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During my time at Lungfish Architects, I learnt a lot of new and exciting things. Lungfish and the wider SCAPE Group were all very welcoming and are an amazing team. They all helped me learn new skills and get a real insight into what life is like to work in the built environment as an architect.

Firstly, I started with a tour and met all of the staff and had an introduction to learn a bit about what they all do. During the week, I worked closest with project architect, Alison Pressley and interior designer, Hannah Scrimshaw who helped me to create many mood boards, focusing on interior design to do with nature and plants. After researching biophilic design (an approach that connects building occupants more closely to nature), a concept that was new and exciting to me, I went on to make another mood board for a classroom in a Lungfish project, Cotton End Forest School. I was able to use what I had researched and learnt about biophilic design to help me create the theme of the ‘woodland pavilion’ building. Towards the end of the day I sat with the Marketing team and learnt a lot about their roles and what they do for Lungfish and SCAPE Group.

On Tuesday, I used my new A3 sketchpad to make a furniture plan of what I had previously created for the Cotton End Forest School, with illustrations to help understand my ideas. I also sat in on the team ‘huddle’ which was very interesting as there was a lot of information to take in on a number of their projects, which was very exciting.

Carrying on with my interior design task, I worked with Hannah to pick out samples and finishes and then placed orders so that I could make a physical mood board with them later in the week. I then spent some time at Scape’s reception with the admin staff, learning all about what they do. After that, I had a very interesting conversation with Richard Daw, associate director, who told me all about how he got into architecture and what makes a good and successful architect.

Carrying on with my furniture plan, I made my final finishes to it as well as doing my final bit of research. Seb, architectural assistant, then showed me how to use Lumien, software that the team use for creating visualisations, which was exciting and could definitely be a branch of architecture that I look at going in to in the future. It was all about rendering, picking out materials and basically just making everything look nice, which I found very interesting as I am a bit of a perfectionist. I was able to pick out the materials and finishes for the exterior of the ‘woodland pavilion’ theme I had been working on and create my own design for the building.

In the morning, I helped pick out photos with Hannah and Kat (from Marketing) to create a collage for an animation focusing on the Lungfish journey of design and engagement, featuring the team and projects. Lungfish intend to use this for clients when taking them through any stage of the design process. In doing this, it helped me have a clearer understanding of the projects that Lungfish have been involved in and learn a bit more about their processes.

Hannah then taught me how to use InDesign which allowed me to use my previous mood boards and turn them into something more sophisticated.

On my last day, I carried on with some InDesign work, so I could create a title page for everything that I had been working on. With my samples that had arrived, I was now able to create a physical mood board, which took me a while to set out but was definitely worth it in the end. This allowed me to see how well each of the materials would work together in my design for the classroom.

When all of my work was finally finished, I had some time to put together a presentation that I would present to the team about everything I had designed during the week. I was very nervous at first but after, I started to get into the flow of it. I think everyone was very impressed.