The Italian Cultural Institute and the Embassy of Italy in Washington DC, in collaboration with the Association of American Colleges and University Programs in Italy (AACUPI), has presented the Back from Italy exhibition, featuring a selection of designs and projects by architecture students who spent the past semester studying abroad.
The purpose of this event is to analyze and comprehend how architecture students’ design process changes after spending a semester abroad in Italy. Twelve different American university programs in Italy participated in the exhibition, among which the International Studies Institute – Florence (ISI), an independent private educational organization serving as an American center for higher education in Florence. Roger Williams University and University of Maryland, both part of AACUPI, enroll students in the ISI architecture program and works by these students were carefully chosen for the exhibition in DC.
In this second edition of the DC exhibition, the curators Alessandro Franchetti Pardo and Marina Kavalirek researched a shared theme for the participating universities. The title of the 2019 event, Building Within the Dimension of History, derives from the belief that working on an architectural design in Italy means dealing with a strongly anthropized territory and an urban fabric stratified through history.
As architects and professors at ISI Florence, Carlo Achilli and Daniela Sinicropi selected the best projects among student works from RWU and UMD.
The work chosen for the exhibit was carried out in an urban setting in Florence that presents many of the singularities that enrich the experience abroad. Using the setting of piazza Poggi, students were asked to design a public square and a museum dedicated to the 1966 flood. Ryan Brosnihan and Kyle Wrynn used the arches in Poggi’s design of the ramps as a starting point for their design, an elegant complement to the San Niccolò Tower with an underground corridor leading to the Arno as the exhibition space for the museum. Amanda Grinley and Meghan Rodenhiser took an organic approach to their architecture, framing a human-scale piazza in which the tower acquires new monumentality. Clay Langer and Rachel Sheppard based their design on the level of the Arno in the 1966 flood, using technical solutions to incorporate water and light into their exhibition space in such a way that the user might feel submerged as Florence was during the catastrophic event. Ana Maria Nicolich embraced the urban fabric and the built environment on the Arno to position the museum in such a way that the resulting urban space is on a livable human scale. Emma Weber took into consideration the Roman city and landscape grids, and simultaneously lifted her building above virtual flooding levels, connecting directly to the monumental tower. Amalie Elfallah examined contextual shapes, functions and volumes that are still present in collective memory, presenting a contemporary version of the historical water factory.
Examined from the perspective of a broader context, the exhibition confirmed the value of a liberal education and the study abroad experience, for they transform students into citizens of the world. Plans are in the works to discuss the possibility of holding a third edition of this annual exhibition in 2020.
