Through the various resource meetings and project shares I attended, I was able to quickly see how a practice stays organised, and information is relayed. The resource meeting which is held each week on a Monday morning outlined everyone’s tasks and meetings for the week. This gave me a few pointers on how I could stay organised with my university projects! The project shares allowed all members of the practice to understand ongoing projects which they weren’t part of and provided an opportunity to brainstorm ideas and work collaboratively. I enjoyed other aspects of the office experience, such as the lunch times sat outside under the gabion columns. Despite the interruption from the trains every few minutes, I got to know my colleagues and gained a lot of useful information – not only architecture but also recipe books!

The project for my second week was a housing scheme. For the week I was tasked with creating a sketch up model of a specific housing type. I hadn’t used sketch up during my time at university as I thought trying to learn a new software would be too much. However, it was much easier than I had initially thought and proved super useful to test out sketch models and materials. I also spent the week reading a Stage 2 report for this housing scheme, which clarified the importance of site and material research and how they can be used to inform a design.

For my last week at SWA, I worked on a retrofit of a primary school for which I was tasked with doing research on hempcrete – a sustainable and innovative material. Using this research and information from the engagement sessions with the school, I worked on ideas for the new staircase. During the week I also got the opportunity to go on site which allowed for me to see how design ideas are brought to life through the discussions between the wider design team and the contractors.