Monday, April 1st:

Today, I worked on redlines in AutoCAD for the West Ashley Head Start bathroom renovations.  I am adding another ADA bathroom and checking to make sure that it has everything necessary to be approved.

PDD: 4 Hrs

Tuesday, April 2nd:

I worked in photoshop today to create “before” and “after” shots for a paint proposal for CCSD.  We are changing a lot of colors in Baptist Hill High School and 3 of them are not in CCSD standards, so we are asking for an exception at the principle’s request.  So we took pictures of the High School and I went into photoshop and tried to use the Sherwin William’s colors to recreate the image as we would have it after the paint was done.

Then I worked in illustrator to create pages and a layout to be printed and delivered to CCSD.

PPD: 4hrs

Wednesday, April 3rd:

I continued what I was working on yesterday.  I ended up photoshopping 7 images total of the school to show examples of how we could use paint in the building varying color and placement.

PPD: 4 hrs.

Thursday, April 4th:

Started the West Ashley Headstart sheets.  We are exploring the building and giving the WA HS program an idea of where they could place a new ADA restroom.  I spent the day refreshing on ADA guidelines on existing buildings and beginning to draw the plans in AutoCad.

Weekly Blog:

Baptist Hill High School
5117 Baptist Hill Rd, Yonges Island, SC 29449
Project Scope: One of our project architects is working on repainting the entire school.  This scope includes all of the hallways, the ceilings, the cafeteria, the gym, the restrooms, and the offices.  Its a big project and we are coordinating with Sherwin Williams management and painters, as well as contractors and school administration.  Our focus is appeasing the principle as well as staying within CCSD guidelines.
Project Manager: Mike Nixon
Role of Student: I have completed the Revit Plans for this project in the past, but this week I was working in Photoshop to create a presentation for CCSD.
What I have learned:

So this week was slow until Jamie ran out of time working on another project and had to pass this off on me.  I have never used photoshop before so this was quite a learning experience as well as a cool opportunity to do something other than drawing lines in autocad or revit.  Jamie has a meeting with CCSD next week to try and convince them to follow our color scheme, which admittedly is out of the color range that CCSD provides.  The principle of the school, however, made it clear in our last meeting with her that she didn’t like any of the colors that CCSD offered and tried to convince us to use the school colors which are a dark maroon and steel gray.  Even though we didn’t use the exact colors she wanted, we found a happy medium that we hope CCSD will pass to make everyone happy.

This week I learned that Architects can’t always provide what the client wants.  There are always restraints, guidelines, and strings tied to everything when working for a client that is not private.  I’m sure in private client projects however, there are restrictions as well.  The architect needs to be a lesion and a great negotiator.  I think we are similar to real-estate agents.  They are always back and forth negotiating between the buyer and the seller trying to make everyone come to a happy medium and agree.  The real-estate agent has to be quick on their feet, a good people person, and understand both sides of the business: buyers and sellers.  Architects have to do that too.  We need to realize the restrictions given to us when adding to the built environment, as well as understanding the wants and needs of the buyer who has certain tastes.  It often seems like a bad spot to be, between a rock and a hard place.  But I think that it makes it exciting.  You have such a large hand in what happens but it seems that architects are always behind-the-scenes making everything workout.  Another example of why being a people-person is vital in this career field.