One of the defining points of today’s emerging architects is the influence of technology on our education and consequently our position in the workforce. As the most junior associate in a technologically progressive firm, my job often consists of researching and developing new technology standards in CAD, building modeling, project database development, and computer based environmental analysis. While in school, I could not have imagined that my generation of interns would play such a crucial role in the integration of technology into the architectural practice. After canvassing my fellow interns in their first or second year of full-time employment, I have found that many of us are cast into roles as technology leaders and struggle to meet expectations within the current IDP credit system.

If I could change one thing about architectural internship and the standards set forth in IDP, I would retire or de-emphasize some of the traditional methods of procurement and allow the exploration into new technological roles within the firm. The advent of the integrated building model has completely blurred the traditional boundaries between “Design”, “Design Development”, and “Construction Document” phases. As interns in a new system, we no longer use lines. Instead in a computer based design environment, we compose a building with actual “walls”, or objects that inherently have the size, code requirements and finish materials of an actual wall. Upon laying out the
exterior walls, we can analyze the building in terms of its wall type, run schedules of its insulative properties, and then render it to show a client proposed materials. As the building model increases in sophistication and begins to satisfy all the requirements for an entire architectural project from programming and concept phase through the completion of construction documents, it becomes more important to recognize it in the course of architectural internship requirements.

As a student coming out of school, I was ill-prepared to function in this type of environment. I was under the naïve impression that many firms were still very traditional in their approach to project staging and production. When I began working, I was overcome by culture shock, confused by the fact that everything for an entire project was contained in a few electronic files. Now, that I am a project manager and I am charge of teaching the development system to new hires, I find myself constantly referring back to the IDP requirements and trying to find a way to reconcile the work we do technologically with the historic method of producing projects. After years of meeting
with the company directors and going through the IDP requirement lists, we have developed a way for interns to complete IDP within our company technology structure. Even though we are working within the current system, it would greatly improve the internship process to have some guidelines on how to adapt the traditional requirements to alternative production practices and the integration of the building model.