This past summer, beginning in June 2010, PhD candidate Bin Jiang began a two-month competitive student internship with Peter Walker & Partners (PWP), in Berkeley California. One of six interns from around the country (including students from Harvard, Cornell, University of Virginia, UC Berkeley, and UIUC), Jiang worked six days a week in the dynamic offices of PWP.  He stresses, however, “they didn’t squeeze us… it was pretty comfortable.” Five days of the week were spent working on various projects with professionals in the office, and Saturdays were spent traveling around the bay area on fieldtrips. Jiang says that the internship was very organized: there were three people in charge of the six interns and they scheduled the interns’ time each day so that everyone got to work on different projects.

Early in his internship Jiang spent two weeks learning Vectorworks and Rhino. While Jiang has had internships in the past at EDAW and EADG International, he emphasizes that each office is different and that you “have to be flexible when it comes to different software.” In addition, many designers at PWP like to use physical models. Jiang says that every project at PWP begins with a model and that modeling “will help you understand your idea.”

The grand finale of the internship was a one-week charrette where the interns competed against each other to design a public garden from conceptual design to a final physical model with drawings, perspectives, and a presentation in front of twenty people, including Peter Walker himself.  While interning at PWP, Jiang worked on several projects including: a Roof Park for the Transbay Transit Center, San Francisco; St. Louis Arch National Park in Missouri; and the World Trade Center Memorial Park, New York, New York.

Bin Jiang at charrette


Bin Jiang and Peter Walker