A Day In The Life Of A Landscape Architect At CLIMATE Architecture And Development
A day for Amy, an architect and landscape designer, involves a mix of project phases, from the "exciting" design phase to the meticulous "production phase" of finalizing drawings. This work is balanced with client meetings, field visits to document project sites and construction progress—"keeping a chronological history of work"—for accountability and future reference.
Project Management, Design, Client Communication, Problem-Solving, Record Keeping
Advizer Information
Name
Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
Industries
Job Functions
Traits
Amy Cooney
Architect, Landscape Design
CLIMATE Architecture + Development
University of Virginia
University of Pennsylvania
Architecture, Interior Design
Climate, Environment, Sustainability & Waste Management
Creative
None Applicable
Video Highlights
1. A typical day involves a mix of design work, production tasks (like preparing drawings), and client interaction, offering variety.
2. The work is project-based, with some projects in early design phases (brainstorming and ideation) and others in later stages (finalizing drawings and sending to printers).
3. The job includes field visits to construction sites, documenting progress with photos and memos, which also serve as a record for billing and issue resolution if needed.
Transcript
What does a day in the life of an architect and landscape designer look like?
Typically, the day before, in the day in the life, you've looked at your schedule and seen what's on call for the next day. Then you wake up and if you have to go to a meeting with a client, you can do that.
If there are no meetings, usually there's a list of projects that need to get done, or different phases of different projects. One project could be in the design phase, which I find really exciting, or coming up with lots of different ideas.
Another project could be in what we call the production phase, which can be just making sure that all of the drawings are on the paper, that the margins are straight, and they're ready to print. This involves sending papers off to printers, sort of wrapping up the end of projects.
There's invoicing that you can do and invoicing clients, so a lot of different things. Normally I like to mix it up, and I need to get out of the house. I work from home at this point. A couple years ago, we had a firm and we had an office space, and that was fun, but at the same time, you don't want to be in the office all day.
So, field visits. You could go look at a site and come up with a design, or you could look at a project that's under construction, which is really exciting. You come back with photographs and put those in a memo.
You're always sort of working, but at the same time, you're keeping a chronological history of your work for lots of different reasons. One is to do some billing and make sure that people know what you're doing so you can be held accountable.
Another one, especially the bigger one, is just to, if there are any issues with construction, you can go back and see what happened, what's beneath the walls, what's going on. So you're always [unclear].
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