25 Jun first week in: The Office

Hey everyone! My name is Alex Gomez, a fourth year student studying in the architecture program at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona. For those of you who don’t know where Pomona is it is located in the LA area (where I was born and raised). So being in D.C. is a major change for a California native, and it has already begun to be an eye-opening experience. I arrived just this past Saturday and I am living in Georgetown with two fellow “LHIPsters,” Annelise Kouns-Warburton and Manny Galaviz. On Monday I began interning with the Historic American Building Survey (HABS). Here, I will be working with a team of architects, engineers, and fellow interns on documenting significant architectural structures. My first few days consisted of creating a series of panorama photographs for Loggerhead Key, an ongoing project in the office. It is a beautiful island adjacent to Dry Tortugas that is simply composed of a lighthouse and a boathouse. So you get a sense of scale, the island is about the size of a couple of football fields. Being that it is located in a hurricane prone region, it is pivotal to document this NPS site because there is a strong possibility that this site might be completely washed up in the near future. My supervisor Robert Arzola introduced me to a number of projects that I will be working on this summer. Starting Monday I will be working on 800 N Collington Block, a project that will document traditional Baltimore row housing. First the team will generate a 3D model of the site through the use of a laser scanner. From there we will take hand measured dimensions to generate a series of drawings that represent this historical housing type. Stay tuned next week for site photos and hopefully a first pass at some of the drawings.