Being the frontal-lobe deficient genius I was in year 10, I somehow managed to fumble my WExp placement that year so much that I’d completely forgotten about it until the week before. This obviously meant that most firms listed on this wexp website students were meant to use became fully booked, and I became fully stuffed. Fortunately, there was this one architectural practice (conveniently close to my town, might I add) which, by the grace of Antoni Gaudi, had vacancies. Less fortunately however, my room temperature IQ regrettably flared up again when sending a prefabricated email to them. Unbeknownst to me, the message I’d just sent to this firm had the wrong recipient attached, alongside oddly placed aspirations to become a schoolteacher (yes, this was a message intended for another wexp placement). Naturally, after violating the actual recipient’s pronouns countless times and presumably puzzling the entire architectural office, I was sadly rejected, with no alternative foreseeable opportunities.

In present time however, I managed to complete the monumental task of gathering all of my braincells in one room and managed to secure a wexp placement without losing as much face. Now, before anything else had happened, I got my 3D design teacher to contact this one firm to secure a place if all else fails, but I was pretty certain that this time (with months remaining till the deadline), there was absolutely no way that I was going to fumble again!

Well, let’s just say that I’m glad I registered for that failsafe.

Luckily, that placement was significantly better than I’d first expected upon being told about it, it had a great work environment (as expected for a small, primarily domestic architectural enterprise), amazing people (over a variety of ages, might I add) and overall I think I’ve learnt a lot more than I expected (which may or may not be a low bar to set as I’d previously thought I would be in charge of managing the printers).

All that aside, however, there was one thing that I thoroughly enjoyed as a highlight of this brief journey & that was the ability to converse on the same level with people equally interested in a, relatively niche, subject as you. At school, there aren’t many people who’re interested in pursuing an architectural career, aside from maybe a small group of individuals. Even within those small groups, I can’t really converse architecture with them as I fear the subjects I talk about might come across as mundane and poorly expressed. This puts me in between a rock and a hard place, where on one hand I’m constantly agitated that I won’t be able to put anything I learn from books, videos or journals into verbal practice and, on the other, I fear of looking like a massive waffler who consistently yaps about subjects which he himself doesn’t understand (which I certainly wouldn’t blame people if they’d actually thought this).

Wexp, however, presented me with the opportunity to talk with people who’re less worried about you getting technical stuff wrong & are non-perfunctory about the subject, however apparently mundane in your eyes, in question. There was this one guy who I’d talk non-stop with (and makes up around 90% of the reason as to why I’m writing this blog) who’d consistently maintain the balance of telling me unrelated, but engaging trivia facts (one which I found particularly interesting was ‘dazzle camouflage’) alongside testing me on my architectural knowledge. It’d be a once in a blue moon opportunity to talk about architects the likes of Louis Kahn, Edwin Lutyens or even artisans and artists like Bernini or Malevich at school; in the workplace, apparently it’s just (as idealistically suspected) common occurrence.

Thought unrelated to the rest of this blog, one of the largest golden nuggets of information I extracted from that architect (and wanted to share a little of here, from my junior level of understanding) was probably to do with the manipulation of perspective throughout architectural history. They went over buildings from a range of time periods, from classical monuments consecrating the Acropolis to the Usionian prairie homes of Frank Lloyd Wright, perspective has been of great importance in delivering a certain mood to the structures they are embodied by. An example could potentially be the Hollyhock house in LA by FLW. Here, the late architect used expansive and compressive architectural motifs in the entrance of the building in a juxtaposition of form, ultimately leading to the open plan of the interior to be more overwhelming and revelationary, as visitors would’ve been forced through a significantly narrower hallway before entry. Through setting up false expectations in the viewer, like here making them believe that the house is more claustrophobic than in reality), architecture can tap into, and almost influence, the mental faculties of said observer, a concept which I’ve grown to be thoroughly interested in.

I want to finally reiterate how helpful and friendly I found my erstwhile colleagues to be at this placement. They were open to responding to my asking of questions, even when I personally thought they seemed a bit obnoxious and trivial. At some point, one of them actually bought me some food from the local convenience store when it was raining quite heavily outside, which was pretty nice of him to do so. Often, I’d find them conversing with each other about architectural history, their favourite styles or architects quite commonplace, alongside chatter of completely random topics such as discerning the gender of a newborn chick or explaining why gin is just flavoured vodka.

Ultimately, to know that architects (at least in this microcosm) are so passionate and social about what they do and how they treat others & even my braindead self, makes me think that, just maybe, architecture is the correct career to pursue.