Architecture in the Real World
Semester: Spring 2025
Faculty Advisor: Jeff Cohen
Field Site: AOS Architects
Field Supervisor: Sam Olshin
Praxis Poster:
PIS_Miles Colescott Revised Praxis Poster
Further Context:
After taking the first semester of the architecture studio course that is offered by the Growth and Structure of Cities major, City 226, in the fall of my junior year, I knew architecture was what I wanted to do as a career. From then on, it became all about trying to find as much time in an architecture studio as I could. Over the winter, I applied for jobs at home in Missoula, Montana, going from office to office and pitching myself to them and why they should hire me. Ultimately, these pitches were mostly misses, but one firm seemed promising, especially after talking in depth about going to school in Pennsylvania with the receptionist, who had gone to Villanova. What ultimately seemed like a far off, unlikely outcome was seeming more promising, and after two interviews, I thought I had it. But as the months passed, and contact became less frequent, so I started to look for other options. This search ultimately led to an internship with Daniela Voith, and VMA in Philadelphia for the summer. This opened the doors for me and showed me what it was like to work in an architecture office, and ever since, I have been trying to get more time in an office, working on real world projects besides the other architects. This desire led to me discovering the Praxis program, and ultimately landing a Praxis independent study with Sam Olshin, one of the other architecture study professors, at AOS Architects.
I was able to work on a few different projects while at AOS. The first main project was for St. Marks Episcopal Church, in Jacksonville, Florida. Unlike many church communities in the United States, the congregation at St. Marks is expanding. With this growth, the existing facilities have become strained, and the worship service the church is able to provide is less effective. While AOS did a comprehensive master plan for the congregation over a decade ago, due to circumstances at the time, the church couldn’t go ahead with the plan and start construction. This time around, however, the have secured funding and will be able to start construction once we finish the design documentation. I attended zoom meetings with members of the clergy and congregation, and documented their needs that the new building must address. From there, I helped to develop these needs into a detailed program list, with quantities, square footages, and associated adjacencies for each room. This was a lot of fun, and allowed me and the other architects on the project to focus on creating multiple schemes that allowed for different things to take center focus in each one. Lastly, I helped create the floorplans for the decided upon scheme and layout each section of the building, starting by hand before moving into Revit to create a more polished set that was shared with the church. This was a challenging, but very rewarding process, to iterate on these designs and see them come to life. At the end of my time with AOS, we had created a set of finalized floor plans and were polishing up some exterior and interior perspectives that would be shown to the congregation, so they could get a better sense of what the building would look like and the materials we were going to use.
This wasn’t the only project that I got to work on, however. I spent a few weeks diving into the work of Percival Goodman, one of the most prolific designers of synagogues in the United States. For this project, I was specifically looking for synagogues that he designed, which had been recently renovated and rethought, due to falling congregation numbers. I was hoping to find precedent to aid AOS in rethinking a Goodman designed synagogue in Springfield, Massachusetts as they facing this same challenge. Ultimately, this research led me to the shocking conclusion that despite the prevalence of this problem, most congregations would rather sell their existing, frequently historic building, and build something new instead of reconfiguring their existing space. Despite this outcome, the research gave me a much deeper understanding of synagogue architecture and what it means to create a religious space that is appropriate for the congregation that it serves.
As a result of this internship, I gained a lot. First and foremost, I became more familiar with the design programs that are standard in architecture firms today. This includes design drafting software like Sketchup, AutoCAD, and Revit, and rendering programs like Enscape. Next, I gained insights into the many different stakeholders in each project, and some skills and strategies for juggling their competing interests and objectives, to ultimately create a project that all parties are happy and excited about. Lastly, I improved my spatial thinking skills by applying them to design challenges, with real world constraints. This is something that I can refine with practice, and getting to work on projects like St. Marks is the best way for me to improve. Overall, I am incredibly grateful for Sam and the rest of the team at AOS for bringing me on for this spring semester, and I wouldn’t change it for the world. Thanks, guys! 🙂