So its my final week of placement, time has flown! This week I focused on the Student Accommodation project in Portsmouth for the whole week. Sarah and Nick have a meeting with the client on Monday 13th, so there is a lot of work that I was able to get on with in preparation for it.
Portsmouth
Last week you will have seen that I made a start on the common room area, which will be repeated on 9 floors - this common room will act as a social hub for the students who may be staying in the complex, so it is important that the space provides comfort.
Above are some of the simple visuals I produced for the common room, these will be presented to the client to give them an idea of how the room could be. For this space I designed the shelving units completely myself. Other elements are examples of furniture that could be used in the space.
I then began working on the ground floor space, which will be a much bigger social space. This week I had a meeting with Sarah to go over the 'Design Direction' presentation, which is which will have been presented to the client previously. From this presentation, notes would have been made on things that the client liked and disliked etc. We went over these notes to determine some ideas that we could go ahead with in the 3D model. I used the Design Direction presentation, colour schemes and reference pictures to start populating the model shell that I made last week. For the ground floor space, I also went in and made amendments so that Sarah and Nick could present a second option to the client. For meetings I think it is good to come with more than one idea as the client may like different elements from each.
On Friday I began to make elevations and sections of each model, as well as some 3D visuals that show some of the concepts better. These will all be used in the client meeting on Monday.
These are the ideas presented for option 1 (above). There is booth seating in the window, as well as over near the entrance of the room, there is also a long table with track lighting above it. There are small tables and chairs scattered on the right hand side in a 'cafe' like fashion, as well as a small separate lounge area towards the end of the room.
These are the ideas that were presented for option 2. Option 2 has a booth seating area, a small cafe type thing inside a shipping container (which I designed myself), plenty of seating and study areas, as well as a lounge and art gallery. Where the lounge area was, the floor is now raised to create a gallery area. I prefer the ideas for option 2 much more, I believe they are more developed and a lot of elements I designed myself, so I really had fun with this.
General
Even though there has been strong focus on the Portsmouth project this week, I have also been helping out around the office with more general things. I have found it a bit difficult to get to grips with how VAT works and what it actually means, so Nadine asked for my help with the receipts to work out the expenses on the Bath project which has been recently finished. I sorted them out into different piles, ones that had VAT already on them and ones which didn't - it is important to log all purchases, no matter how small, because it will affect the expenses which will affect the overall profit margin of the project.
Reflection
Overall, I have really enjoyed my placement. I really can't believe it's gone so quickly. I feel that I have built upon skills that I already had such as Sketchup, photoshop and general communication skills, but more importantly I have learnt so much. I have learnt how to communicate ideas even more clearly, how to work as a team, how to communicate with clients, how to source materials and furnishings, how to deal with the financial side of the industry (and learning how expensive things can be!!) and of course how to speak on the phone (one thing which I was really nervous about the first week). I also learnt a bit about marketing, and how WN Interiors uses social media (instagram) to show case their most recent projects, social networking plays such an important role for marketing projects these days. As someone who has never worked in an office environment, I was made to feel so welcome and everyone was willing to help and answer any questions I had - I feel very lucky to have been able to work with a team of such great people. I am looking forward to continuing to work with WN Interiors over the course of the summer, and seeing how projects progress over the course of time. I am so glad I chose to go ahead with the "Learning in the Workplace" unit as my final unit of second year, I have learnt so much and met such great people along the way. I would encourage anyone to do this unit!!
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