#practicepreviews

Hey everyone!

We are checking in from Chicago, where we started working at Studio Gang yesterday.  We actually got a head start on the experience and came up on Wednesday with our studio, Studio Louisville. On Thursday we got a tour of Studio Gang’s office, which is in the old Polish National Alliance building in Wicker Park. After the tour, we had a great work session in the office where we presented our research and preliminary concepts for the final project of the semester. On Friday we toured a number of Studio Gang’s projects including the Campus North Residential Commons at the University of Chicago, the Nature Boardwalk Lincoln Park Zoo, and the Eleanor Boathouse at Park 571.

After the tour, we checked out of the hotel we were staying in and into the apartment that we are renting while we are in Chicago. Over the weekend we both spent time exploring the surrounding neighborhoods and learning more about Chicago.

Yesterday was our first day as externs in the office. We are both working on different projects right now and really enjoying the work. There is such a diverse set of projects going on right now and it is an incredible opportunity to be able to be on the team and contributing for two weeks.

Two weeks in LA flew by. This was my fourth time participating in the practice previews program and my first experience working in LA. Griffin Enright Architects is an exceptional office that is currently focused on lots of high end residential housing projects. In the two weeks there it seemed that they had at least 7 projects working through construction and several others along the way. Because of this I was surprised at how small the office was. I arrived my first day expecting somewhere between 10-15 employees, but was warmly greeted by 3 full time employees, 1 part time intern along with Margaret Griffin and John Enright. This small office size made for a really wonderful experience as I was allowed a very personal vantage into the mechanics of the office and day to day activities.  

Because so many of the projects in the office are in the CD/CA phase I spent lots of time redlining drawings in cad. It had been a few years since drafting with xrefs so I spent some time getting re-acquainted with the process. It seems that much of the workflow involves generating ultra clean/controlled models withing Rhino then exporting out for high tolerance drafting into Autocad. There was also some work being done with VR and the Unreal engine in the office which seems to have replaced Maxwell as their primary form of rendering.

I found that the greatest difference between my experiences in New York offices and this one was the amount of trust the principals here place in young designers. All of the full time employees were around my age and had graduated from sciarc within the last few years. Because of this trust in young employees I found the office required individuals to work outside of their comfort zone and engage in tasks that they may have little experience with prior. After a few days working in the office it became apparent that anyone working there would be allowed to engage in a variety of architectural endeavors assisting in projects from their inception through construction. Certainly an exciting place to be for someone hungry for for real world experience. Both John and Margaret leave several afternoons a week to go to sciarc to teach. This appropriately keeps the office rooted within a progressive contemporary conversation while engaging in the politics of building high end residential architecture. The experience was unique, challenging, and refreshing. 

There were several excellent lectures happening while i was there. Tom Wiscombe gave a great lecture titled Objects Containers Worlds that sparked an interesting conversation between himself and Thom Mayne, and sciarc had their Drawings Conclusions Symposium where I was able to see Peter Eisenmann give a keynote. It was a nice departure from watching these people on youtube while working in studio.  Aside from the great office experience I was able to see some wonderful projects, eat some amazing food, and reconnect with old friends doing remarkable things in LA. 

-Thompson Burry

The University of Kentucky College of Design, School of Architecture has begun preparations for another exciting year of the Practice Previews Program. We are honored that many offices who have participated in the past are joining us again this year, thank you for the continued support! We have also added several new offices this year and continue to expand the opportunities afforded to our students in the School of Architecture.

Below you will find the list of participants for this year along with their office and destination city. They will be posting to the Practice Previews Tumblr and on social media so follow their journey and experiences. #practicepreviews

 Students Participating and Destination:

Owen Duross – Ball-Nogues, Los Angeles

Nick Michl – Brooks + Scarpa, Los Angeles

Jennifer Bui – Bureau Spectacular, Los Angeles

Oliver Hidalgo – D.A. Project, Tomsk (Russia)

Vanessa Vidal – Exkew+Dumez+Ripple, New Orleans

Rachel Jackson – GRADE, New York City

Thompson Burry – Griffin Enright, Los Angeles

Katie Halsey – HOK, Kansas City

Chris Westfall – Iwamoto Scott, San Francisco

Dalton Wharff – John Ronan Architects, Chicago

Natalie May – Leong-Leong, New York City

Freddy Maggiorani – Leong-Leong, New York City

Thomas Kirk – LTL Architects, New York City

Carlos Robledo – Morphosis Architects, New York City

Tanner Smith – NMDA (Neil Denari), Los Angeles

Thomas Lanham – Oyler Wu Collaborative, Los Angeles

Irvin Shaifa – Oyler Wu Collaborative, Los Angeles

Alexis Peneff – PATTERNS, Los Angeles

Travis Spears - Perkins Eastman, New York City

Zachary Martin – SHoP, New York City

Shelby Carpenter – Skylab, Portland

Sommer Cade – SO-IL, New York City

Chris Redomon – Synthesis Design + Architecture, Los Angeles

Demetrius Edwards Jr. – Urban Lab, Chicago

Olivia Winn – Urban Lab, Chicago

Addison Mullions – West of West, Portland

MOS // Sarah Wagner

It’s been a week since leaving MOS, but I could not be more glad to have been provided with the experience of working in such a fantastic firm if even for a short period of time. Included are some images from my time in the office, of both where we would work long hours on complex drawings and of the shop space tucked away into the basement of the building. While I didn’t spend time in the shop during my short externship, I feel that it gives a more complete image of the space and values of the team working there. Fabrication is central to their design processes, and even as I was working on drawings for the Venice Biennale, others were prototyping and then immediately manufacturing in-house doorstops for an apartment project. The demanding pace of the office requires rapid process of designing, building, and redesigning to happen often in the course of a single workday, and their small shop is crucial to that workflow.

I cannot thank Michael and Hilary enough for letting me join the office for a couple of weeks, answering all of my questions, and showing me so many fantastic projects and proposals. Thanks for the cups of coffee and the patience as I figured out the filing systems on your server. And thanks to John, Ivi, and Andrew, all three of whom taught me so much about building, about design, and about managing gigantic Illustrator files. And thanks, of course, to Marty for arranging this all.

Cheers-

Jared Giles / Brooks+Scarpa / Los Angeles

It has been a great week and a half working at Brooks+Scarpa. For the most part, I have been working in Rhino and PhotoShop, and right now I am currently working on renderings for their Green Dot Middle School project. In addition to that, I have also been doing odd jobs around the office, such as converting old CAD files, and organizing the material library.  

 So far, I have enjoyed being a part of this program, and I have learned a great deal about how an office operates, and how to better myself as a student to one day work in the industry.

The University of Kentucky College of Design, School of Architecture has begun preparations for another exciting year of the Practice Previews Program.  We honored that many offices who have participated in the past are joining us again this year, thank you!  We also added several new offices to the growing list of participating firms Including - David Adjaye Associates, GRADE, Leong-Leong, MOS, Perkins Eastman & Young-Ayata all in New York along with De Leon + Primmer, Louisville. They will add new dimensions to the experience our program can offer to our students.

Unfortunately from year to year it is hard to predict the number of students who will be able to participate, therefore we had several other offices agree to participate but where we ultimately could not place a student.  We would like to thank them here publicly and hopefully reconnect next year (Griffen Enright, Neil Denari & Synthesis Design, Los Angeles | Iwamoto Scott, San Francisco.)  It seems like this year a majority of students wanted to head northeast.

Below you will find the list of participants for this year along with their office and destination city.  They will be posting to the tumblr and on social media so follow along.

Participants:

Jared Giles  – Brooks + Scarpa, Los Angeles

Tiffany Combs – Brooks + Scarpa, Los Angeles

Thomas Kirk – David Adjaye Associates, New York City

Joe Brewer - de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, Louisville

Aaron Fritsch - de Leon & Primmer Architecture Workshop, Louisville

Paul Isaacs – GRADE, New York City

Kevin Bloomfield – HWKN, New York City

Julia Arnold – Leong-Leong, New York City

Zack Allen – Leong-Leong, New York City

Emily Fannin – LTL Architects, New York City

Nathan Williams – Morphosis Architects, Los Angeles

Zack Martin – Morphosis Architects, New York City

Sarah Wagner – MOS, New York City

Bryan Hardin - OMA, New York City

Andy Magner – Oyler Wu Collaborative, Los Angeles

Dalton Partin – PATTERNS, Los Angeles

Whitney Osborne - Perkins Eastman, New York City

Kelsea Clayton - Populous, Kansas City

Andrew Meyer – Reiser Umemoto, New York City

Thompson Burry – ShoP, New York City

Jennifer Bui – SO-IL, New York City

Lauren Turnage – Urban Lab, Chicago

Olivia Winn – Urban Lab, Chicago

Mariana Carvalho – Young-Ayata, New York City