Sep '04 - Apr '06
so after finishing studio this december (which i did pretty well...) i was ready for a whole summer of fun (southern hemisphere), but i decided to do my internship. i don't know if that's the word you guys use when you work while you are still a student, and you gotta report that work to the university. and it's mandatory. well, in my school we got up to 5 of this practices!!!. the first one is named something like "build practice", in which you got to work under a building company, in a work in progress. i did mine in a housing development last year. after that you get to do 4 more: municipal practice (working at city hall, either in their building or urban department), service practice (where you work for a non-profit organization), technologic practice (doing something "techno" related to arch, such as building process, 3D research, publication/documentation work, etc). and the last and more important: office practice, where you get to work on an office... which might ending up as your final job! you've got to do this during semester or during vacations, but you gotta take in mind that they are between 120-160 hours.. so it's like one month at full work, or you can do it half day trough a semester. so i decided to do mine in a relaxed way during whole january so i can relax a bit during this last 2 years i still have (2 studios and 2 semester of regular classes, then 1 year of titulation project).
So during december i did a bunch of calls to the city hall of the district i live and my school is in, Providencia, because it's a central area of the city with the best urban spaces in it (one of the few districts on my area that can afford spending on urban spaces...) , and very close to my house ;)...
so my task is to redesign the urban space in a neigborhood, that's very close to office sectors and pubs-restaurants areas. this is a very nice street, with big old trees, 40's building in very good conservation, and it's very quiet. actually, it has a small restaurant that uses the sidewalks, and the goal is to make it more a pedestrian style, and maybe cut the crossing street to it into a square. light and textures will be the main way to work out the sector. so for the time being, plans need to be "accurated", and situations must be detected (users, how cars park here, how many parkings can be removed of how many need to be added, etc). the good thing about this work, is that i dont have to work at office!! i do all work at home and i have weekly reviews with the urban development ppl at city hall. so it's not "school" blog..but still school blog!!!
a panoramic view of the sector 
typical building of the sector, 40s architecture
3 Comments
Hey David, would be cool if you can show images of your studio project last semester (tengo kuriosidad de ver ke se hace en latinoamerica)...
also as i said in my BLOG, im just curious to understand and/or too know what is consider 'urban interventions' these days...anyways, maybe is just me the one who doesn't have the clear picture of what is called urban and what is call big scale...
bests
madianito,
i feel sad because i tougth you would remember my last semester project!!!!! you were one of the few that posted on my reports.
joking ;)...
take a look at here
that's my end of the semester post.
as for the size os this intervention, it's in a very small scale, low budget. 1000 square mt. as for low budget, it means i can change pavement, add urban furniture, lights, add/remove/move trees. but, i still have to keep the 7 mt that it's needed for a street to still be named a "street", i cant change zoning (it's currently offices-retail in first floors, and office-housing above, so it's ok), and it's more of a re-aconditioning so more pubs-restaurants-cloth shops-etc start using this street. and i forgot to tell this: it's not paid! but if this project works out good in the month i have for it, it could be built and then i will work at city hall full time to develop it in detail.
The practice system sounds cool. It sounds much more in depth than my school's system where you get shipped off to some office for 9 months and get completely disillusioned and come back for one more year of school.
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