This past week has been intimidating, inspiring, frustrating, and overall realistic. We were excited for Clint to come back and see all the work we had done in organizing the room. He was pleased with our work, but his boss said it was taking up too much space. Great. Now what? How were we supposed to organize all of these files without taking up the whole room? You've all seen how big that Mountain is! I think Clint could see our frustration; he said "Impossible tasks, ridiculous guidelines, and obsurd deadlines. Welcome to architecture." A huge pile of empty boxes that had been getting in our way soon turned into our best friend. We made "filing cabinets" using the cardboard boxes for each letter and sticky notes for each city... until we ran out of boxes. This problem turned into our first "project." Yes, this is a wooden crate and yes, we did use a ridiculous amount of duct tape to make this work as a box.
With an approved method of organizing, we got back to searching through Document Mountain. I have to admit, we really didn't go through many files this week because of the time we spent going through a few really amazing ones we found. We now have a box stashed away on the side for all of our favorite files and projects.
When I say "drawings" and "files" there could be up to 30 or 40 different drawings and plans in a file. Each file starts with a title page, with fancy letters and sometimes a realistic drawing of part of the building. Next comes the demolition plan, where we get to see what is happening to an existing building in order to create the new one. It's really cool to me to be able to see the transformation from old to new. Then there are the floor plans, the ceiling plans (I didn't even know they had those), building sections, individual room plans, wall sections, electrical and plumbing plans, and so many more things that you would never think of that architects and engineers have to. The elevation drawings are usually my favorite; the outside view of the building is drawn and it's exciting to see what these buildings actually look like. Because I am particularly interested in the design aspect of architecture, the details of the elevation drawings usually intrigue me the most. Although all of the different parts of the planning process leave us in awe, the blue prints are defintely the most impressive. Usually only the really old files include real blue prints, which we found out are actually blue!
When I say "drawings" and "files" there could be up to 30 or 40 different drawings and plans in a file. Each file starts with a title page, with fancy letters and sometimes a realistic drawing of part of the building. Next comes the demolition plan, where we get to see what is happening to an existing building in order to create the new one. It's really cool to me to be able to see the transformation from old to new. Then there are the floor plans, the ceiling plans (I didn't even know they had those), building sections, individual room plans, wall sections, electrical and plumbing plans, and so many more things that you would never think of that architects and engineers have to. The elevation drawings are usually my favorite; the outside view of the building is drawn and it's exciting to see what these buildings actually look like. Because I am particularly interested in the design aspect of architecture, the details of the elevation drawings usually intrigue me the most. Although all of the different parts of the planning process leave us in awe, the blue prints are defintely the most impressive. Usually only the really old files include real blue prints, which we found out are actually blue!
One thing I am looking forward to during this apprenticeship is learning how to add value from my own ideas to projects. Right now, I've noticed, I look at the drawings and just comment on how amazing they are, which they are. But, eventually I want to be able to look at them and say "I would do this different..." or "I would add this here." I am confident that working with Clint and the rest of the Cromwell staff will help lead me down the path to being able to do these things.