Week 8

This past week we wrapped up our intern project. This is what I worked on the majority of the week. Of course, with all the work we have had, we procrastinated until the very last minute. Over the weekend, we scrambled to build everything in 3d. Then, on Monday, we combined each of our 3d files into one. Then, we set to work on doing renderings, diagrams, finalizing the plan, photoshopping, and putting together the presentation... no big deal right? 3 days, we can do this. Can't we? After a couple late nights, we pulled it off.

We presented at our First Thursday gathering in front of the entire firm and our client, Beau. The response to the presentation was great. People said it was an interesting, functional, and practical project. The Director of Design for the office, Ripley Rasmus, was especially complimentary and stunned by our effort. We were flattered. I felt blessed to be able to learn from August and Bernard who are Masters of Architecture at Cincinati and Kansas City. They were so great to work with and had lots of ideas. Also, August introduced me to Vray for Max. I will be using Vray forever and ever. I will upload some of the final images from the office tomorrow.

New Person of the Week: Ripley Rasmus. I first had a chance to sit down with Ripley during a mentorship speed dating session. There were 20 mentors and 20 mentees. Mentees spent five minutes with each mentor. It was awesome. I enjoyed talking to Ripley then. During this week, I had another opportunity to interact with Ripley during a set of design discussions about a recent competition project. He is very thoughtful in his design approach. I was happy to see someone so advanced in the profession to be continuing to be involved in the process with sketches and design development.

As far as HOK's presentation strategies, we use a wide range of methods. Sometimes virtual presentations are acceptable. However, for Design Development, we always try to have something in the clients hand that they can reference. With the capabilities of our print shop and large scale printers, it is very easy to put together a small booklet that can be professional bond by our print shop and a couple of spreads to be produced at up to 48" width. This is the most common method for a presentation. However, when presentations are made within the office or even with our other offices, these presentations are always done virtually. This is more sustainable and takes away the time and hassle of printing. These presentations are displayed as PDFs or as Powerpoints. For design presentations, the firm uses a variety of software from Excel files for numbers data to Photoshop for the renderings, Word, InDesign, Illustrator, etc. The final is typically put together in InDesign.