Marianne Cadio
For my fall semester and second co-op, I went to Paris, France and worked under Atelier Tsuyoshi Tane Architects. While I was primarily put on a competition team, I got to also work on a book (translating, editing, and copyright work), an exhibition at the Cite d'Architecture near the Eiffel Tour, assist an architectural photographer, and helped to design a bag for Dior.
Though I worked at a firm in Paris, most of my coworkers were from other countries, including many from Italy, Russia, Egypt, Belgium, Switzerland, Greece, amongst others. This allowed me to learn a lot about the culture and architecture of other countries which I had never visited or worked in before. Particularly the Italian architects taught me a lot about the typical firms in Italy as well as the work culture, which was incredibly informative and helped me grasp where I would possibly like to work in the future. I was also allowed to work in more management-related roles thanks to my fluency in English and comfort with Indesign and Rhino, which taught me plenty on communication and how firms compete and manage competitions and hard deadlines.
I also had the chance to visit plenty of very famous architectural locations, including Alvar Aalto's only house in Paris, the Notre Dame, the Louvre Annex by SANAA, and the Pompidou by Renzo Piano. These experiences, alongside some fashion shows and events I was able to attend, taught me a lot about the work of different international architects and helped me gain a glimpse into the way the fashion world works, something I had always been interested in but had never had the chance to fully participate in.
Overall, this was an amazing eye-opening experience. I got a glimpse into several other cultures and parts of the architecture world, to an extent like I had never experienced before, and visiting sites which I had always read about but never had the chance to visit really helped to cement all which I had learned in my architecture courses up until this point.
