RIBA South/South East’s Student Mentoring Scheme – Anna Malicka

Stage 3 – BA (Hons) Architecture

1st meeting

The first meeting with our mentor took place in the UCA on Thursday 14 November. After the group talk to all participants of the programme each of the mentees had chance to talk to their assigned mentors.

My mentor is an architect based in a London architects firm. He seemed to be very excited to work with us as he used to have external mentors whilst he was a student and thought it was a very valuable experience. He showed us the project that he was currently working on in Camden, London. He brought with him a lot of drawings of the construction starting from general room plans and finishing on the design of tiny details like the sockets. We were overwhelmed by the number of drawings that were drawn only the one family house. I knew before that the work we do at University is only a tiny part of the ‘real-life’ projects. However, this exceeded all my expectations.

Our mentor made a great impression on me and I know I will learn a lot from him.

2nd meeting

We arranged the second meeting two weeks later in the London office. Despite the fact that we had to get the very early train to London, and I’m not used to getting up so early, I was very excited for the upcoming meeting.

First impressions of the office was that it was of average size. We were introduced to the whole team and our mentor explained the role of each individual working at the practice. Then he gave us a quick tour around the office. I quite liked the idea of storing samples of materials so that every time you design something or describe your ideas to the client you can use them. Afterwards, our mentor took us to his desk and showed us other projects they do. It was very fascinating to see real projects from conceptual drawings to the photographs of them being realised and inhabited.

I felt that the most interesting part of the visit was about the everyday life of an architect and things they have to deal with that are not necessary connected with architecture. Our mentor told us that he never spends a whole day on designing as he has a lot of different things to do that we’re not taught at school. He showed us that with the exception of CAD and Photoshop we also have to become familiar with other programmes we wouldn’t necessarily have expected to use. For instance, they have to use Excel all the time to keep track of the costs, expenses and earnings of the project. Also he showed us that there are a lot of publications that we can read while struggling with the legal and contractual procedures.

Later we went to the construction site of the house we were told about on our first meeting. The house is located in Camden and is nearing completion. However, the final finishing work is still going on and is due to be completed in spring 2014, with the practice refurbishing and redesigning the whole thing. It was very exciting to see the building after seeing the drawings beforehand. We’ve also now met the owner of the house and the lady told us that it’s a shame we didn’t see the house in the state they purchased it in as it has already changed dramatically. Our mentor promised us that he will show us the pictures as they record every stage of the project. Some parts of the building were built from scratch, for example a beautiful sculptural staircase which will become a central and focus point of the house. I liked it a lot. We were shown some interesting details and were told a couple of stories about the construction of the property.

After the site visit we went to the nearby café to talk about what we had just seen and got to ask any questions that we had. Our mentor spoke in more detail about his experience of first starting in practice and gave us a lot of great tips and advice for the future. The next meeting is arranged for after Christmas break.