progress. By the time we had essentially readied the presentation diagrams and other research for the client presentations, one week was over and school was ending. I really wanted to continue working as I felt that one week was not enough to learn all I could from the internship. I asked my supervisors if I could stay for another week and was told that I could, to my delight.
For my second week, we went further by looking at physical design strategies, which were ways to implement solutions to the flaws we found through the presentation diagrams for each project. We were asked to research green development, sustainability, materials, and other factors that could contribute to making a project “green,” or as I’ve seen fit to call it, “greener.” Although I have studied sustainability in school before, some of this information was much more complex than what I was used to interacting with. To explain some of the basics of planning physical design strategies, I was given a series of lectures that discussed sustainability as a concept and, among other things, gave a brief explanation of the analysis that is required to establish the “greenness” of a project.
For the Citystars project, our group found that the changes in the weather in Cairo made heating and air conditioning costly and wasteful due to temperature extremes. Therefore, we had to find cost-effective insulators that minimized energy loss the most. When the college interns listed materials to control the temperature in Citystars, I picked up on clay. I remembered something my grandmother had told me a long time ago about a red clay pot (known as a handi) she had. I had asked her why red clay was so great and she told me that red clay was a really good insulator. If you applied heat to it, the pot and its contents would stay hot for a good deal of time. The same principle worked with cold. I explained this principle and asked about the possibility of using red clay as the insulator, citing that less energy would be needed to heat and cool the building. The supervisors said they would look into it and thanked me for the idea. I felt that I was contributing meaningfully and enjoyed the fact that I was heard despite my age and lack of experience.
Besides all of the work, I tried to find other ways to gain information about architecture because I wanted a more well-rounded view of the field. During breaks, the college interns taught me how to use applications to create renderings such as 3D Max and SketchUp, techniques to convey more information through diagrams, how to draw architectural drawings, showing me their projects from college, and telling me about studying architecture locally and overseas, the branches of architecture, such as interior design, landscape architecture, etc. This gave me a perspective on the road I would have to take to get to a company such as Concept I. I began to view architecture as a potential field of study which I could explore in the future. The second week flew by, and by the time we finished the physical design strategies, it was time to say goodbye to the firm. On the final day of my internship, the CEO unexpectedly came to see me. He thanked me for my good work and told me I had set the bar high for other interns by staying for an extra week and doing extra work. He told me that the firm would like to have me back if I wanted to continue my internship in the future. This surprised me, gratified me, and further encouraged me to consider architecture as a field of study.
At the end of the two weeks, my experiences taught me a great deal. Within architecture, I learned knowledge and skills. In terms of knowledge, I picked up how to analyze and present a site, portray information in and glean information from diagrams and other presentations, using applications and techniques with which to accomplish both tasks, and the list goes on. However, I also found myself developing skills that were equally important at work compared to the knowledge I gained. I had to be resourceful and think flexibly to find ways around problems. I had to examine the aesthetics of my work, not only the content. I used presentation and analytical skills when presenting my work or meeting with my superiors and colleagues. This learning was priceless, which I could not have learned in any other way but hands-on experiences.
Outside of architecture, I began to understand what office life could be like. I experienced meetings, interactions with colleagues, presentations and office hours, among other things. I went out with the college interns for lunch every day and hung out with them during breaks. I experienced really eating Thai street food for the first time. I had never done that before for fear that I would get sick or that I would not be able to identify foods I cannot eat. I was pleasantly surprised at the diversity and deliciousness of true Thai food and slightly ashamed that I had never attempted eating Thai street food before, even though I have been in this country for a little while now. Funnily enough, the commutes also taught me something. In the morning, it would take me about 35 minutes to get to work, but when I came home, it could take up to an hour and a half. Usually, I avoid having to travel during rush hour, when everything is crowded. Now, I had to experience it firsthand. I would get home exhausted, unwilling to do any other work. Once, on the MRT, the train was delayed by 40 minutes. Although that was frustrating, I now understood that this was something I would likely have to face in the future and that I had to prepare accordingly.
With this experience, I can now consider the possibility of working in an office. I expected to be working at a desk all day at monotonous tasks, but I did the exact opposite at Concept I. In fact, I really enjoyed working in an office with colleagues and would gladly do something similar in a future job. I can also consider working in the field of architecture. I initially had my doubts, but I enjoyed the work I had to do and would consider pursuing it as a career. In short, I am extremely grateful for the opportunity, sure that I now know much more about architecture and working in an office, and hopeful that I can have other, similar experiences in the future.
In school, we are taught academic subjects and skills relevant to tasks at hand. In practice, in the real world, I saw the interconnectedness and collective use of skills and knowledge that may have originated from different disciplines at different points in time. Accessing prior knowledge and skills as required in a practical situation gave me a sense of fulfillment and success. This was also noticed by my superiors, showing me that fields are not always reliant on specialized knowledge. To make a mark in a field, innovative solutions can be found by accessing a myriad of skills and knowledge that one might hold and creatively apply to the real world.