Mid-Internship Review

The middle of my internship is rapidly approaching. So today I did something that I have not done for a long time. I did something that only Dwight would do. I asked to have a performance review, and my boss said that I am doing fine. That was it. Then I asked if I could attend one of the boring meetings that he is always going to. He said that they are all boring. Still persistent to be all that I can be I asked if I could go to one of the city commission meetings so I could see how Landscape Architects deal with City Councils not located in Manhattan. Finally he conceded to some misery and I get to go to a meeting on the 17th of July. Whoo hoo!

The other part of my performance review was given by my immediate supervisor man and he actually had some good things to say. Things like, you are filling our gap well. We needed someone with CAD and Photoshoping skills. Then he told me that the workplace is a great place to see how the real world works. School can only prepare you so much and then bam! your working for real and you have to deal with people's egos. And in the real world you need to know how to deal with projects being put on hold and any number of frustrating things.

But I have learned a little, the first is that the sandwich shop, The Robins Nest is wicked sweet. Second of all I have learned where the nice bathroom is in the building, it does not have gold toilets but the stall dividers are marble. I also learned that Landscape Architects don't like pushy Architects, Architects don't like Landscape Architects telling them how to use CAD. Although seriously this one architect was making a building that was larger than the building lot because he didn't put it in CAD correctly. And nobody likes Engineers. The Landscape Architects in the office do not like the ASLA Magazine, they do like Urban Land and Topos, and that PPS does not like Landscape Architects. Who is the PPS you ask. Well, it stands for People for Public Spaces, and it is a organization of designers and other professionals who are out to make good public spaces. You can visit their website here: http://www.pps.org/

I have been looking into the design of Plazas and Squares and I stumbled upon the PPS from a book called "How to Turn a Place Around." It is an interesting publication that talks about successful public spaces and even gives a rubric for assessing public spaces. A much better book in my opinion is "City Comforts: how to build an urban village", but that is besides the point. I then Googled "PPS and Landscape Architects" and found a number of articles that talked about the feud that LAs have with PPS. I will not delve into it much but if your office has a copy of Landscape Architecture Magazine, March 2007, Volume 97, number 3 you should turn to page 36 and read the article. As for me I like everybody! Well, almost everybody there was this one lady in France.... Anyways, I think that the PPS has a lot of good suggestions for Public Spaces and I think that LAs have a lot of good ideas for public spaces so take the good and block the bad. Sorry, this post has been a ramble. Happy Belated Canada Day!