As most schools seem to be beginning their fall terms here at Newschool we are still working on our final two weeks of summer. This summer besides working on research for my thesis topic (which I will write about very soon) I had to take a light load of classes to finish lightening up my thesis year load. I took a total of 6 units, 3 classes (programming, urban history, and professional practice). Overall the classes were our typical course work of lectures, readings, and papers, but our pro practice class had a nice little twist. With a project that required our class of 20 or so students to be broken down into five teams. These five teams would later become five fictitious firms. The idea was that we were going to compete for a project that would be located near the Del Mar area. Our fictitious battle began with the request for proposal (RFP) process - then the request for qualification (RFQ) process. Finishing with the shortlisted elimination interview which was this last Thursday (every team got shortlisted of course) (lol). We had a panel interview made up of local architects as well as some adjunct instructors who were playing the roles of the client, city, and the supporting individuals. We were all given 7 minutes to sell our team and then followed by 10 minutes of Q&A.
It was pretty funny with some teams working overtime till the very end. Most teams handed out business cards, others handed out customized water bottles (with company logo). One of the teams even went as far as creating an actual website for their fictitious firm. All in all it was a lot of fun. Some of the firm names for this competition were SinArc, SPAM, and Douglas FIR (My Firm).
In the end my team did not end up winning the project. The team that did end up winning was SPAM. SPAM did a really good job of showing confidence, team work, and most of all making the panel jurors believe in them. It was a great learning experience for all of us, helping us understand a bit more about the RFP and RFQ process as well as the professional working environment.

Here are a few images of my fictitious team’s presentations boards (Douglas fir)



board one

board two

board three

These boards were made the night before our presentation using images from spaceinvading.com as well as others created from simple analysis models. These simple boards (not worried about layout) were made quickly for our fictitious presentation – all for fun.