Many times in my career I have found myself unprepared and ill equipped to make that next step towards becoming an architect. Regardless of these difficulties, that time has passed and the future now holds the potential to find a new direction for architectural internship. In finding this direction, I believe we must redefine what an architectural internship should be.

First, let us look to other professions and occupations for their examples of internships. In architecture, we typically begin counting our internship experience when we get our first architectural job right out of college. This seems to run a bit counter to the traditional standard
of internships continuing while you are attending school. Perhaps we could encourage more architectural firms to open their doors to student interns and allow them to experience a wider range of project responsibilities. Most architectural students would appreciate any opportunity to get real world experience regardless of any payment.

Secondly, we need to promote teaching and mentoring in architectural firms. In many business environments, knowledge is power and the most senior of architects are not willing to give up any trade secrets to lowly interns. This attitude must change if we expect to turn interns into competent architects. From my experience, mentors at busy architectural firms are just not willing or able to spend the time necessary to help an intern learn what it takes to be successful. Architects tend to send interns off to do menial jobs instead of allowing them some time to help and observe an architect in action. The fear of losing productivity or billing too much to a project because of the intern’s learning curve should be dismissed to ensure a healthy organization.

Finally, if we expect to run an efficient and effective architectural organization, we must further promote business and management skills. As previously mentioned, many architects grimace at the thought of sitting down with an intern to point them in the right direction. Somehow they have forgotten that they too were once an intern. Very rarely does an architect show an intern the budget for a project or the billable hours needed to satisfy financial requirements. Clearly we could all use a bit more experience at being a good manager with a basic business and finance background. It can only help the project to be more open with interns to help increase their stake
in the company.

In conclusion, with a more inclusive and extensive internship program I believe we could increase the caliber of our current and future architects. Obviously we have some work to do but the direction must be clear so that we can arrive at the solution. Architectural interns have some big shoes to fill but with a bit of time and practice they will become the professionals that they must be.