Day in the life of an Architectural Assistant 01 - Read the brief!

I have thought about doing ‘Day in the life’ blog posts if I have a particularly interesting or in fact annoying day at work and I think I have have found a good one to start with!

So.. it’s the Friday before bank holiday and I’m setting myself up for what I assume and hope will be a fairly chilled day. I get into work to see some layouts for a renovation I had done the survey and survey drawings for in the weeks prior with a note from my senior Architect on what I needed to do and what seemed like a perfectly acceptable deadline - have it done by lunchtime (4 hours away)

Sounds simple and easy enough, work to do with instructions on how to do it.. should be an absolute no brainer right?

I scanned (first mistake) the note and the sheet which my senior Architect had worked on to show an outline zoning layout to fit 8 flats into an existing, vacant public building. The brief was to keep as many of the existing walls as possible, less work and money for the client.

Zoning layout

I opened up the survey drawing and got to work basically copying the layout and removed only the walls that would be between flats. This took me about an hour-ish maybe and I had been given about 4 hours to work on it so it was at this point I knew I’d missed something. I spent the next hour or so panicking about what I’d actually been asked to do, reading and rereading the note and basically copying what I’d already done to try alter it in different ways and hope that something was right. Safe to say I was a little overwhelmed at this point.

I reread the note again and the penny finally dropped, my senior Architect had drawn out the zoning and it was my job to design the actual flat layouts, where are the bedrooms, bathrooms, kitchens, any new windows etc… for 8 flats. Wicked, I had 2 hours.

I printed off the ground and first floor, got my pencil out and started sketching over the existing plan. Very quick decisions were being made that I can only assume were coming from everything that I had ever learnt during my degrees. Once I’d done a rough sketch, I started going over it in red.

Layout Sketches

This is what my senior Architects came into, me frantically drawing over the plans in red pen. I didn’t have the final draft printed but what I did have was a sketch showing what I was going to do that I could communicate and ask for advice on certain aspects I was not too sure about. Some small comments were made but everything was mostly positive so I jumped onto AutoCAD and drafted my sketch over my lunch break and presented it with all the necessaries, north arrow, title block, scale etc. I got it onto my senior Architects desk at about 2, just after lunch.

Job well done.

Now, what did I learn from what was the most stressful morning at work so far? Quite a few things actually. Firstly - something I should have known to do - read the brief. I laugh as I type, as this is Architecture Student 101 advice. As a university tutor I say this pretty much everyday in response to students being unsure about what they’ve been asked to do. Everything you need to know is in the brief and as an absolute starting point you need to understand it. If you read through it multiple times and it’s still not getting through then highlight it or make your own notes on what you understand.

Another thing that I learnt was not to panic if feel like I’m doing the wrong thing. When I realised I must have missed something I immediately went into panic mode, which meant that my brain was not thinking straight. If it was, I would have reread the note I had been left earlier, called my senior Architects for clarification on my task or just taken a breath and most likely figured it out for myself. This is something I need to do in everyday life anyway but in an Architectural environment it’s such an important part to remember. It can be so easy to get overwhelmed as an Architecture Student if you have multiple deadlines for multiple modules but it’s always easier to take a breath, and tackle the tasks with a clearer mind.

actually got something from my Architecture degree. That might sound like a ridiculous thing to realise after spending countless hours and money but it’s a pretty common thought around the Architecture community that you don’t learn enough to work in practice during Architecture school.

into a very oddly shaped existing building using the existing walls as a base, knowing what to remove and keep, in less than 2 hours. The decisions I made were quick and based off years of experience as an Architecture student, being able to critique my own work in the go and my experience during my Part 1 placement in New York where I worked on a lot of existing apartments. It could be argued that the skill to design the apartments was more from my Part 1 experience but I know without a doubt that getting over the panic I felt working towards a deadline definitely came from being an Architecture student.