The students want a taste of real-life work experience at an architectural firm. A 60-year-old downtown Vancouver architecture firm wants to mentor young people, recruit more top-notch employees and put Vancouver on the Northwest’s architectural map.
It all came together this spring at LSW Architects with the arrival of 21 high-achieving teens and graduate-level college students, each group working on a separate housing project design.
Eleven graduate students from Washington State University’s School of Architecture arrived May 11 for a six-week immersion program, for which LSW Architects was selected from among all architectural firms that applied in the Northwest. And 10 Clark County high school students have been coming to LSW’s freshly remodeled building once a week since February for a brand new, semester-long job-shadowing program.
“It’s so cool that now when I walk around the city, I look at buildings and say, wow, I can do that,” said Astrid DuBois, 17, a student at Vancouver iTech Preparatory. “It just gives you a greater understanding of architecture.”
Founded in 1955, LSW Architects has designed numerous major public facilities around the city, such as Clark College’s Gaiser Hall, Discovery Middle School and the Jim Parsley Community Center. LSW President Casey Wyckoff said he and his business partner, Ralph Willson, have a passion for providing young people with internship and job-shadowing opportunities.
“I think it’s in our DNA to want to help young people succeed,” said Wyckoff, 40, who started as an intern at LSW Architects 19 years ago. “If I can be one of those people years down the road where someone says, ‘I’m in architecture because I got encouragement from this guy,’ that would be rewarding.”
High school students
Hailing from a variety of high schools in Clark County, the teenagers interviewed for LSW’s program, submitting a portfolio and résumé. LSW worked with school districts to choose students and develop learning objectives for the job-shadowing program, which will continue in the fall.
The high school students, many of whom have a visual arts background, began the course by coming up with the name Design Co-Mission for their group and creating a logo and mission statement. LSW staff members gave them a crash course in architectural principles and showed them how to use SketchUp, a 3-D modeling computer software program.
The teenagers got to work designing a downtown affordable housing project to spark ideas for a potential developer. They visited the project property site and observed how LSW architects took notes. They mocked up floor plans, parking areas and three types of apartment units for a six-story building.
Although some of the students’ ideas for an affordable housing apartment building for families would be prohibitively expensive if built (think rooftop swimming pool and four-bedroom units), Wyckoff didn’t want to stifle their creative process with the financial reality of market conditions.
“We’ve been encouraging them to do what you feel passionate about and run with it,” Wyckoff said. “But the other side of me bites my tongue because … on paper it probably doesn’t pencil.”
Wednesday, the teenagers huddled around laptop computers in LSW’s break room with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking Esther Short Park, preparing a final presentation for the city.
Being an architect turned out to be more complicated than it looks, requiring math skills and technical knowledge of things such as city code, the students said.
“It’s a lot more complex than you’d think,” said Wyckoff’s son Ethan Wyckoff, 14, who is home-schooled. “I saw my dad working on things at home. It didn’t seem too hard — he just seemed to be drawing.”
As they designed the housing project, students learned how seemingly minor details can drive up costs. A hallway between apartment units is square footage that can’t be factored into tenants’ rent, and so it should be a standard width. Build higher than six stories and your structure needs a steel frame.
“They’d kind of bring us down to reality but still use some of our ideas,” said Matthew Carr, 17, who attends Vancouver School of Arts and Academics. (Incidentally, he was the only one of the bunch who thinks he’ll pursue architecture as a career.)
“I just really appreciate all the detail LSW taught us and all the small considerations we would have never thought of,” said Sequoia Pullella-Barca, 17, a student at Vancouver iTech Preparatory. “I learned more than I could ever imagine.”
Overall, the students said, they felt it was a worthwhile experience from which other high-schoolers could benefit, for becoming acquainted with the practice of architecture as well as a professional office setting.
“It’s opened up a new perspective on my thinking. This is going to really help me for the future,” said Rachel Lee, 17, a student at Mountain View High School.
WSU students
When WSU put out a request for proposals to architectural firms in Washington and Oregon for its graduate student immersion program, LSW applied — and was selected.
“For us, it’s a big deal. Vancouver has not traditionally been on the architectural map of the state,” Casey Wyckoff said, citing Seattle, Portland and San Francisco as a bigger draw for architects. “I think we have something great, and it’s an opportunity for us to connect with a pool of talent.”
The WSU students have been tasked with helping a developer determine the feasibility of building a mixed-use retail and affordable housing project downtown that’s connected with Vancouver’s future waterfront project and mass transit. (The developer did not want to be named in this story or have the exact location of the property mentioned.) The students will look at parking, quantity and size of apartment units and create conceptual architectural designs for the project.
“From a developer’s perspective, parking, unit count and leasable square footage — those are the key ingredients in determining the financial feasibility of the project,” Wyckoff said. “You can design a bunch of great stuff, but if it’s not financially feasible, it just won’t get built.”
Assigned tasks with weekly deadlines, the students will get valuable experience working with a real project, coordinating with the city and gaining an understanding of the practice of architecture. They’ll learn architectural planning and feasibility, he said.
WSU master’s student William Bilyeu, 23, graduated from Battle Ground Public Schools’ Prairie High School in 2010. He’s in the one-year accelerated master’s in architecture program.
“It’s nice to be in an office and see how professionals work,” said Bilyeu, working on a one-sixteenth scale model of the site.
The students said after touring large firms of 250 people in Seattle, they’re glad to have the experience of working in a more intimate setting.
“It’s actually making me more excited,” said Kelsey Jancola, 22, of Covington. “You’re like, ‘That could be me sitting in that chair.’ “
