Asked where he’ll be interning this summer, Derek Rayle’s answer includes latitude and longitude.
Above: Derek Rayle
The short answer, though, is Oslo (59.9139° N, 10.7522° E).
Rayle, John Maxson, Jillian Stone, Russell Martinelli, and Margo Barajas are among UO landscape architecture students headed to summer internships with notable firms.
For Rayle, choosing Oslo was slightly random.
“I had a list of offices that I wanted to intern for and decided to just apply. SLA happened to be at the top of the list,” he said.
SLA A/S, a landscape architecture, architecture, and planning firm, has offices in Copenhagen and Oslo. Rayle, a second-year graduate student, will help the firm with 3D modeling and construction documentation.
It’s not the first internship for Rayle, who previously completed an externship in Phoenix, Arizona, and has worked in planning offices. He brings strong graphic design skills as well as modeling and construction documentation background. His internship is for three months.
National September 11th Memorial design firm
Above: John Maxson
Maxson, also a second-year graduate student, is headed to a two-month internship with PWP Landscape Architecture, the Berkeley, California firm that designed the National September 11th Memorial in Manhattan. Maxson will be one of three interns in the office.
While as an undergrad he worked in a small architecture firm, this will be the first large design office and first landscape architecture office that Maxson has worked in.
“I’m especially excited about the internship because it’s structured around education. Interns spend the first week on a design charette and go on field trips to visit construction sites, completed work, and other nearby firms,” Maxson said. “I also expect they’ll keep us very busy with work in the office, but it seems like there’s an emphasis on making sure we get out and get to know the area as well.”
From national parks to urban design
Above: Jillian Stone
Stone will serve a two-month internship with Berger Partnership in Seattle. The firm’s sole summer intern, Stone will get to choose one of three areas to focus on — industrial ecology, displacement (how to implement improvements without setting the stage for gentrification), or inFUNstructure (public investments that shape culture and character). Stone, a second-year graduate student, was selected from 115 applicants.
“I hope to learn how a professional firm in a booming city operates,” said Stone, who has worked as a trail designer at Grand Teton National Park, Rocky Mountain National Park, and the Coconino National Forest in Northern Arizona.
“Berger has won a number of ASLA awards and I'd like to see what makes their work stand out, and how their design process works,” she said. “I am also looking forward to learning how to operate on a more urban design scale. A lot of our projects at UO are based on large scale or rural sites and this is an exciting opportunity to get out of my element and learn new design skills.”
English gardens, international culture
Above: Russel Martinelli
Martinelli will intern with Exterior Architecture in the firm’s London studio. He traveled to Europe over winter break and, while in London, “spent a good amount of time and energy networking,” which eventually led to the internship offer.
In his fourth year of five in the undergraduate landscape program, this is Martinelli’s first internship in a licensed landscape architecture firm. He’ll be tasked with the same duties as regular staffers during his 10-week internship.
“The firm does work all over the world and specializes in larger scale, high-end design with resorts, large-scale residential, commercial, as well as a lot of charity work,” Martinelli said. “I hope to not only learn about all of these different areas of design but to learn the art of English garden design and [immerse myself in] the English and international design culture.”
Cultural landscapes advocate
Above: Margo Barajas
Barajas is headed to Washington, D.C., for seven weeks as the Sally Boasberg Fellow with The Cultural Landscape Foundation. A second-year graduate student, Barajas has served as president of the UO student chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects and was a graduate research assistant for the UO’s Overlook Field School.
Barajas’s job will be a mix of research and content development, including writing guides to historic landscapes in several US cities—duties that dovetail well with her current academic focus and her photojournalism undergraduate degree. Barajas also hopes to visit area landscape firms “so I can see what work is happening in firms that are dealing with the restoration, revitalization, and preservation of cultural landscapes.”
Barajas says she is “a nerd for history” and applied for the fellowship because of her “passion for all aspects of the study of history” and a desire to be in “the next generation of advocates for cultural landscapes.”
Above: “Digital Ecologies,” a design by Derek Rayle in his fall 2016 studio project for Santa Rosa Island, Channel Islands National Park.
Above: “The Bosque,” a design by John Maxson.
Above: A project by Jillian Stone featured in two publications, Landscape Architecture and Landscape Review. (Project completed with team member Rachel Spencer.)
Above: A formal garden design by Russell Martinelli.
Above: A project by Margo Barajas to keep groundhogs close to their burrows but away from farm fields. The project was done during the Overlook Field School, a program of Fuller Center in partnership with the UO Department of Landscape Architecture.