Hello all,

I last wrote to you about my internship with the Neighborhood Design Center, but I am now working as a co-op with a local Landscape Architecture firm here in Columbus, Kinzelman Kline Gossman, LLC.

http://www.kkgstudios.com/

My co-op is a year long, so I will be enjoying our offices in the Brewery District until I go back for my last quarter in January of 2011.

At work, I help on various types of projects doing different tasks. Sometimes I will work on drawing in autocad, presentations in InDesign, or renderings in Photoshop.

My favorite experience so far was when I worked on a project with a local church. Before even starting the design of the site, we were able to have meetings with the church’s counsel to do experiential planning – which is an important step in developing a design. From our meetings we found that the clients really wanted a space that fostered personal relationships, and was welcoming to those outside of the church. From here, we took the social and spiritual motives to create the physical design.

However, as much as I love my co-op, I will be taking a month-long break for a landscape internship in Geneva, Switzerland this summer. It is through the U.S. Mission and the ASLA. Hopefully by the time I get back I will have figured out how to post pictures, because I’ve heard Switzerland is a gorgeous place!

Tootles!

-JJ

(If any underclassmen are undecided and considering a design-related major, feel free to shoot me questions @ obee.2@osu.edu)

Hey all!

Tomorrow kicks off the Neighborhood Design Center’s exhibit at OSU’s Urban Arts Space on Town St. in downtown Columbus.
Here’s the web site for more information if anyone is interested.

http://uas.osu.edu/

There’s also work there currently from landscape architecture teachers and students.

~JJ

Hi, I’m JJ Obee. I began with this scholars group in 2005 when it was still CommTech (woot woot!). I spent my first year and a half pretending to go into art and visual communication, but then i ended up in Landscape Architecture – which is like a combination of design and environmentalism – perfect. So since I decided this at the end of my sophomore year, that meant that once I got in I had three more years (giving me a super senior year – yay football tickets). I was able to shave off a quarter, but then I added another year to my time when i landed a co-op (which starts in January). In the mean time i’m going to school and interning with the Neighborhood Design Center, which I’ll be writing about for now.

So that’s the one I’ll be writing about for now. The Neighborhood Design Center is a non-profit organization that does visioning in terms of architecture, landscape architecture, and interior design. They are located on High Street across from the Wexner and next to Evolved if you’re ever interested to know.

I got the internship when a teacher recommended me to the executive director. He then called me in for an interview and I was hired on for summer and during the school year (to do as many hours as I could handle with my school work load)

My commute is pretty wonderful being that A. I only live a few streets away, and B. half the time I am able to do the work in Knowlton (where I pretty much live anyway).

Since I started working at NDC this past June, I have mainly focused on two projects. The first one was my main one throughout the summer. Newark (about an hour east of Columbus) has a great bike trail system but there’s a big gap right in the middle of the city, which is a really culturally charged place. The city hired us to study the current bike trail system and talk to the residents of the city to determine where the bike trail should connect, and to suggest possible future spokes of the bike trail withing the city. This task included public presentation, meetings with stakeholders, presentation design, current bike trail riding (which was awesome), and research of their Canal District. Some of the programs we used were ArcMap (GIS), Photoshop, InDesign, Illustrator, and Autocad.
Interspersed with the bike trail design days were all-office charettes. During these interns working on other projects would do a small briefing on what they were doing, then we would brainstorm to help them come up with some big ideas. We got donuts or pizza on those days. I was very happy.
Now that school has started I am working on my own little project with a company called Strategic Environment. They recently purchased a giant (and i mean like 9 ft high by 10 ft wide) display board for when they go to conventions. My job is to design their board. It’s been pretty fun working with them, and the pace of working on the project by myself has been nice with school going on and what not.
Pictures to come soon hopefully!

Here’s NDC’s link:

http://www.neighborhooddesign.org/FINAL/ABOUT%20NDC/WhoWeAre.html