where you doing your summer placement? How did you get it?
Im at a smallish practice in Lincolnshire , around 10 employees. i got the placement through knowing a friend whod worked for the practice before on their year out, and then sent my cv in, then being invited for interview, where i showed them a few bits from my portfolio. Theres another guy who is wokring the summer there as well who did much the same thing.
Basically my advice from what ive seen, is to send cvs around and if you get invited for an interview, bring a few bits of portfolio, but proly the most important thing is CAD skills. Once youve learnt autocad, or similar package (like vectorworks, microstation etc) most practices would definitely be more receptive to you. The pay isnt partciaulrly amazing, but the expereince is worth it.
In my time there, I am drawing up new buildings in cad, making 3d models of them in sketchup and putting together design statements. Many other tasks inlclude amendments to plans, drawing building regulations details, site meetins, client meetings, researching (precedents and materials), and phoning / chasing engineers/ planning dept. I certainly learnt a lot about the design process and planning dept procedures in a short space of time. As said earlier, university does not prepare you at all for office/practice life, its at best, a stepping stone to it. In practice, buildigns have to be designed for the real world, and many compromises will be made as a result of that. Ive found that architects go to a lot more meetings and are on the phone a lot more thatn i ever thought. its about c-ordinating the different groups of people, (client/engineer/planning dept/builders etc etc) and keeping them all in the loop and relatively happy!
Mainly during a placement you will mainly be drawing up cad details and doing winodw/door schedules in the larger practices. even in smaller practices you will be expected to know cad, and sketchup is useful too. Having said that , cad is not to hard to pick up , you should be able to get up to speed in a week or so in practice.
If you are a year out placement , the amount of design work you will actaully do will vary, and usually in smaller pratices you will have much more design input and perhaps a small project of your own to manage.
Its all about seeking out practices that you admire the work of, websites are usually the first port of call for researching where you might like to work. beware of "architectural design studios" and "building design studios" becuase they might not be RIBA accredited, and the term 'architect' is professionally protected so anyone not registered with RIBA/ARB cannot legally call themselves an architect or use architect(s) in their company name.
erm ok, ive written much more than i set out to, so if youve read through all that and still got more questions then feel free to ask, ill try to answer them lol
