Ivan Patino was our Designers Without Boundaries (DWB) intern for the 2015 Spring Semester, and this is his story:
Hola! Cómo están? My name is Ivan Patino. I was born in Bogota, Colombia and moved to the United States when I was twelve years old. After graduating from George Washington High School in Denver, I joined the United States Navy with the intention of traveling the world while serving my new country and paying for my college education. Here I am receiving a Navy award from the Air Boss onboard USS Enterprise.
Four and a half years after joining the Navy, I returned to Denver determined to attend CU Boulder.
I had visited CU Boulder during a high school field trip and had fallen in love with the architecture, atmosphere, and vibe on campus. I chose the Environmental Design program at CU Boulder because it allowed me to utilize my creativity and passion for designing.
When I was little, my favorite toy was armatodos (Colombia’s version of Legos). Using my creativity, I would spend hours assembling a variety of buildings, aircraft carriers, and spaceships.
Thanks to Designers without Boundaries (an academic scholarship program for first-generation and underrepresented students in the Environmental Design Program), I was awarded a 180 hour internship at WORKSHOP8. I was excited and looking forward to this internship in order to gain experience in an architecture firm.
Some of my favorite memories from the internship are walking with Joseph through the site for the Mariposa Phase VI Project and participating in the conceptual design for the Lyons replacement housing project. I also enjoyed helping Emily and Shawn with construction documents for the Langer flood replacement residence where I learned technical terminology and worked through real-world applications of what I have learned in school. Working on projects at WORKSHOP8 is as much fun for me now as playing with armatodos was for me as a child.
I have enjoyed my time with WORKSHOP8. I truly feel that I have been a part of the team. I am grateful for this experience and for the knowledge that I have gained from it. After completing this internship, I am now even more certain that architecture is the right path for me and I hope to stay in contact with the WORKSHOP8 team. I see this time not as the end of my undergraduate education and my internship, but as the beginning of what I hope will be an exciting career as an architect.
