Summer Intern Series: Tommy Vince
For the past 19 years, David M. Schwarz Architects has maintained a travel fellowship program which offers undergraduate and graduate architecture students an opportunity to travel and intern in our office. Tommy Vince is a 2019 architecture intern from The Catholic University of America (CUA) School of Architecture and Planning and will be receiving his Master of Architecture degree from CUA in 2019. Keep reading to learn more about Tommy.
Favorite place to hang out in DC? When I am not in studio I enjoy the National Gallery of Art, Georgetown, and Buffalo Billiards.
Favorite ice cream flavor? Ben and Jerry’s Americone Dream
Favorite visual artist? Auguste Rodin. The Rodin Museum in Philadelphia is beautiful and designed for that specific collection and every single work of art. The Museum and Gardens were designed by architects Paul Cret and Jacques Greber.
Favorite book? The Odyssey by Homer
Favorite movie? Good Will Hunting
What is your favorite building, in DC or elsewhere? The Freer Gallery of Art, designed by Charles A. Platt. It has amazing and subtle details for stone and plaster work. It also has a gorgeous courtyard.
Favorite plays? Hamlet and The Importance of Being Earnest
What are you currently working on? I have been on The Vanderbilt team. I was working on the polychrome brick design for Vanderbilt Residential College B. We recently finished 100% DD, and that was a great team to be a part of.
What is something you have done during your time at DMSAS that you had never done or tried before? Polychrome brick design. I now know brick dimensions vertically, horizontally, and various bond types and patterns by memory.
What do you hope to gain from your time at DMSAS? I hope to learn more about traditional design at a large scale, as well as designing in certain cities and contexts. It has been great designing a new residential college in the collegiate gothic style, and looking at incredible precedents.
What is your favorite DMSAS project? Is there is another project (past or present) that you wish you could have worked on? The Smith Center for the Performing Arts and Reynolds Hall. My grandparents live in Las Vegas and I had visited the building many times before working at DMSAS. It is a great building and beautiful performing arts center for the city of Las Vegas.
What about DMSAS has surprised you the most? The diversity of projects! It’s fun to walk around the office and see different drawings and models that we are working on right now for stadiums, theaters, resorts, hospitals, private residences, and residential colleges.
Why are you interested in architecture? I have always enjoyed how architecture and design relates directly to the human person. Everything we interact with and encounter in the built environment is designed with the human being in mind, from the plan of a city, to a building, to a stair detail or doorknob.
What techniques do you most enjoy using to document architecture—photos, sketches, watercolors, 3D models, etc.? I enjoy and am trying to get better at measured drawings and plein air watercolors. I learned both techniques from the Institute of Classical Architecture and Art and at The Catholic University of America.
