Charlotte has just undertaken a week of work experience at a local architecture practice in Hythe. The placement was offered to Charlotte after enrolling on the RIBA South-East mentoring scheme which is offered to Stage 3 Kent School of Architecture students.
Work Experience – Charlotte Earnshaw
I began the week by working on the same school scheme that I had been involved with on my previous visit to the practice to see the mentor I have been paired with on the student mentoring scheme. It was interesting to see how the scheme had developed and I was quite pleased that the areas I had been part of developing were working well within the overall scheme. Instead of developing the school further, I was given the task of planning out a small area of the site which was originally a school car park and playground space- the proposed area is due to become a housing estate of 15 units. I drew up the sketch scheme in CAD, a similar task to the one I did during my first visit. This task took several hours as various factors needed to be resolved.
Later in the week I moved onto a different housing project and took part in amending plans and elevation drawings, this project was due to meet a deadline on Friday so it was imperative that I worked efficiently and made use of the time wisely so that I was not hindering the development of the scheme by being slow. I feel that this experience was very important and I was able to put into context the importance of design flare accompanied by efficiency and ability to clearly and effectively communicate to other team members. I had been fortunate to work with a part 1 student in her year in industry during this design process which was helpful and I gained many useful tips during this process. I also used my knowledge of Photoshop and other display software to help layout sheets to be viewed at a large scale as presentation devices.
Large meetings were held throughout the week about the 2 projects I had been working with and further developments were made to both schemes, it was interesting to see the number of people required to be part of the process as I had not anticipated the importance of large meetings such as the ones held in these situations and have gained further understanding of the implication of time and money towards large scale developments of residential and educational developments.
In addition to the design work, I participated in mass tea/coffee making and A1 paper folding, both of which I am incredibly talented at!
By the end of the week I was feeling part of the team and was glad I had participated in a full week of mentoring rather than one singular day as it gave me a fuller insight into the general process of development. I am looking forward to a site visit on my third visit and am hoping to the see the school developments later in the year.