I wanted to take this opportunity now that my uni semester is officially over to talk about my experiences in the workplace for the first time.

Now, I took this internship study opportunity to give myself industry experience before graduating and I think I've gotten more than just that. I’m continuing to work for Eco Effective Solutions as an intern to optimise my experience and am lucky that my supervisor has agreed to be my mentor.

About the Role and the Company

Eco Effective Solutions (EES) is a design, research and consulting organisation founded inn 2009 by Mark Thomson. The company is committed to ecologically sustainable development and education of the community to minimise adverse environmental impacts. Their vision aims to design, educate and demonstrate solutions which positively contribute to the environment.

My “End Game” so to speak is to utilise architectural and urban design solutions and practices in order to improve social issues and injustices. Architecture has the capabilities to make a significant impact on poverty, homelessness, climate change, education, healthcare and our sense of community. EES has a fundamental philosophy around sustainable and healthy design solutions which makes it the perfect place for me to study an internship as my own ethos and passion is embedded in healthy living.

Postion Title: Architectural and Urban Design Assistant

My role within EES is the provision and preparation of architectural and urban design documentation to contribute to existing office projects.

Internship Aims & Objectives

As this ultimately was a university subject I needed to create some aims and objectives going into the internship so my supervisor and myself knew what I was aiming for and in a way expecting from my role.

1. Learn how the design process develops as the contextual project requirements evolve

   • Gather an understanding of how EES integrates their design process through contextual project requirements (what is their design process, how is this evaluated, etc.)

   • Develop a way to evaluate communication skills as part of the design process

2. Improve my research skills and increase knowledge base as it relates to real-world projects and designs

   • Gather and evaluate in-depth information relating to real-world projects and designs from diverse and appropriate sources

3. Leverage my passion for graphic design and identify opportunities to extend those skills

   • Organise different graphic design opportunities available

My supervisor was provided a copy of my Proposed Role as recommended by the university, so he was able to understand my aims and objectives for the internship period.

Induction Reflection

I undertook my internship from home and consequently I only communicated with my supervisor in regards to tasks that needed completed or expectations, or anything really that was relevant to my role. When I had questions related to my internship and work or need to get new information, I simply emailed my supervisor. While emailing was the preferred method of communication, every fortnight my supervisor and I had a regular meeting at the Hope Cafe in South Brisbane to go over the work I’d completed within that fortnight and receive feedback and new projects with regular meetings held on Saturday mornings in an agreed upon location in South Brisbane.

My supervisor has a management style of the hands-off approach. This laissez-faire management system allows for my supervisor to delegate many tasks to his team while allowing them to get on with the jobs given. This style is beneficial as it allows for empowerment and fulfilment within the workplace while fostering creativity and innovation. As a result, I was required to be more responsible and committed to projects. This particular management style is perfect for me, especially as I completed my internship from home owing to the benefits identified before along with the availability for me to make mistakes along my experience in the workplace. As an individual I have a high level of passion, dedication and intrinsic motivation towards my work and this particular management style encouraged personal growth and autonomy giving me a different skill set I don’t necessarily would have been possible within a larger company.

Midway Review

The midway review meeting is a meeting that I had with my supervisor to discuss my original aims and objectives, strengths, improvements and general performance feedback. This meeting was done after 50 hours working for the company.

For my aims and objectives, my supervisor and I discussed each point and what I’ve learnt from the internship so far relating to them. We discovered that my aims and objectives were still relevant to my position and even though I had managed to address every point to some degree there is still more I could have been doing within them to push myself further. The main comment from my supervisor in relation to my aims and objectives that came up regularly was about benefit and value. He discussed how design opportunities are about the value you as a designer bring in order for someone else to reap the benefit. He focused on questions like “who controls this?”, “what is of interest to them?” “What is the outcome?” or “how can I produce an outcome?”. 

It was identified that my strengths are primarily in my researching, and subsequent interest for research development, and graphic design skills. My supervisor was able to see the graphic design skills specifically through the development of an office film in which he was thoroughly impressed with. He is excited for to see the graphical development for the research I’ve compiled through the research datasheet task he has set. To improve, my supervisor, wanted me to focus more on producing value from the work I’ve completed. We discussed how at times it was unclear which projects I’d been working on as I ask for limited feedback and wanted me to be more thorough with communication and producing tangible outcomes of my work. In hindsight, I realised more copying of my supervisor into communication with external companies would be beneficial for understanding what had been done.  

Summary of Reflective Learning

An example of a moment of reflection during the internship was when I needed to revisit some of my drawing components I’d forgotten to incorporate into my initial sketches. I needed to solid fill the cut lines and add relevant annotations to the drawings. This shifted my understanding as emerging practitioner as it really highlighted that I have a lot to learn still – this was a fairly simple mistake to have made more than anything, but I did quickly rectify the issue thankfully.  

Having discussed this with my supervisor, I was able to gauge from that conversation that a lot of the time in the industry it is the little things that can often be forgotten about or missed which he highlighted as a main reason communication and re-evaluating yourself is so important for architecture. This definitely shifted my expectations of the industry as I hadn’t necessarily thought that communication and reflection were major components of the job even if I knew collaboration was.

University to Industry Links

The two main skills from university I brought to the internship were my understanding of the design process and my technical drawing skills.

Within my studies, I’ve been taught that design is a process of wicked problems being solved through a nonlinear iterative. It’s been emphasised through both studying and working at Eco Effective Solutions that design is not done through ‘ABC’ step-like sequences but rather a complex flow (Lupton, 2011, p. 7).  Something that changed within my internship was being more understanding and willing to be agile in my own approach in order to figure out how to get solutions specifically with how to work with the architectural legislation and client’s constraints while innovating. 

Building sections remove part of the building revealing the cut section of an interior space. Cuts profiled with heavy lines while lines beyond the cut indicate interior elevation elements

(Yee, 2012, p. 139)

I’ve also needed to utilise my technical drawing skill particularly in the way of building sections. Building sections are relevant in showing configuration and scale of contained spatial relationships. I specifically was responsible for showing the configuration of a building in Brisbane City in order to demonstrate further how adjustments could be made in the future of sustainable practice. 

New Knowledge and Skills

During my internship at EES, I learnt new knowledge and skills relating to BIM, communication and visualisation. Despite having learnt a little of these skills in my studies my knowledge was severely limited, and my internship allowed me to gain greater perspective and experience that I will be able to take with me into the industry.

BIM (AutoCAD & Sketch-Up)

BIM is a process that architects and engineers use to design and construct buildings. It allows us to make digital 3D models of a building or space to represent how it looks and operates. There is a difference between BIM and softwares such as Revit, ArchiCAD, AutoCAD, or AllPlan in which BIM is the working system (Reyes, 2012). I have used Revit before as part of my studies and there were elements of this in my internship as well. However, the new skillset for me was learning AutoCAD and Google Sketch Up in relation to 3D modelling. I used these two programs for different projects. I was able to learn more about AutoCAD through my work on Charlotte Street with some of the drawings I completed. I was not expecting to have to use a program I was unfamiliar with so it was daunting however I believe having the practice of getting to know new software in a professional setting will be beneficial as you can never guarantee what a company may use. I also had a chance to model part of George Street in Sketch Up which highlighted the BIM capabilities of displaying complex spatial relationships especially as I was able to export the 3D model into Revit for an even more in depth analysis. 

Communication

As a divergent thinker, I often find it difficult to channel my thoughts in a way that makes me an effective communicator. As a result, I have learnt a significant about not only the importance of verbal communication in a field like architecture but also had a chance to develop this skillset for myself. In architecture, you’re always interacting with a variety of different people. It’s a collaborative field meaning clear and concise communication is important for people to understand expectations, design ideas and many other things to co-workers (Dutta, 2012). This point was stressed a lot by my industry supervisor and my skills developed through my fortnightly meetings with my supervisor. Within these meetings spent a lot of time talking through project work and I was provided with relevant feedback. I was also given the opportunity to reach out and contact potential contractors for one the project. I definitely did not expect to that happen within the internship however I am grateful I had that chance to refine my communication skills further and have an understanding of what its like working with people in the industry who aren’t necessarily architects.

Visualisation

As an architect visualisation refers to generating, retaining, retrieving and transforming structured visual images. This is important as it facilitates critical thinking and problem solving within a practical setting in relation to specific designs (Smith & Talley, 2018). In my internship I was given a task in which I needed to extrapolate the data from three different sections in order to recreate the roof plan of an existing building. I was given the information necessary and was given the task to create digital copies of the sections which I would need however I had never in my life had to determine a roof plan from what, at the time, felt like not enough information. Usually in classes we develop buildings from the ground up. We start with a plan, then create elevations, sections and details from that floor plan. However, with this particular task I was not given a floor plan of any kind, so I wasn’t entirely sure how to develop the roof plan. I did end up needing to ask for advice because it was completely new to me and my supervisor was happy to help me. Before my internship I don’t think I would have ever thought this was even possible but I think its really helped me understand architectural visualisation more and understood its importance to my industry.

~ Mackenzie

References

Dutta, A. A. (2012). Communication in Architecture. Designers Style International, 34-35.

Reyes, N. (2012). Building Information Modeling Benefits for Architecture and Construction. HMC Architects.

Scott, A. (2018, March 1). Lecture 1: What is Design? DEB101: Introducing Design. Brisbane: Queensland University of Technology.

Smith, S., & Talley, K. (2018). ‘‘Lend a Hand’’ Project Helps Students: Improved Spatial Visualization Skills Through Engaging in Hands-On 3-D Printed Prosthetics Project During a 9th Grade Engineering Course. Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER), 8(1), 41-54.

Yee, R. (2012). Chapter 4: Conventional Orthogonal Terminology. In R. Yee, Architectural Drawing: A Visual Compendium of Types and Methods (pp. 133-159). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.