Before this internship as part of my Master, I had studied architecture for four years but had never actually worked in a studio, and I was honestly a bit worried I wouldn’t enjoy the job as much as I enjoy the studies.
EGM put that worry to rest fast. In my first week, my mentor sat down with me and simply asked: what do you actually want to learn here? She told me to explore the office, follow whatever interested me, and not wait around for tasks. It sounds small, but it changed how I saw the whole internship. I wasn’t there to do the jobs nobody else wanted. I was there to learn and contribute, and that made me want to make use of this chance from day one.
More than at school
That trust showed up everywhere. At EGM, there are, of course, architects, but the firm also has its own interior design team, technical designers, and IT and communications departments. Thanks to the firm’s size, I was able to learn from everyone, not just from one discipline.
I ended up working across very different projects. Eindhoven airport, a social housing study, UMC Utrecht, a rehabilitation centre, a competition entry for a municipality and sitting in on meetings I never would have had access to as a student. Watching how a design actually gets discussed with clients, municipalities, and consultants taught me more about the profession than any studio class had.
The office itself made this easy. As an international, I could do everything in English without any issues, and everyone was genuinely supportive of me picking up Dutch along the way. It didn’t matter if I was talking to a partner or a fellow intern, everyone was approachable, and if I had an idea or a question, people actually listened.
Happy to go to work
I came in with the technical skills from my studies, but I left having used and sharpened all of them in a real context: modelling, rendering, technical drawing, design studies and, more importantly, a much better sense of what it takes to be an architect. Turns out I love working as an architect and thanks to EGM, that realization came with a lot of excitement. I looked forward to going to work every single day.
