Welcome BLDD Interns!

Hello Bloggers!

Today’s blog entry is all about the lovely interns and our past three weeks with BLDD Architects. Let’s give you a proper introduction.

First, there is Kayla Peck located in the Decatur office and Lena Reiff at the Davenport office. Both Kayla and Lena graduated this year at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a Bachelor’s of Science in Architecture. They plan to return this fall for their Masters of Architecture. The third intern in the Champaign office is Mohona Murad and lastly is myself, Nineveh Rasho, located in the Chicago office. Mohona and I are graduates from the U of I and will be second year graduate students at the U of I this fall looking to obtain our Masters of Architecture degrees.

As this is Kayla’s first internship she was relieved to find warm and welcoming smiles to ease her into the position. Throughout the past three weeks, Kayla has worked on a variety of projects from school additions to a chemical facility. She is currently working on a few QLEo surveys and spent some time outside the office- which has been fun, at least for her. Although the work she has done have only been small portions compared to the projects themselves, she has already been provided with plenty of learning experiences.

Lena had the opportunity to job shadow BLDD her second year of college, and was interested in joining the company from that moment. Now that Lena is officially a part of the firm, she feels she has been able to be a part of the entire architecture experience. Lena has gone on multiple site visits, worked on over 6 projects, learned more about codes and specification sheets, attended meetings, and has learned lifesaving Revit shortcuts (which we all know is wonderful). While any office can give an intern the opportunity to be a part of their projects, not every office can give an intern a place of being and BLDD has done just that.

As a woman in architecture, Mohona wants to have the opportunity to voice her opinions about sustainable design as well as aid communities by creating environmentally friendly structures. Throughout her past three weeks with BLDD, she has been working on Burrill Hall. Her mentors have tasked her to create the structural and the architectural Revit model for the building, which we all know can be daunting for an intern. However, Mohona’s coworkers have helped her and guided her throughout the whole process.

As for me, this is my second internship with BLDD Architects in the Chicago Office. I am clearly having a wonderful experience with this firm, since I keep coming back. So far throughout the past three weeks I have mostly been working on Assisted Living projects. I also have worked on quick tasks to help my coworkers make a deadline (construction documents galore). Luckily I was able to go on a site visit and work on a field report for Holmstad Assisted Living, a project I worked on last summer, which was so exciting! Every day I learn something new from my coworkers, and they have been an extremely helpful hand when it comes to this internship.

As the four of us continue on this path with BLDD Architects, we hope to constantly have educational and invigorating experiences. As we are the only interns and are all women, our goals are to continuously break the barriers between men and women in Architecture and hope to set a precedent for younger generations to come. We thank BLDD for happily inviting us into their family and appreciate the opportunities they have given us thus far.

That’s all for our blog today. You will hear from us soon!