RRSLA INTERNSHIP BLOG

 Hey guys, this is Jacob. The last two weeks have been quite interesting. Last Friday my principal offered me to go down to Fort Lauderdale for two weeks to meet the rest of the team, and everyone else at EDSA. So on Sunday I packed my bags and took the three-hour drive south to here. EDSA has a guest house so this is where I'll be for my stay. It's quite convenient for the office since people are down here so often traveling from other offices.  I have been to LA before and the Fort Lauderdale and Miami areas are quite the same as LA. The first thing I noticed was how all the buildings looked frozen in time from the '70s-'80s. It's pretty cool to see all the things on tv in real life. I watched shows like CSI Miami and monk when I was young and all of the Miami rich boat stereotype is just like it is in the movies here. Also if you've seen shows like Birdcage, All about the Benjamins, and Miami Vice it's like a live movie set 24/7. It's also super commo

  This is what my boss sent me based on my concept sketch below.  This was my original sketch.  Hi everyone, Blog #4- I am just getting back from a weekend in Aspen with Ashton, Austin and Emily! It was a winter wonderland and I am so happy that I got to experience a taste of what they are doing all semester long. This week was very exciting because I am finally gaining some office confidence lol- Not that they did not have confidence, but I now understand that it can be difficult to delegate work to someone at our level. We began working from sketches on a campus master plan for Northwestern University in  northern Louisiana . I thought that it would take a lot longer than it did, but we hopped into it on Monday and got it out of the door today. I even did the cad work and helped do a takeoff OPC (opinion of probable cost).  I love the larger scale stuff, and I love Carbo! I hope that you are enjoying your internship and blossoming with your new skills. I am getting better at understa

 I've been busy the past couple of weeks working on CDs for Water Wise Gulf South which is a non-profit that Dana started to help manage stormwater in marginalized communities. They recently held a competition where groups could enter their own designs and the winners would receive $5,000 to get their projects completed. After the winners for each neighborhood were selected and site visits were conducted I've been working to get all verifying all the plans in CAD. Getting them dimensioned and getting all the details to spec and everything labeled. Outside of that, I've been working in Excel putting together opinions of probable cost for each of the jobs. Actually, that's pretty much all that I do on most days CAD and Excel. I did make this isometric detail, that's the most creative thing I've done in a long time.  Last Friday we had a volunteer day at City Park in New Orleans to clean up the stormwater parking island that DBA designed. We trimmed up a bunch of p

 Hello Guys,      It's crazy to think that we are almost done with our 3rd month of our internship already. Time has been flying by for me so far. The weather here has been amazing the last couple of weeks. The wind is super hectic sometimes but feels nice for the most part. The Job itself is going great. We have picked up a bunch of projects recently so things have been very busy around here since our most experienced worker took another job. We are hiring a new employee soon so it will be nice not being the new person anymore. As far as my living situation goes, my app complex is stuffing a random person to live in our loft so that should suck pretty good. Its already a small app so I can only imagine how bad adding another person will be. Some more interesting information about how my life is going, my truck broke down last week, and after I fixed it, it got broke into the next day and they stole my keys out of it. So a bunch of great things going on here, I hope you guys are do

 Hi everyone!!!! The third month of interning is coming to an end and I am very happy about it. I feel like I am getting more into the nitty-gritty at work now; I am cleaning up surveys and consulting cad files. It's very time-consuming and confusing but it's been a great way to learn how to use CAD. I am scheduling with Douglas next week and I was very surprised to find out I have to take 3 more electives, which I am definitely not happy about. If anyone reading this is also taking electives next year please let me know what you plan on taking :) On a lighter note Madeline came and visited us this past weekend and we had a blast. We went tubing and on a coaster and showed her all the pretty sights near the Aspen area. It was a nice little break from working and really fun to catch up with her. I am finally coming back to Louisiana for a few days next week for a wedding and I am so pumped. The fist thing I will be doing is eating 30 pounds of crawfish then heading to Popeyes to

Lately we've been working mostly on a couple of residential projects. One of them is for a local radio guy, which is pretty interesting. Part of the program is going to be an outdoor recording setup, so we need to deal with noise. I also got to put together a short video for the office Instagram of the concept process.   Other than the residential projects, we've also been redecorating the conference room. We're using professional photos taken after some big projects finished up and hanging them to showcase the office's work. We're doing it mostly DIY, and hanging them on these vertical mounts.  

 Goodmorning fellow classmates,      I hope everyone is having a great time on their internships. Looks like were getting past the halfway point for some which has in-turn fueled me to start looking for another opportunity this summer. I would love to be able to go get some experience from somewhere else in Baton Rouge although that it probably a stretch. My boss was out of town for the majority of the week last week, so I was tasked with practicing planting plans by hand. As of today, I have completed 10 of Ryan's old plans as practice and I have come such a long way. I was struggling at first mostly due to my heavy hand, but I have lightened up a lot as of recent. The line weights are far as composition goes have come full circle.      I have also been drawing details which is a lot harder since his style is so unique. I will post some pics below because I am pretty proud of them personally . Besides that I have been digitalizing his plant books so we can make garden journals for

Hi pals!   The weather has been so nice up here lately, although it did just start raining. Overall, it has been great for getting out and about. It has also been nice to begin leaving my giant coat at home. Honestly, I think the nice weather and the time change have just made everything more pleasant in general. I have been staying pretty busy running errands for the office, going on site visits, or working on drawings and renderings. Among all of these things, I have also gotten to meet a few clients. I always enjoy connecting with them, whether in person, over the phone, or on Zoom. The ones that I have met all very nice and seem so excited about designing their living spaces. I had a lot of fun last Friday when Bernice and I met some potential clients at their home. They own a building company, and you could tell that they were dying for someone to give them a reason to buy more machinery. We walked around with them for hours and talked about the design goals for their property. Th

 Hey everyone,      More people are coming back to the office now physically and it's great to see new faces at the workstations. It was a relief to finally see new people in-person instead of seeing them on zoom meetings and I appreciated that. I was able to see and meet with Jim, who is another principal in our office that was primarily working remotely. We both exchanged introductions and had conversations about the projects I was working on and how I felt about Denver.      What I've been up to lately is drawing sketches for Firestone Central Park. We're now in the most exciting phase of this project as now we can rearrange amenities and trails now. After getting feedback on which programming diagram was favorable, I started sketching out ideas. Who knew that a park could include so many ball fields in one area. In fact, most parks in Colorado that I have studied so far had a cluster of ball fields in a single area with trails integrated, which I didn't think at fir

Hello, everyone! This is my first blog since I am in China. I started my internship on March 1st, I know that was too late than you guys, but I went to this office on the first day after the Chinese New Year holidays. I miss all of you so much, so I going to share what happened to me these days. After the last day in LSU, I went to Florida to see my boyfriend with my cat Meemo. I stayed in Florida for about 20 days and then took a flight to Los Angeles to take the Covid test. After I got the negative reports, I got on the plane back to China. I arrived in Guangzhou, a coastal city in southern China, the climate is very similar to Louisiana. I followed the passengers through the Chinese customs and then went to the hotel for the first 14 days of quarantine. After 14 days, I got my release report and took a flight to my home city Chongqing, for another 14 days quarantine. I stayed in hotels for almost a whole month by myself. Although it was kind of boring, I had my Nintendo Switch and O

 Hey all! It's been a bit quiet around the office this week. 3 of the 5 people in the office have been out of the office for various reasons. First thing Monday morning, I had to quickly update a grading plan to reflect some architectural changes to a house that is currently under construction in Mountain Brook so the driveway will not be quite so steep. I am always so amazed by how one little component of a site (i.e. adding an extra step at the front stoop) can have such large implications on a site design and cause impacts all across the site. In this case, we added an extra step at the front door to push the motor court/driveway down, which solves several issues with the site. Duane checking my grading before I sent the drawings to the architect. Including myself, 4 of the 5 people at the firm are left handed. We think in our right mind!  I've also taken a smaller landscape design in another area of Mountain Brook from site inventory/measure-up to schematic design this week

Hey everyone!  (Fair warning, not much has happened since my last blog post.) Work:  My main focus at work has been the local Aspen residence that I have been working on. We are piecing together the final components of the construction documents to hand over to the City of Aspen to obtain permits. I have drawn SO many details for this site. For only being a 500 sq ft project, it sure as hell has been a very complex project. The spa has been the most complex component within the site. To comply with newer Aspen regulations, the spa needed to be a unit that can be dropped into the ground rather than a more typical poured in place concrete style spa. This complicated things as we had to figure out how to maintain access to the "void space" for maintenance purposes. I can not tell you the amount of times I have edited these details to this point haha. It has been interesting drawing these details as my PM has mostly been like just go for it. So it has been a LOT of researching. L

Hey everybody!  Currently writing to y'all on my lunch break right now. This week at work is going to be pretty busy. We have a lot of new leads, including one for Lil Boosie's mom. I am excited to see what we can do for them!  I am personally so happy that spring is finally here! Since the freeze and rainy weather, there haven't been many days to go outside and enjoy nature until now. Thankfully, I went to Tickfaw State Park yesterday and it was beautiful. Many flowering trees and shrubs are blooming so life is becoming more colorful and joyful. It still feels strange to me that we have time to ourselves after work and on the weekends, so I've been experimenting more with watercolor pens and acrylic paint in my free time.  Hope everyone is enjoying their time and can't wait to see y'all soon!  -Alyssa

 Goodmorning Everyone,      Thought I would pop up since I am feeling like I need a little Monday Motivation. After last week, I could use some work anyways. Last Thursday was an easy day... we drove around and saw all the Azaleas blooming. I learned all the different colors of flowers and leaves, sizes, and growth rates. Safe to say I am burnt out of azaleas lol. Friday comes around and we set up one of our clients with décor because they were having friends over to show the house. We drove around all day looking at antiques which is honestly my favorite part about working here.     Before that on Wednesday I believe we went to Covington to meet some potential clients and we were able to see the Saint Joseph Abbey. A beautiful piece of property tucked off on some back roads. It was breathtaking and we were there for a few hours after the meeting. Ryan really wants me to develop an eye for beautiful craftsmanship. The details are what matter in such micro design. A brick can mean the d

Hey y'all! I hope everyone is having a great time during their internships! I recently celebrated my 22nd birthday and to mark the occasion I had a weekend visit from my dad. We went all around Nashville and even tried some of the famous hot chicken from Hattie B's. I also got to celebrate my birthday at the office along with my fellow intern Lauren. Our office manager Julia brought in bundtini's (mini Bundt cakes) for everyone from Nothing Bundt Cakes and they were delicious! Along with celebrating office birthdays last week, we also had a meeting with the Vice Mayor of Nashville Jim Shulman and the Executive Director of the Nashville Planning Department Lucy Kempf. During the meeting we had a conversation about the rapid growth Nashville has seen over the last 10 years, and what measures we as landscape architects think should be taken in order to protect the historical integrity of both downtown Nashville as well as the surrounding neighborhoods. It was a very interestin

 This past day, I was pulled in on a municipal project with Shannon. They are working with CPEX on a resiliency toolkit for Oppelousas, La. I was tasked with drawing sections for the various types of storm water infrastructure. I definitely referenced my details from Kathy's class! God bless her. lol.  Hope you enjoy these sketches- They did not give me many final comments because this is just a draft, so let me know if you see something not boyeresque :)  I really enjoy working on Shannon's projects and Zach's institutional work.. less on the residential side but I do appreciate all of the work that goes into fine tuning the details. I appreciate that they trust me to work with hand since that is still my preferred method. I do want to work to improve my skills even further once I have some free time.