After graduation, NUS joined the State-owned Enterprise Design Institute and participated in the restoration of the Song Dynasty Ancient Road

Wen | Guide to Study Abroad · Classmate Z

19fall Master of Landscape Architecture, National University of Singapore

As one of the 21-year graduates, I returned home last May with the last tranquility before the outbreak of the epidemic broke out again.

NUS inherits the fast pace of Singapore as always, and the students in the same class began to prepare to submit their resumes as early as the first semester of the second semester of research. For me at the time, work was still a distant future, and I hadn't thought much about how I would continue my life after graduation— work and study were two very different states, and I might be able to build a design castle with great meaning to myself, but there was still a huge gap between that and reality.

Design students are always forced to choose between romanticism and realism, and so do I. So during that time, I was busy with the overwhelming DDL and anxious about where I should go.

01 Go, or stay?

Most international students may have hesitated to stay in their country or return to their home country.

Almost without hesitation, I chose to return home. In fact, I was able to adapt to life in Singapore, and maybe quite well. I love Singapore food, I'm used to the fast-paced pace of study and work in Singapore, I'm familiar with the very different landscapes of the West Coast and the East Coast, and I'm used to hearing the unique Style of Singlish, and the landscape profession seems to have a broad enough prospect in Singapore— the only problem is that there is a certain slightly innocent and naïve desire buried deep within me, and I am eager to return to my hometown with everything I have learned, like a traveler who has circled around in a story, a dusty servant, carrying a full circle of gifts that my family may not have seen , gleefully knocking on the door.

The decision to return to work in my hometown may have come from my grandfather. He is a researcher and compiler of local history in his hometown, and the past of this land has long been familiar to me as a young bedtime story. I was familiar with the past of my hometown, but the six years of studying abroad made me gradually unfamiliar with its present, and even the moment I got off the plane, I felt a sense of trance, as if I was returning not to my hometown, but to a completely unfamiliar land — I was even more familiar with Singapore on the far equator than I was.

Therefore, due to many considerations, including but not limited to my future development, the job search environment under the influence of the epidemic, and many trade-offs of personal emotional factors, I finally successfully entered the Municipal Planning and Design Institute in my hometown and worked as a landscape architect.

02 Myths about the future of landscape design

When it comes to the future of design-related industries, most of the news we can see in recent years is not optimistic. Overtime, sudden death, company squeeze, etc. news emerges in an endless stream, I also searched for a lot of relevant information when I was looking for a job, and even once discouraged, I had the idea of continuing to study. The problem is that I know that I'm not good at research, and total avoidance is not a suitable approach.

Therefore, I spent nearly a month browsing different website platforms, learning about different companies in the industry from the senior sisterS I knew, and there were relevant company information compiled by industry seniors on the Internet, etc., and made full preparations before applying for a job, deciding the direction that I was good at and interested in before delivering.

Personally, I prefer to work in project design, so when submitting my resume, I think more about the state-owned enterprise design institute and some large private enterprises and studios, and finally choose the state-owned enterprise design institute. Design institutes and private companies have their own advantages and disadvantages, and the actual work conditions and treatment of different companies are not the same, so when choosing a specific company, you can go online to some recruitment websites or related websites to find employee evaluations, including but not limited to:

The type of project the company is mainly engaged in

Landscape companies are good at the types of projects are not the same, state-owned enterprise design institutes are mostly comprehensive design institutes, in addition to landscape institutes, there are also architectural institutes, municipal courtyards, planning institutes, etc., most of the handling is government projects, the locality is relatively high, the project direction is more. The projects I have participated in this year include beautiful villages, future communities, park design, road landscape design and the protection of historical and cultural monuments, as well as some projects for the construction and municipal support of the hospital; In addition, other different landscape companies are good at real estate, new Chinese, children's games, ecological restoration, etc., because the landscape itself is a more comprehensive profession, so when choosing a specific employment direction, you can consider what type of project you are more interested in, so that you will be more enthusiastic and motivated when interviewing and actual work in the later stage.

The direction of employment after entering the company

In addition to the direction in which the company is good at, another point that needs our attention is the specific employment direction after entering the company. Taking our company as an example, the internal is mainly divided into a scheme group and a construction drawing group. The program group is more familiar to us, that is, to carry out the early landscape design, draw floor plans, renderings, docking with the owner of Party A, and output a design plan to the construction drawing team for the next step of the construction drawing design (the construction drawings are more professional and meticulous, generally continue to train after entering the company, we basically rarely learn this knowledge in school. Construction drawings will continue to be subdivided into greenery, civil engineering, structures, hydropower, etc.).

Related salaries, benefits, etc

This needs to be taken into account in all job search processes. Design-related work overtime is really serious. Therefore, working hours and overtime-related issues also need to be understood before looking for a job, and I personally consider my physical problems and do not want to work too much overtime and give up submitting resumes to several large companies of my choice.

Interestingly, perhaps because I had experienced so many unsuspecting ddls during my two years of study in Singapore, I had developed a set of fast and efficient analysis and drawing methods, as well as a little bit of software skills, so that in the year since I joined, I have actually worked very few days of overtime, and it seems that I am two worlds away from my colleagues who are at the workstation almost every night next door.

03 Study abroad has obtained far more than just a collection of works

I don't have much experience with the interview process, and the most important thing is that the portfolio needs to be well prepared. Frankly speaking, I didn't have enough time to prepare my own portfolio, but I directly added the content of the project I completed at NUS to the portfolio of graduate students- perhaps thanks to nus's extremely busy and rich study life, I even deleted a few works that did not seem to me to be very good, and completed a dense collection of nearly fifty pages.

On the basis of the completion of the portfolio, I changed the English version and the Chinese version to use for the submission of resumes.

During the interview, the interviewers were very interested in the projects I worked on during my graduate studies, perhaps because the projects they actually worked on rarely had the more diverse and open content that NUS had. I shared my eco-rehabilitation project at CCNR in Singapore, a landfill restoration project by Jakarta, and the temporary exhibition space at Changi Airport during COVID, which are rarely seen in China, which are great plus points in the interview and job search process, and even at the end of the interview, the interviewer lamented regretfully, "We may not have a chance to do this type of project here." ”

It is true that the impression of the design institute is biased towards conformism, perhaps some traditional and old-fashioned, but during the interview, I could feel that the interviewer was full of yearning and curiosity about the system and design style that has long been commonplace abroad. This is also one of the advantages of our international students themselves, and the time spent studying abroad will eventually leave not only the portfolios and resumes we submit, but also our slightly different ways of thinking and insight from domestic students.

04 There is no standard answer to design, and so is life

The work of the design institute is actually very different from that of the school.

Whether it's the ecological restoration of the CCNR or the landfill of Jakarta, I learned more about how to understand a field that I may not have been familiar with from scratch, relying on the landscape way of thinking to turn data and words into analytical maps and finally into space.

But at that time, the space in my hand was "empty" after all, and it could not be truly felt.

After work, the research and thinking that I took for granted and stayed on paper needed to become a park that could actually be used, which led me to think more about how to add specific norms and specifications to the void space. The transition from student thinking to designer thinking is actually difficult, but perhaps because of my study and life in Singapore, this transformation is not difficult for me, but I can flexibly adapt to different project requirements in my own way faster, and my master is more willing to guide me to participate in more large-scale projects and have more practical opportunities.

Even I enjoy it – working in my hometown has led to most of the projects I can handle in environments that I used to know, sometimes the ancient roads and mottled walls outlined in my grandfather's stories. During this year, I participated in the landscape restoration of a Song Dynasty ancient road and the design of the beautification plan of the countryside along the route, the cultural landscape design along the Mother River, and the greenway design around the ancient city wall of Fucheng. The words that once existed only in the records of local history as a child gradually became the design drawings and actual projects I had retained, and I learned to use the rationality and modern thinking exercised at NUS to restore the culture of my hometown's past.

It's a wonderful thing. Seemingly completely different two, located in the high-speed development of the far equator of the tropical country and from the drizzle of the small city of Jiangnan, the extreme simplicity of modern and mottled old monuments, finally converged in my hands. I remembered that at the beginning of the intention to enter the landscape profession, I was dissatisfied with the old city of my hometown being completely demolished and destroyed, I don't know if I have found the answer now after six years, maybe there is, maybe not, but it is difficult to have a standard answer in design, just like life.

I think all we need to do is do a good job in the moment, understand what we want, whether it is studying or working, as always, and not forget the original intention.