Architect-US Career Training Program

[Participants] No one had warned a participant in our Job + J1 Visa Program about Houston. They had been told about the heat, the traffic, and an immense city that many describe as a place of passage, but not about its ability to surprise quietly. They arrived with few expectations, and perhaps that is why the city began to reveal itself in a different way: through the extraordinary collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, the galleries of the Museum of Natural Science, the unexpected scale of Memorial Park, and those bayous that turn urban infrastructure into landscape, path, and memory.

[Get to know "Houston, Unexpected" in the first comment below]

Image courtesy of Emmanuel Appiah / Unsplash

👉 If you are currently working as an architect you will know that your free time hardly exists. It's the price of success!

Your success comes from being good at what you're doing and also from being prepared and having an organized schedule that gives you time to hone your craft.

Discover the advice that we have prepared for you stay focused!

📲 https://wp.me/p8ARXQ-8GU

Image courtesy of Avi Werde / Unsplash

[News] BIG has designed the campus for a new STEM-focused university in Bentonville, Arkansas, backed by members of the Walton family and located on the former Walmart Home Office site. The project will span two city blocks and include three main buildings that reinterpret the local architectural vernacular, combining academic, research and urban life spaces.

The proposal aims to blur the boundaries between university and city, opening the campus to the wider community and turning it into a civic meeting point for Bentonville. Led by Bjarke Ingels, with Polk Stanley Wilcox Architects serving as architect of record, the project presents a new way of imagining an urban university: more connected, accessible and rooted in its growing context.

Image courtesy of BIG

[Participants] Some absences are not felt in the obvious things, but in the details that once seemed invisible. A Sunday morning aroma, a familiar texture, an ingredient that used to be found without effort. During her first months in Houston, a participant in our Job + J1 Visa Program discovered that some things that simply existed in her home country became, here, a search, a test, and a ritual.

The city introduced her to a rich, diverse Latin food culture full of blends and influences, but it also taught her that appreciating something new does not erase the longing for the original. Cooking far from home became a way to keep a thread to her roots alive, even when the result only comes close. And, for now, that almost also means memory.

[Get to know "Cooking away from home" in the first comment below]

Image courtesy of Carlos Delgado/ Unsplash

[Featured Company] AMLGM is an award-winning Architecture and Design studio with headquarters in San Francisco, California. The Studio was founded in 2014 by principals M. Chad Kellogg, AIA, and Matthew Bowles, AIA, LEED, AP.

[ All about AMLGM's work in the first comment below! ]

AMLGM is well-known for its unique designs for a variety of buildings. They infuse every project with their inventiveness, creativity, and skill at handling every facet of the construction process. It is a small company made up of 5 architects including the co-founders: Chad Kellogg, Matthew Bowles, Luna Yue Zuo (Junior Architect), Ling Sha (Architectural Designer), and Joe Schollmeyer (Architect).

Their hope is to positively transform the physical environment by making it more efficient, dynamic, beautiful, and inclusive. AMLGM's belief is that practicing architecture demands both resilience and empathy, and their keen sense of hearing and love of their work influences each project's design.

[News] CookFox Architects has completed the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music on the campus of Monmouth University in New Jersey, a building conceived as a tribute to the honesty, courage and authenticity that define the musician’s work. Spanning 30,000 square feet, the center houses Springsteen’s archives in a particularly symbolic setting: the same university where he performed during his early years.

The project combines corten steel panels, referencing New Jersey’s industrial heritage, with an untreated mass timber structure that reinforces its direct and material character. The surrounding landscape, composed of native plants and a sycamore tree linked to the memory of the artist’s childhood home, turns the building into an architectural extension of his roots.

Image courtesy of CookFox

[Participants] There is a special kind of satisfaction in taking part in projects that go beyond an architectural commission and carry real value for a community. In recent months, he has had the privilege of contributing to the development of a public park, a project that has reminded him why he chose this profession in the first place: to create spaces designed for people, families, children and neighbors; places that can become part of a neighborhood’s everyday life and remain in its collective memory for generations.

This project exists thanks to the combined effort of donations, institutional support, public investment and a community that believed it deserved a space that was both beautiful and functional. Every decision, from infrastructure to construction details, is part of an ongoing dialogue between disciplines, institutions and citizens. Because community architecture is not only about shaping forms; it is about building trust, belonging and places that are open to everyone, with no ticket or invitation required.

[Get to know "Architecture With Purpose: What It Feels Like to Build for a Community" in the first comment below]

Image courtesy of Redd Francisco/ Unsplash

👉 When you start at a new company as an intern you are joining a community of people who share a common goal. With these 6 tips your internship will be easier and more rewarding!

✅ Try to keep your search as open as possible! Do not restrict yourself!: It is understandable that most people consider the cost of living and the pay of an opportunity when deciding where you intend to go with your career.

💡 Passion in every project you take on!: In the US, Interns are not always viewed as equal partners at a firm, sometimes you need to work your way up, and this involves taking on tasks that you might not have imagined yourself taking on.

💬 Always find ways to help your firm and counterparts: It is important that you always try to be a proactive force for help and support, rather than distractions and conflict.

❓ Questions! Questions! Questions!: Always ask questions you may have, no matter how stupid they may seem, as you want to show you are there to learn and there to improve to further help the firm.

🔎 Try to learn about what each department does and how the work together!: Although you might only be interested in the Design Studio of the firm, it is always valuable to know what each department does and how they can help you.

✒️ Document every aspect of your internship: If you document an experience that you have had on a specific project, it will help you to remember what you enjoyed about the experience and what you did not.

Do you already apply any of these tips? Let us know in the comments!

[Get to know 6 Ways to an Enjoyable Internship within the Architecture Industry in the first comment below]

📸 Photo: Ryan Parker / Unsplash

[News] Hennebery Eddy Architects has transformed a large vacant commercial building in Portland, Oregon, into the new Multnomah County Library Operations Center, a net-zero energy facility that combines adaptive reuse, solar panels and vibrant works of art.

The project converts a former 1995 grocery store into the operational “heart” of the county library system, with workspace, storage areas and a second-hand bookstore run by the Friends of the Multnomah County Library.

[Participants] An evening at the David H. Koch Theater offers a return to a very particular kind of New York glamour: discreet, sophisticated and deeply tied to the city’s cultural identity. Located within Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, this modernist Manhattan landmark, designed by Philip Johnson and inaugurated in 1964 as the home of New York City Ballet, retains a restrained elegance in its monumental staircases, travertine surfaces and luminous chandeliers, elements that enhance the theatrical experience without ever overshadowing it.

[Get to know "NYC Ballet: Innovators & Icons at Lincoln Center" in the first comment below]

Image courtesy of George Bakos / Unsplash