The Whys and Hows of Internship at Prashant Pradhan Architects, Gangtok
The following is based upon my experiences as an architectural intern at Prashant Pradhan Architects from Jan-June 2021 (5 months in-office, 1 month WFH due to COVID).
Office Culture and Timings: Office culture at PPA is not at all toxic unlike many architectural firms in India which make the interns work for as much as 12 hours a day. Here, your time is respected, hardly 2–3 days a month will demand some hours of overworking because of urgent projects. On normal days everyone slacks off by evening.
The office starts at 9:00AM (you gotta be on time here), and ends by 6:30PM. I remember, one of those days when we had just joined and I continued working after 6:30PM because I thought that the task had to be finished that day itself, and Hishay who’s an Architect since last 8 years at PPA, told me, “Rachana, you can work on that tomorrow also”. They don’t expect you to slog unnecessarily.
The architects are pretty friendly, nice and very cool! There are a lot of after-office parties in the office, in which the architects too join in to drink and chill with the interns :P
Workload: It will vary across your internship duration, at some points there will be urgent projects or a lot of projects going on simultaneously so you’ll have to sincerely work through the office hours and maybe a couple of hours more on a few days. While at other times there will be less work, doesn’t mean you get to doze off in the office (though we did that too :P ), the work hours won’t be too hectic. Overall, some days would be tiring, some will be chill, but all of them will be awesome!
Work Exposure: During my internship, PPA was dealing with a whole lot of variety in project types, our batch got to work on Residences, lots and lots of Hotels (obviously! Gangtok is so full of tourists at all times after all), Malls, Schools, Restaurants, Bars, Villas, a Buddhist University, and now they’re even starting with a Tea Museum!
Projects are mainly spread across Gangtok, Darjeeling and some other parts of Sikkim and West Bengal. Also, every once in a while they pick up projects in Ahmedabad, Gujarat. So you get to work on hilly architecture with retaining walls in the mountains and stuff.
You’ll get to work on all kinds of Working Drawings, 3D Models, Renderings, Costing and Estimation, Physical Model-making (Oh yes, they make one for almost every project!). You might be a bit disappointed if you are looking for a firm that will let you handle a huge chunk of design, I don’t know about other firms but here interns are not involved in the major design decisions, building plans are usually already done when the work is handed over to interns, which also makes sense considering our lack of experience with real-life projects and technicalities. But even then, there is A LOT to learn and develop.
How can I not mention the Site Visits! ❤ They sent each of the interns in our batch to Darjeeling on a site visit at least once (Yep, imagine going to tourist points for site visits that too possibly on weekdays!), and there we got to stay in this ancient kick-ass villa that we were redesigning. Other than that, from time to time there would be local site visits for measured drawings, analysis, and supervision.
I got to know from friends that some architectural offices don’t spend much time on the projects, they just finish them off one after another, even at the speed of 1 project in just a week! You won’t see that at PPA, here, a lot of time is spent on most projects and there are countless iterations for design development until both the architect and the client are satisfied. The firm values quality over quantity, there is a lot of passion and architectural ethics at play.
Office Location: PPA had been running as a single office studio in Gangtok for years, recently they started a new office in Siliguri and might ask you during the internship confirmation call if you would be fine working at both locations in monthly shifts.
The Gangtok office is located at a very sweet spot, there are large windows across one of the long walls with a breathtaking view. You can see the bed of clouds moving, you can see the sky turning shades of yellow, orange, pink, and such a pure blue by evening, you can see the terraces laden with snow after a hailstorm, what would you not give to have a work office like that! Also, the office is very near to MG Marg (just 5 minutes walking distance from there) which is a major tourist spot in the city. We interns used to go there every evening for walks and food, it’s just lovely.
The girls in our intern batch weren’t sent to the Siliguri office even once so I can’t give you a first-hand record of that, but the guy co-interns narrated stories suggesting that working at the Siliguri office was something of an experience in itself too.
If you go to Gangtok for an internship, it will be nothing less than a holiday package in one of the most beautiful hill stations in the world. There are so many locations to explore on foot, to visit by taxi trips, to go biking, to go hiking, to go trekking, tours will be endless. There’s snow, there are lakes, there are long stretches of mountains, there are rivers, there are waterfalls, there are unpaved routes through forest areas, there are viewpoints and so much more. It’s all so surreal, it’s almost a dream world.
Co-interns and friends: Now, if you’re lucky, living with your co-interns might turn out to be one of the best things that ever happened to you. First of all, PPA takes a whole lot of interns, there were ten of us! You’ll meet people from all these different colleges and geographies, it would be amazing! In our batch, we were a bunch of students coming from Maharashtra, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttarakhand, Kerala, Telangana, and West Bengal, all with their own idiosyncrasies. You’ll meet people with different interests, and you’ll meet people with architecture in their veins. You’ll make the craziest friends and crazier memories.
There’s nothing called ‘too many friends’, so we would go on to expand our gang of 10 to as many as 15–17 members on weekends. PPA is something of a hub for architectural interns in Gangtok. We had friends from other firms (and some local friends too) come over and had a good time talking, joking, listening to stories, cooking, eating, dancing, celebrating, and partying. We heard a lot of crazy stories from each other and we lived a lot of crazy stories with each other too!
Accommodation: PPA provides the interns with accommodation to stay during their internship (both in Gangtok and Siliguri). The Gangtok accommodation is located in the same building as the office, so no worries about taking cabs or walking to the office, you just gotta take a flight of stairs, plus you get to stay in the office 24X7 (Yep, there’s WiFi and all the space for late-night parties).
Talking of the accommodation, it’s outrightly disappointing, at first glance it looks unlivable, but don’t worry you’ll manage. As one of my co-interns said, “Pehle badbu aati hai, kuch dino baad khushbu aane lagti hai is jagah se”. Trust me, adjust a little and that place will give you memories of a lifetime like no other rented place in Gangtok can. It will start off as mild adversity that will bring you interns together through bitching and complaining, and eventually, become the sweet home that’ll make you cry while leaving. Siliguri accommodation is much bigger and cleaner so not much problem there.
When to Apply: Applications sent to PPA between October-November should be considered fine for the Jan-June batch. I and my college friend Kriti had applied back in late October, most others had applied in November and a few had even applied in late December or the first week of January when the rest of us had already started working.
How to Apply: Make an awesome portfolio, a separate CV isn’t mandatory. Attach your portfolio PDF with the mail body having a nice cover letter covering your intro, college, skills, and why you want to work at PPA. If you’re selected, you’ll directly receive a call or mail saying so and asking for confirmation. For our batch, no one was asked to appear for an interview, however, in previous batches, there have been interviews for selection.
Internship Duration: PPA usually takes interns for 6 months duration, however, exceptions can be there depending upon your portfolio and demand in office. One of my co-interns applied for only 4 months and was accepted. If your college has a two-semester internship rule then great, you’ll have a pretty high chance of getting accepted as a yearlong intern.
Work from Home?: PPA usually doesn’t prefer the WFH mode of internship (though they might agree in certain cases), and why would you want one at PPA when an in-office internship there will give you an exceptional experience. Awesome place, awesome people, awesome mentors. It’s lit over there! If you do get the opportunity don’t waste it requesting to WFH.
Other firms in Gangtok if you missed out on PPA: Design Concepts, PAN Architecture, Team Design Worksop, Building Space and Design, Kailash Pradhan Architects, Studio Interweave.
Should you be worried about your current knowledge level? No! There you’ll have your co-interns to help you, teach you, and learn from you, and the architects to guide you if you go wrong. You’ll eventually learn and get good, so don’t sweat your technical skills if you got selected! You’ll learn it all there :D
Some shit from my seniors which didn’t help me:
- “Decide what kind of work you want to do and then sort firms accordingly.” Initially, when I was listing out the firms I would apply to, I was utterly confused about how to come up with a perfect list. Some seniors told me to decide upon firms based upon what kind of projects I wanted to do like residential or institutional or hospitality or urban mapping etc. Heck, I didn’t know! How was I even supposed to know? I had just worked upon whatever problem statement the prof gave all these years, never freely researched enough to have an inclination towards any particular sector. And this suggestion just confused me even more, if you’re in a similar situation know that it’s fine to not know your preferences at that point.
- “You should have started applying by June. It’s late already!” I hadn’t even started my portfolio until June and then I was told this and it obviously drove me crazy. So just don’t mind such extreme timelines. If you can fairly make your portfolio in a month, it’s fine to start it by mid or late July or even early August, so that you can start applying by September without much anxiety of being late.
Important Note — Those looking for an intern in a foreign country should not consider the above timeline, you need to apply sooner. Also, take the above with a pinch of salt as there was an ongoing pandemic during my time so the timelines might have been a bit distorted due to the uncertainty of in-office training for a lot of firms.
Other shit from my seniors which did help me:
- “Don’t be disheartened on not receiving responses, anyone who gets an architectural internship without any contacts sends out applications to at least 150–200 firms.” Yep, I myself sent out applications to some 200+ firms. Don’t be surprised if the opening rate of your mails is 15% or so and the response rate even lower. Considering the huge number of colleges offering B.Arch degrees in India and the strict compulsion of architectural internships to complete your degree surely contributes to the oversupply of interns to the firms and hence the undervaluing.
- “Yes, it’s low paid, the stipend won’t even cover your normal monthly expenses.” As I started applying and began receiving some responses, I was appalled by the offered stipend amount by the firms. Especially, being in KGP when your non-archi friends are getting crazy pay internships, your expectations are at least to get a minimum survival amount, right? But here is the truth of the architecture industry which you gotta digest, most firms in India offer stipends in the range of Rs. 3–10k/month.
Some shit from me which might or might not help you.
- Tasks and Interviews: A lot of firms might respond to your application asking to appear for an interview or do a task or even both. No harm in appearing for the interviews, it will build your overall confidence and also help you learn about your shortcomings. As far as tasks are concerned, depends upon you if you have the time, energy, willingness, and reason to attempt them or not.
- How to personalize emails if you’re bulk applying: I made a Google sheet with columns of firm names, their email address, their location and one or two lines of what I liked about them. I used the chrome extension ‘Mail merge’ to automatically fit those fields into my common mail template and auto-send them at the scheduled time. And the ‘Streak’ extension to track the emails.
- If you are someone who gets stressed out easily, here’s one for you: Don’t die of anxiety if you’re not getting expected responses. I know securing a good internship might seem like a big deal at that point, but try to relax a bit, it will turn out fine :)
PS — I have always been hesitant about reaching out to department seniors for too much info, so I thought of documenting all this for those like me. Also, feel free to reach out to me for any kind of help, I won’t mind pakka! :D
