Day 1

Today I woke up at 7:30, well rested after a long night of watching the NBA playoffs (Memphis/Thunder game was out of control), and I got ready for the day. After showering and  eating breakfast, I packed up my lunch, my laptop, and my notebook and headed out the door. 

I arrived at Allied Works Architecture at roughly 9 AM. Upbeat funky music resonates around the open workspace. I don't know if there is a dresscode in place but everyone wears collared shirts and sweaters. Stylin'. 

Nathan showed me to my new station! A sleek Mac Desktop, two printers, a phone with hundereds of ext. numbers, and a spinny office chair greated me. I have lots of desk space and I'm even sitting in the direct eye-line of the boss, Brad. I also met my new neighbor Alice, who sits between me and Nathan.

After getting settled, it was time to set up my computer. Unfortunately we couln't figure out a way to connect to the server, so as of now Nathan and I will be emailing the important documents. We also set up the internet on my laptop, the desktop, and my iPod.

Eventually it was time to start working. Nathan informed me that I would be working on a Door Schedule. First he emailed me a large blueprint and we printed it out on a large sheet of paper. The Door Schedule will be used by the contractors later during construction and also for determining material costs and things.

After printing out the building layout, Nathan emailed me another document. The second document contained a Door Schedule from a previous project. Once I got the formatting down I began using the blueprint to fill out a new Door Schedule.

Soon enough I was recruited for a new task. Another architect named Rashmi needed me to do some painting in the office. So with fresh paint rollers and a bucket of paint, i set to work on hiding some chips of paint on the walls. One of the tennants on the lower floor moved out, so I needed to paint over where they had their signs.

Once I had finished sanding, painting, and taping, I was back to work on my Door Schedule. But soon Nathan needed me to run an errand. Nathan needed some stain samples (wood stain) so I walked over to Ace Hardware in the Pearl to pick up some pint-size samples. 

Unfortunately the Ace Hardware shop had recently replaced the stains we were looking to get, so the paint manager gave me the location of another place that might have the stains we wanted.

When I got back to the office, i threw another coat of paint on the places I had previously painted and I finished my Door Schedule. Then it was time for a quick lunch.

At around 1:10 Nathan and I departed for a consultant meeting at Catlin Gabel. Consultants can range from plumbing and electrical to even specific niches like acoustics. Nathan said the worst thing about these meetings is when consultants tell the architects they can't do something or it simply "won't work". 

When we got there I was surprised at the sheer size of all of the men in the room. I'm pretty sure most  of the men their had biceps bigger than my neck. The meeting went around in a sort of roundtable manner. First Nathan discussed some of the issues he was having, then it was time for the other members of the group to give their concerns and updates.

Each consultant would visually show the others what he was planning to do with his role. The mechanical consultants were voicing their concerns with the air duct system, and the electrical consultant was talking about where he was going to run his cables. Each member had to defer back to Nathan. For the most part the group seemed to cooperate well, but one time Nathan said, "I hate to see when a building design gets changed because of mechanics".

The End

-Jesse Kimsey-Bennett

P.S. My next entries will likely be less thorough.