Transferred from: WIIISH Space
Only learn internship life - take you into a well-known firm
Welcome to the Weixue Internship Life Series~ Here, the seniors of the Weixue family will tell you about their interesting experiences in the internship process. You can find all the wonderful stories you want to know about the world-renowned master design firm, the working environment and life of the interns, and the wonderful stories you talked with your friends during the period. Without further ado, let's find out.
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Master of Architecture from the University of California, Berkeley, and Bachelor of Architecture from Beijing University of Technology. He has practiced in well-known firms such as China Architectural Design and Research Institute, OPEN Architects, Jean Nouvel Architectural Design & Consulting Co., Ltd., UNStudio Architects, Kengo Kuma Architectural Design & Design & Design & Consulting Co., Ltd., and so on.
To learn more about the author's educational experience, please click → relax, and do something interesting at UCB
Jean Nouvel, French architect and winner of the 2008 Pritzker Prize. Jean Nouvel is good at using steel, glass and light to create a novel architectural image that meets the requirements of the environment and context of the building site. Representative works include Louvre Abu Dhabi, Qatar National Museum, National Art Museum of China, etc.
1. Working environment
AJN (Ateliers Jean Nouvel) is located in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, France, in a non-noisy inner alley. The office itself is unremarkable, and at the end of the alley you can see a fenced door with the name of the office written in small letters next to the door, and behind the door is a C-shaped inner courtyard surrounded by three Haussmann-style buildings.
▲ Office Entrance © XD
The three buildings are interconnected internally, with the 2nd to 4th floors being office areas and the first floor being the model making room and reception area. Perhaps it's because in older buildings, the interior space layout is relatively simple, and each floor is a relatively typical open office space.
The size of the office is about 200 people, including architecture, landscape, interior, structure, renderings and other departments. As in most offices in Europe and the United States, each person's workstation (including the intern) will be adjusted at any time according to the project he is working on, and the people who work with him will sit together to communicate. There is less obvious hierarchy among employees (with the exception of Jean Nouvel, who existed like an emperor).
▲ In-house © AJN Website
The firm's composition is predominantly French, with more than a dozen Chinese and people from other countries, but French is the preferred language for most people to work. If you don't speak French, HR will assign you to a colleague who is fluent in English, but that doesn't mean that all colleagues can communicate in English. During my internship, there weren't many international interns in the firm. So it's a good idea to learn some basic French expressions before your internship starts.
2. Office culture
As an architectural firm with projects all over the world, AJN opened its first office in Shanghai only a few years ago, and this seems to have something to do with Jean Nouvel's management of the firm.
Unlike other large firms, AJN does not have partners (this was the case until my internship, and I don't know if this is unclear now). This meant that all of the firm's projects were to be controlled by Jean Nouvel alone. Speaking of which, I have to admire the energy of the hard work, and there are often more than 10 projects in the program stage carried out in the office at the same time, and each project is personally handled by him. For the project he is interested in, Nu will draw sketches all night to think of plans, and even specific to the shape of the tree pond and the paving pattern have to be repeatedly scrutinized.
▲ "La Marseillaise" building © AJN Website
However, as the absolute brain of the entire firm, Jean Nouvel himself will not appear in the firm most of the time. Due to my busy schedule and advanced age, most of the time the project leader communicates with Nugong through video conference, and I remember that I have only seen Nugong less than five times in total during the six months of my internship.
If one day he hears that Nu Gong is going to come to the office to see a project that he is particularly concerned about, the person in charge of other large and small projects will print out the drawings in advance, and use the time to let him sketch a few strokes in the plan book. The scanned master sketches are distributed to colleagues, who then meet to figure out the meaning of the sketches.
The most impressive thing is the imagination of a poet, who can connect various intentions in nature, history, and culture in a short period of time to construct a shocking architectural picture. Even some of his long-time colleagues are still shocked by Nouvel's whimsy, and listen to the project leader relay Nuvel's ideas with expressions of "Did I hear me wrong?" and "Can I really do this?" (e.g., describing a proposal as a Zeppelin hovering over the city with cow's nipples).
▲ National Museum © of Qatar AJN Website
3. Internship application
AJN will post the internship application information on the official website, and if you don't have one, you can also submit your resume and portfolio on the "OPEN APPLICATION". If HR thinks that your situation is suitable for the position, they will make an appointment with you by phone at a later date.
In fact, at this point, it basically means that an offer has been made. The so-called interview doesn't require you to talk about your portfolio, just a phone call and a simple question or two about her on her resume, and then she will tell you why we chose you. However, as for when you will receive the email for the phone interview, it all depends on when HR remembers to check the application email, which can range from a few days to a few months. As far as I know, there is only one HR person in charge of recruiting employees in the HR department, so it is not uncommon for me to miss the application email. It is also recommended that if you have not received a reply email in 1 month, you can try it a few more times.
4. Job content
Interns, like permanent employees, are assigned to a fixed project team and work as part of a team to work steadily throughout the project phases.
In the first month after I arrived at the company, I was assigned to the renderings department to help produce the renderings of a domestic project plan stage (yes, AJN has a special renderings department). Jean Nuvel seems to have a strong personal preference for the expression of renderings, and he likes to start with the renderings when looking at the plan. So if you pay attention, you will notice that AJN's project has its own style of rendering.
▲ In the Qingdao Xihai Art Bay Workshop project, Cyber moved bricks and studied the façade bricklaying scheme
© AJN Website
In the next few months, I mainly participated in Qingdao Xihai Art Bay Workshop (preliminary design stage) and a domestic office building + apartment project (planning stage), the main work includes modeling and refining the plan, making report texts and drawing CAD drawings. During this period, he also assisted in translating part of the text guide of Jean Nouvel's solo exhibition "In My Mind, In My Eyes" in Shanghai.
It is worth mentioning that in AJN, the solid model almost does not appear in the early stage of the plan designation, but is only used as the expression of the final result, so the interns who are the main force of the model can reduce a lot of heavy manual labor in AJN.
5. Daily life
Paris, the word seems to conjure up a life, which is contained in a myriad of charming, elegant, romantic fragments that make up a flowing feast.
Of course, don't expect AJN's internship salary to pay for this feast. But outside of the internship, you'll also have plenty of time to experience life. The firm usually does not work overtime, and if it is a project DDL overtime, there will be compensatory leave after that. For example, when I was an intern, it coincided with the "Yellow Vest" movement, the biggest riot in France in 50 years, and every day I walked through the parade crowds and visited the attractions of Paris, which was also a limited-time return theme tour of the "French Revolution".
▲ Immerse yourself in "Les Miserables" © XD on your way to and from work
Like regular employees, the office gives interns a dozen meal tickets every month, which can be used in almost all restaurants in Paris. In addition, every Thursday at noon, the Chinese of the company will go to a Chinese restaurant for dinner, and the scene of everyone complaining about gossip together is also a very rare memory.
▲ The hot pot bureau © XD after catching up with the node
Every festival, the company will hold a cocktail party, and colleagues will shuttle through several buildings with wine. Catch up with whoever celebrates their birthday, and you may also receive a "Haidilao"-style birthday blessing. At each project node, the person in charge will also invite all the people in the group to eat in the restaurant together. On the last day before the end of the internship, you will also receive carefully selected gifts from your colleagues and a card with words of blessing written on them.
▲ Last Day收到的努工作品集 © XD
6. Epilogue
"If you've been lucky enough to have been to Paris and lived there when you're young, it's always with you. ”
- Ernest Hemingway
When I think back to Paris now, I can still smell a slightly sour smell of plastic in the air through the out-of-focus images, which I smelled as I walked sleepily through the Place de la République on the morning of my first day of internship. Even if you squint, you can see the wet gravel road after the rain, the night of the city on the Seine, the crowds of marchers passing by... But the tone of the city was imperceptibly set when we first met it. Even now, despite being away from Paris for several years, the smell still appears deep in the nasal cavity when some of the vents are released.
In memory, there may be only a few moments that make up life, and these moments will penetrate into our continuous time experience and become the background color of our life. Walking through the Place de la République was undoubtedly a moment of mine. I remember walking fast and having an urge to take a deep breath. After that, I will meet a group of colleagues who will benefit me a lot, I will experience the beauty and ugliness of Paris, all of which at that moment I will feel strongly alive because of the unknown.
▲ Night view of © Paris XD before leaving
The pictures and texts in the article are all from the author © XD,
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