What happens when you give co-op students 90 minutes to make a gingerbread house?
The Wall Street Journal asked the question, “So what happens when you give architects and designers 90 minutes to build a gingerbread house?”
For three University of Cincinnati co-op students, it was an invitation to recreate one of the most iconic buildings on UC’s campus: a miniature replica of Crosley Tower. The competition is a tradition at Rockwell Group, an award-winning architecture firm in Manhattan specializing in hospitality, culture, health care, education and more.
Teams crowded around two long tables lined with cardboard boxes. Each box contained a premade gingerbread house, a bag of icing and an assortment of confections including Necco wafers, Smarties and M&Ms.
Clara Weber, a third-year College of Design, Architecture, Art and Planning student, and two of her colleagues, Lily Gormley and Nikara Schehr, also both third-year DAAP students, arrived with photos of Crosley Tower. Constructed in 1969, it is the second-largest building in the country made of continuously poured concrete, eclipsed only by the Hoover Dam.
UC students Clara Weber and Nikara Schehr are shown with their gingerbread replica of Crosley Tower at the Rockwell Group holiday party design competition. Photo provided.
Some see it as an eyesore and others have nothing but nostalgic thoughts of Crosley, which is set for demolition in fall 2025.
Weber spoke to the Wall Street Journal for a lifestyle section story. She along with Gormley and Schehr were completing a co-op at the Rockwell Group during the past semester. Weber also did a co-op with the company during the spring.
Crosley is “the ugliest building on campus but everyone kind of loves it,” explains Weber, whose team used graham crackers to build a replica.
The experience was also a chance for UC students to show off their ambition as architect David Rockwell mingled with employees. It demonstrates the type of excellent networking opportunities UC co-op students are offered when they work for companies with regional, national and global reach.
“Rockwell Group is such an incredible company and one that I wanted to keep a relationship with so that is why I returned for a second co-op experience,” Weber explains.
At Rockwell she worked on various projects: resorts, restaurants and multi-family residentials.
“I got a chance to experience a little bit of everything, find the things I was good at and build skills in the area of modeling and design,” says Weber, who selected materials and floor plans and put together material boards for clients.
Nikara Schehr and Lily Gormley shown on the boardwalk during down time during their New York City co-op experience. Photo provided.
“You are really part of a bigger operation so everyone is pitching in on many projects at once. It’s meeting huge deadlines so the focus would shift daily, but that was really a good thing because you are able to pull inspiration from so many people.”
Among the top five best co-op programs nationally, UC founded cooperative education in 1906. The real world experience at companies, government agencies and non-profit organizations worldwide gave more 8,300 students a chance to earn while they learn last year.
Co-op students had collective self-reported earnings of $88.8 million, or nearly $10,700 per student per semester.
“I think co-op not only teaches you a lot about the professional world that you don’t get to experience in school, but also it teaches you to be independent,” says Weber. “It teaches you to get out there and push yourself.”
Weber, who is from Northern Kentucky, said co-op allowed her to “get out of her bubble” and see other parts of the country.
“The work exposes you to so many different people and offers so many different networking opportunities. Rockwell Group provided that, and I was able to form relationships. I will have them as a resource in my future, which is really amazing.”
Read the entire Wall Street Journal article online. (A PDF is also available if you email cedric.ricks@uc.edu)
Featured top image shows Nikara, Schehr, Lily Gormley and Clara Weber watching the Bengals vesus NY Giants game at MetLife. Photo provided.
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