Flowers, Art, and 3D Modeling

My internship is at a small architecture firm in TriBeCa. The firm consists of 4 architects, myself, and Angus (the principle's yorkie).

On my first day I was thrown right into the mix. There was no slow first day of getting to know everyone. Thirty minutes after I arrived Andre (one of the architects) and myself were leaving the office on our way to the Flat Iron district to evaluate a mixed use building. The walk from the subway to the building was lovely, we walked through the 'Flower District' (which I didn't know existed until this time), it was beautiful. The streets were lined with every type of flower you could imagine. After the 10 minute walk we arrived to the site. The site consists of 3 buildings that were remodeled into 1 building. This was one of the most difficult spaces to navigate that I have ever been in. There were stair cases everywhere, weird hallways, uneven flooring, and a mixed use of materials that had no correlation to one another.

Once inside we made our way to apartment/art studio 3B. Upon entering the studio it appeared to be a normal space, boy were we in for a surprize. We start to examine the space and realize there are randomly placed walls, some shotty yet nicely done construction, the random curved walls, stair cases to combat the difference in floor level, windows from room to room, windows to outside that were completely hidden, piles of suit cases in every room, and the most interesting was the owners art collection. The owner is an artist and he displayed all of his own art around the space. Andre and I began to measure the spaces, when the owner came and started talking to Andre. He told us about his life, and how he made it to the USA. We spent a good deal of time talking with this fellow before finishing the measurements.

When the measurements were done, we made the trip back to the office.

I uploaded all of the photos we took, and began to draw the space we had measured on the computer (we use Archi-CAD). I was having some difficulty drawing this space as it was very strange, but after spending the time to re-evaluate and look through our photos I was able to draw the studio.

I will be spending most of my time measuring, and drawing this building over the coming months.

Hugging Trees

Over the summer, I enjoyed interning for the New York City Department of Parks Department. My main responsibility was to go out to different parks in New York City and survey trees. On a regular day, I would go out to a park with a GPS device and collect tree data, such as the trees' location, diameter measurements, species, and condition. The fact that I was going to be identifying trees was really what motivated to apply, especially since I had no forestry experience but was eager to learn!

Oh the PossAbilities!

My internship is with the PossAbilities organization at Hunter. The organizations mission is to basically help get students with disabilities support. I’m super excited to go to my internship Friday! We are going to start working on some sort of public periodical for the organization. Hopefully they love my ideas for the project!

The Urban Intern Launch

Urban Studies can be a broad and complex major. Student interests vary across multiple disciplines. To showcase, the depth and witty talents of the URBS 409 Urban Studies Internship class for Fall 2010, we have taken to the blogosphere.

What follows is a semester long endeavor to highlight the challenges, accomplishments, joys and frustrations of interning in New York City. Whether filing paperwork or leading the charge on a new initiative, students will log their experiences here as they struggle to balance school, work, life and most important, an internship.

Stay tuned...