On Friday Element 5 Architecture hosted two 6th graders from Matthews Elementary. The students, Grant and Brittney, shadowed Nick Mehl (that's me) through my morning tasks to see what it's like to be an architect. I can't imagine how exciting it was but they said they thought it was great...maybe they just enjoyed being away from school for a day. In case anyone's interested, here's what my day looked like with them:

An Introduction to 3D modeling. We showed the kids how we make 3D models in our CAD software and SketchUp. They seemed fascinated in how Jay pushed and pulled walls and roofs to manipulate a structure into becoming more like he envisions it.

Lesson in Construction Documents. Perhaps else interesting to them was showing the students the technical drawings that we produce and how much detail goes into creating a set of drawings to be used for construction. To their credit, they did seem interested and asked some good questions about what was being drawn, what the various symbols and notes were and even identified some elements in the plans.

Meeting with a Developer. Okay, the meeting with one of our clients truly was boring to them, so they took a break to create their own architecture with the drawing tools we have in the office. Here's one of the creations that emerged from that exercise:

Site Visit. After seeing the 3D model and construction drawings for a house we have under construction we took a quick drive to the South Austin site to see the house being built. Now, this was fun. The house is a small, modern urban residence that had just started drywall installation - the best stage of construction to see a house. Grant and Brittney got to see all of the wires, ducts and pipes in the walls. They were particularly fascinated by the bathtub and shower installations (don't ask me why). A sample wall erected in the front yard showed how the stone, stucco and paint colors would look, some of which had already been installed.

That concluded our morning together. Onto the rest of the day without the kids, which included a meeting with the city permit office, another meeting with a developer and some CAD drafting back at the office.