i worked a year and got paid.

don't ever pay for an internship, it's not worth it

I concur!

At minimum, are you receiving academic credit for the experience? Or is it just an internship?

I will receive credit, and it will take place of the fall semester of my 5th year of studio. The plan is to have a spring semester studio back on campus with the 12 or so people going to Paris.
The firms might give us a monthly stipend, but it is nowhere near the amount of the trip, maybe $200 per month.

Do many other Architecture programs have internship programs as a 5th year option? Our school has all but eliminated the traditional studio for 5th year instead we have 6 different studios that included urban studies, premanufactured modular housing (studio 804: http://www.studio804.com/), internships inside the country....

So there are really people that are seriously debating whether or not to pay a huge sum to work in some office? I thought that was only an urban legend...

I think of it as I am spending a semester in Paris studying abroad and instead of taking classes I work in a firm. Either way I would gain a lot from the experience and end up with connections with people that cant be learned in a book. Our school has summer study abroad programs but they seem more like tourist 6-8 week trips then actually living and becoming fully embedded in a city.

What other options should I be looking at where I can gain more? If anyone can offer any suggestions I would be great full. I have two days to apply and have been hesitant to commit, but havnet yet found better options.

Holy shit, $18k for one semester in Paris?! Are they kidding? This means you are actually giving the firm money for the privilege of following people around and hoping to get let in to watch whatever design charrette happens. I cannot imagine they would let you do any real work for them, although having not been in this position I couldn't say for sure. In which case: what are you supposed to be learning from? Watching people work? It sounds like you already HAVE contacts in good European firms and I would warn you that the workplace in France is a much less chummy place than it can be in America.

Do you speak any French? Will you be able to follow conversations going on around you?

This sounds absurd. I lived and studied in France for 9 months on less than $7,000, and worked a job (in the film industry) for which I was paid at the same time. It was an intensely rewarding experience but I simply cannot, cannot fathom paying $18,000 to not take any classes or have any social interaction but instead to sit in an office all day. Ugh. You will have more than enough time in your life to work in an office and you will get paid for it, and you will be doing things you can actually learn from, instead of making models and rendering. Why waste your school time paying to do this when you could actually be out studying something?

Ok -- I just checked the website and you will be living in the Cite (a foreign exchange student dormitory campus, segregated from the city) and your only excursions to actually experience France or French culture are a couple of local daytrips which are very easily done on your own (the train goes to all of them). I would not pay this kind of money for this program.

Save the $18k and take yourself on a whirlwind tour of Europe when you graduate. You won't get any more social exposure (and no less, either) but you'll at least get to see a lot more AND it will be significantly cheaper.

I did this program in the summer of '07 before my 5th year at KU. It was considerably cheaper, but only because we were there for only 3 months.

As for knowing French, I know that Nouvel and Ibos had architects/interns that spoke English very well. The principals of each firm may not be as fluent, however. Most firms did not pay a montly stipend...Portzamarc gave 300 euros/mo and Nouvel gave out measly meal vouchers!

"I would warn you that the workplace in France is a much less chummy place than it can be in America." - Not from my experience, my fellow study abroaders and I found our firms laid back and extremely fun places to be, with 2 hour lunches and late starts to every workday, frequent smoke/coffee breaks, and extremely interesting fellow employees.

One big problem with the program is that you have to make sure the firm has enough work for you, or you will be wasting time and money. Also, our program had a couple more excursions:

Lyon (equal if not better than Paris)
Strasbourg (felt like Germany)
Basel, Switzerland (Herzog hometown, but kinda lame)
Berlin (one week)

If you're lucky you can visit your firm's completed buildings: I went to Rennes and Lille on their dime.

We also stayed in corbu's La Tourette for two days, which was the highlight of the trip as we drank wine all day and frollicked in the countryside, even running across a gnome's house one day.

18000 is steep, but I had the time of my life when I went. Plus, you will have plenty of time to go to Barcelona, the Alps, Prague, Munich, Switzerland, Amsterdam, etc. on weekends. That's what we did.

Beebtown,

Its good to see such a great discussion about a Program at the University of Kansas. However, all of the things you are saying lead me to believe that you obviously have never been to Paris; Nouvel, and Portzamparc pay like 1000 euro a week, and there are models running around the offices, taking lunch orders. My time in Paris was one long coffee break, we mainly hung out at the Tabacs, and talked about philosophy. As for excursions, there is no way you could get to Prague for a weekend trip, you would have to spend at least four miserable days there. Munich Is awesome. Berlin is a Crazy town, especially if you stay on Oranienburger Strasse...

So If anyone decides to go to Paris, I recommend staying in the 2nd, and finding the sandwich man on Rue Saint-Honore.

Oh yeah, and I went to Beebtown on Megan!

ah bears!

$18,000 is a lot. if you've got $18,000 (this is above/beyond normal tuition?!), i'd encourage you to save it for after you're out and THEN do your european internship with some money in your pocket and the potential to get paid for your hard work.

i'm sure there are still some less exotic 5th yr programs in your school from which you can learn at no premium cost.

stay where you are and start working on your apps to the firms for which you want to work now. start bugging them. you might just get a great paying job in which you can really become engaged in the work of the office. (which wouldn't happen in 4mos anyway.)

best that could come of the $18,000 semester is that you'd make some connections and get a little exposure. not bad things, but there must be another way to get both without that cost...

The high price is to pay for living expenses for being in Paris. Paris is pretty expensive, plus the exchange rate is still not great. During that first month I will be in a dorm, but after that I will have an apartment located close to the Arc d' Triumph. The firms dont recieve any money by having me intern, the plan is they will pay a small monthly stipend. During the internship, there is real work that is along the lines of the type of work typical interns do. I know some French, and we will be spending the month of August in Paris taking an intensive language course for 4 weeks. All of the offices speak English for the most part but I think it will be helpfull to know French because we have been told that you will be able to gain more respect and responsiblity if you show them you know some French. I have been told this is an opportunity for you to show them what you can do, in the past firms have offered jobs to interns after the semester is over. The leader of the program worked for Corb for about a year and while he doesnt attribute his success to it, he believes it has really helped get his foot in the door. They extended it from a two month summer program to a semester because the firms wanted to give us more responsibility which requires more time.

Beebtown, which firm did you intern at? Do you think that experience has helped you now that you have graduated?

If you were given the choice to use this amount of money to do something that would help out your future, what would you do?

Ibos & vitart - tiny office with very cool people - worked on housing competition. I believe Woijiech ranks them up there behind Nouvel and Perrault in his jaded yet increasingly more progressive opinion.

Typical day, Jean Marc's wife, Myrto drives us around in her itty bitty Renault Twingo, backwards, for maybe 5 minutes, racing through tight Parisian side streets before flinging us out into a busy boulevard right into an oncoming bus. All this, while every so often glancing at the road between explaining to us in broken English that she doesn't really have a license, but is using her mother's.

The internship only made coming back to America and working harder to take, as my eyes were opened to how much better it can really be.

However, if I were in your shoes, I would seriously consider finding an in on my own, as the program seemed to be grossly over charging when I participated and now it is even higher. Research how much you could save by doing something similar on your own.

During the internship, there is real work that is along the lines of the type of work typical interns do.

= rendering, building models, laying out presentation drawings.

I don't see how you couldn't get this same experience later, when you are more prepared to grow in the job and possibly stay there longer than one semester, without paying so much money. That is really a LOT of money. I think (from both personal experience and lots and lots of observation) that students don't really understand what all that money means until they are 7 years out of school and desperate to buy a house but can't because they are shackled to enormous debt until age 55. That's a tough pill to swallow.

Basically, I would say that the work you're going to be doing better be really, really rewarding to your architectural development (and, having done it, I can say that building models of other peoples' designs wouldn't cut it for me, personally) for it to be worth that kind of debt.

Save Paris for a time when you can live there without having to report to a job everyday. That's how everyone else in the cafes do it...

But what do I know. You've clearly already decided, anyway.

Beeby!!!!

I did this program with that kid too. Worked at Borel.
Seriously worth it. I really enjoyed my time. Beebs got it covered though mostly.... Just take it easy and stuff. I kinda regret spending so much time drinking with my american compadres instead of getting out and meeting french people more. I guess the language barrier scares alot of people... I came in knowing a little french as did another girl... Borel doesn't speak a lick of english really, nor does emanuel geutrand, so i wouldn't go there if you didn't know french. at the end of my internship, i got paid 500 euros and was given a ridiculous amount of books. The work was really laid back though... mostly made models and did paintings.
I strongly recommend this program. is worjek still doing it? i heard he's doing something in china now.... is phillippe doing it too?

-andrew pedron

oh and if they're still doing it with Accent, try to see if you can do it on your own

the entire university pay thing is all good... worth it, but paying for a travel agency that doens't do anything is ridiculous.... plus they pissed me off by giving me a shit apartment at first (quickly corrected it when i complained though and were good about that but still)

Thank you all for the insight. It has been really hard to get that kind of information at school. Wojciech is still running the program, he says he has tried for 30 years to get the internship program to be a semester instead of just a summer. Wojciech has also setup a China program like the Paris program, except they are all American firms located in China, like SOM. So you don't have to commit to learning Chinese quite as much but the firms are willing to pay for almost everything, even weekend trips.

Philippe is in Paris now working for a couple different Universities (I forget which ones) Some of my teachers think he is coming back, others have no idea. I have heard about some of the past apartment situations, they have assured us we will have the best they can get this time around since its a semester.

I have no made up my mind completely but I planned on doing it for the past 5 months, and will ultimately decide once they start wanting some money. In the meantime I am going to apply to several other firms and see if anything bites.

For the KU people, what type of work are you doing now? Did the internship help you at all once you began looking for a real job?

Just an aside that the job climate in paris right now is about as bad or worse than it is in NYC. I have a lot of friends who've graduated over the past 6 months and are having serious trouble finding work. Double that if you're an american and looking for a firm to set up a work visa for you. So if you have a job set up already at a name brand parisian firm, that is certainly a good way to get into working in Europe. It may or may not be worth 18k, but the possibility of it happening without your school setting it up is seriously low.

at the end of my internship, i got paid 500 euros and was given a ridiculous amount of books

That's not getting paid, that's getting some of your own money back. You basically got a discount of about 3%.

But seriously, consider whether or not you think it's worth it to just "buy in to it". Think about it: the costs are 18.000$. And that is for, like 24 weeks? That means that you are paying literally 750 bucks a week to do the simple chores somewhere. Because, to be honest: which of your interns would you give the nice tasks: the ones you handpicked yourselves, or the ones that are just around in your office based on their big bank accounts?
And think of it like this: you will probably get into a nice office somewhere in Europe if you have a decent portfolio, a lot of patience, and a bit of effort. And really, of you are considering paying that much to work in an interesting place: For half of that 18.000, I will make sure you are allowed to work at a interesting, innovating Dutch office ;). And I'll throw in a week-long trip to Paris, as a small signing on bonus...

Which Dutch office are you referring to? My portfolio is still a work in progress, but I am really open to considering opportunities beyond my school's Paris program.

email: selby (at) ku (dot) edu

It seems like it could be a great experience if you have the money to burn, but the cost seems ridiculously high...my 5th year we were in Berlin for a semester: we started 2 weeks in Finland & Sweden, stayed in nice apartments (3 people to an apt), took classes with our Berlin professor downstairs from his office, and during the course of the semester took another 2 week trip through northern Italy, and had an elective one-week trip to Prague & Vienna. All this cost regular tuition from the school + a cost of about $6000- included everything except the P/V trip which was about $400 if I remember? All hotels with breakfast was included in the side trip as well as a bunch of tours & entry fees along the way. This was a while ago so with inflation add a couple thousand?
If the $18Gs includes tuition go for it, if it's extra, then go get your own apt and get really involved in the local culture and get your stipend from some firm at the same time...or wait until after graduation and go through all of Europe and head off to some other continent too.

I created a quick blog to post some of the projects I have been working on putting into my portfolio. NI still have to tweak images/ text/ layout before I will be happy, but I thought I would post a couple projects and see what kind of feedback I got.

portfolio link

im mr. glasses and im an architect.......your work looks great......i think you could find a job anywhere even in this market... forget working at a pritizker prize winner, your better than that.....see if you can get a job teaching because it is obvious after reviewing your sample work that you shouldn't be asking questions but rather answering them......your project for a new merc as well as your other work has inspired me to reevaluate my own design philosophy....it is great to see such well developed student work, you would never had seen this type of depth when i was in school.....good luck with you future endeavors and I look forward to hopefully seeing more of work and perhaps collaborate one day

Thank you Mr. Glasses, I have actually taught Architecture during the summer for the past two years for Duke University Talent Identification Program (Duke TIP) to 8th-11th graders interested in Architecture. Each of the projects still need some work to get it to a level of polish I can be happy with but its good to hear a professional give input on projects, processes and layouts. I had thought they might be a little too academic and disconnected to reality. Thanks.

Mr. Selby........mr glasses here again and im still an architect, something that you should reconsider.... Apparently my tone of the message didn't come through ..i apologize for that..As i see your work is neither academic nor professional ...... What you are calling an architecture portfolio is really just a mediocre effort at graphic design....Academic?, you could do with being a lot more academic, the merc project lacks any critical discourse. That would have easily failed as a project when I was in school.... If you still think that architecture is the profession for you then you should polish your portfolio, but its hard to polish a turd, as there is only more shit underneath, i say flush it, and start over in graphic design. My sincerest apologies about the confusion I thought you would have perceived the message more clearly. Once again I'm Mr. Glasses and I'm an Architect.