Summer work for a student

European practices work a little different, even in the best of times, students wouldn’t normally be paid much, peanuts if anything at all, in fact I know of some of the bigger offices who charge fees of the students to work there. I’m not sure how it applies in different colleges, but there should be a grant system available through you college for exactly what you want to do (da Vinchi grant maybe?)
Secondly, no offence, you are possibly a very good first year, but you are still just a first year (unless you have done somthing else, technology maybe? before architecture, in which case I take it back) I don’t want to discourage, but I would advise that office experience is not essential at this stage, and experience of a bad office could even be damaging. After first year (and before) I worked on site, and the expereince there was far more valuable than most office expereince I had. Assuming you have not done technology or something similar before, then I’d imagine you could only be of limited use to an office (in terms of presentation skills, computer skills, etc) Hands on experience at this stage, is much more important than sitting infront of a a screen for the summer, there is plenty of time for that later.

Thanks spoil_sport

I’ve a civil engineering degree which would be of some use in an office. I know what your saying about only being in first year though. I wouldn’t expect to be doing much more than doing up some drawings on CAD or fetching coffee for people. I’m still just exploring the option of it for now.

Hmmm.

You say that you have a civil engineering degree.
It might be helpful to your cause to emphasise the structural engineering content of that course on your CV before you send it round.
Most architects I came across weren’t as sharp on this side as they were on the spatial reasoning/conceptual side of their work.
Even outside of this, I think you have a good case for being given some work.
Liasing with builders’ engineers, explaning details on progress drawings, etc.
Have you enquired at Ove Arup ?
They used take on civil engineers every summer from colleges in UK & Ireland.
Their architectural department is not as famous as the engineering department but they still get a share of big projects.

Tune the CV towards the likely needs of each would-be employer as well as to your own interests and strengths.
Bon Courage.