1. Please provide a brief description of your STEP Signature Project.
My STEP signature project was my architecture internship at Kime Design in Toledo, Ohio. I helped out on the residential side of things mostly with renovation projects. I assisted my boss with site measures, modeling, plans, elevations, and renderings, as well as final construction drawings.
2. What about your understanding of yourself, your assumptions, or your view of the world changed/transformed while completing your STEP Signature Project?
My internship at Kime Design was my first professional job in architecture. The whole experience really made me think about things more realistically, financially, and functionally. My education in architecture has been very conceptual and design based. While this has been a good start to learning about architecture and design, the professional world is much more practical. Every day at my internship I would have experiences that would help me think about architecture in a better way.
3. What events, interactions, relationships, or activities during your STEP Signature Project led to the change/transformation that you discussed in #2, and how did those affect you?
On one of my first days, my boss asked me to sketch out a plan of a bathroom including a bathtub, toilet, and sink. I sketched it out thinking it was a pretty simple task. My boss proceeded to move things around and explain how there really is only one way to place everything that makes sense for function and to be most cost effective.
After this activity, my boss proceeded to explain to me what I’d be working on throughout the summer which would mostly be assisting him with home renovation projects. My first few weeks I worked on an addition for a family that wanted to add on a master bedroom as well as extend their kitchen, dining room, and pantry. This whole project for introduced to me the process of architecture between producing drawings, site measures, designing, and meeting with the clients, and finances. There was really just so much more to even a simple addition that I had not thought of before.
On the last day of my internship, my bosses surprised me and had planned for me to ride around with a common home builder of theirs. He took me to five different houses in the Toledo area his company was building all at different stages of construction. I had never had much of an interest in construction before but I was truly fascinated by it seeing it up close and with the builder explaining everything to me. It was also really cool to see him and his employees referencing the kind of drawings that I had been making all summer.
4. Why is this change/transformation significant or valuable for your life?
As I said previously, I started my internship with Kime Design after my junior year of my undergraduate degree in architecture. Since my freshman year, I have strongly questioned if architecture is for me. My interest in the field never seemed to align to my classmates or my professors which has really been a struggle for me. I have always had a gut feeling that the professional world is where it would click and would be where I would thrive. My internship entirely confirmed this for me. Even after just my first week I had a new confidence in myself and in my career in architecture. This confidence allowed me to have my best year academically, as well as the ability to start planning and getting excited about my life after graduation!
A rendering and plan of one of the home additions I worked on.