AMES, IA (07/08/2015)(readMedia)-- Thirty-six architecture and 11 landscape architecture students studied in Italy for the spring 2015 semester with the Iowa State University College of Design Rome Program. Their studio projects involved research, analysis and proposed redesign of segments of the 12-mile Aurelian Wall that rings the area of Imperial-era Rome. They also participated in a three-day design charrette with 19 students from the University of Oklahoma in Rome and 50 Italian students from Roma Tre University.
Victor Valadez of Muscatine, IA (52761), majoring in Architecture at Iowa State University, traveled to Italy in spring 2015 for a semester of study with the ISU College of Design Rome Program.
Bethanie Blake of Davenport, IA (52807), majoring in Architecture at Iowa State University, traveled to Italy in spring 2015 for a semester of study with the ISU College of Design Rome Program.
Evan Aubry of Moline, IL (61265), majoring in Landscape Architecture at Iowa State University, traveled to Italy in spring 2015 for a semester of study with the ISU College of Design Rome Program.
The 12-mile Aurelian Wall (completed 275 AD) that rings the area of Imperial-era Rome served as the focus for all the studio projects.
For the first project, students redesigned one of the wall's historic gates as an archaeological artifact that houses a museum, with particular consideration for improving the relationship between the gate and the contemporary city's infrastructure. On the second project, architecture and landscape architecture students formed interdisciplinary teams to conduct inventory and analysis on different one-mile segments of the wall, so they could have good analytical information for the whole wall. This fed into the third project, for which students proposed an intervention in some segment of the Aurelian Wall that forged connections while highlighting the wall as a historic urban artifact or monument.
Between the second and third projects, Iowa State University held a three-day design charrette about the Aurelian Wall in association with 19 students from the University of Oklahoma and about 50 Italian students from Rome Tre University. The charrette was held at Roma Tre's campus in Testaccio and the work was exhibited In Iowa State's studios at the Palazzo Cenci in the historic center of Rome.
The students' study was enhanced by extended field trips to northern Italy (Bagnaia, Caprarola, Perugia, Venice, Verona, Vicenza) and southern Italy (Baia, Naples, Paestum, Pompeii and the island of Capri) as well as day trips throughout Rome and environs.
The College of Design offers a variety of high-quality international experiences to students through faculty-led semester, summer and spring-break programs as well as other short-term study abroad opportunities and exchange programs in locations around the world.
