Internships

As a mandatory part of my study, I have to do 784 hours of internship and write a report about it. Since I did the exchange study in the first semester of my third year at the University of Tsukuba in Japan, I thought I might as well do my internship in Japan. Because of private reasons it came down to doing three internships in Tokyo.

The first one is at Takenaka Corporation, which is one of the biggest architecture offices in Japan with over 7000 employees. Here I had a part time job just once a week during my study at the University of Tsukuba.
Website: http://www.takenaka.co.jp/takenaka_e/
Period: once a week, from Nov. 2013 until Feb. 2014.

The second one is junya ishigami +associates in the Roppongi area. This office is more of a design atelier and looks less commercially oriented than my first internship. In this relatively young office that was founded in 2007, the creative process is very important and a lot of study models, drawings and presentation panels are made. Participating in a lot of competitions seems to be the key to spread your name. Here I learned that the office is not just about designing space, but also about directing people, meeting deadlines, communicating with foreign clients through video calls and having meetings at 2 o'clock in the morning. The architecture branch in Japan is very tough and I did pick the hardest office of them all, but I survived these 6 weeks thanks to a fellow intern who became an important friend to keep me going during each day of 13 working hours (10am~12pm).
Period: 6 weeks, from Feb. 2014 until Apr. 2014.

The last one is Sou Fujimoto Architects. This office was founded in 2000 and is a little bigger than my second internship. This office also focuses more on the creative side of architecture. Around 50% of the working staff members is Japanese and almost all of the interns are from Europe. I was placed in a European oriented team with projects both Europe and Japan. My main task was to make scale models and simple drawings, since I had no computer skills at all. My group leader was very patient though and a lot of people took the time and effort to teach me new skills, which was really reassuring. Although the working hours were shorter everyday (10am~10pm) the pressure to finish all kinds of projects in time felt quite heavy when looking at the group leaders. But I enjoy the simplicity in the designs and the working atmosphere was really nice. If the hours were not that long I actually might have applied for a job in the future.
Website: http://www.sou-fujimoto.net/
Period: 10 weeks, from Apr. 2014 until Jul. 2014.

Important note: these are just my opinions and experiences of the architecture offices and they do not necessarily define the visions and situations of the offices.