Author: Sarah Myane | Major: Architecture | Semester: Fall 2024

Interior of Sagrada Familia in Barcelona

Time is flying by, as the Christmas tassels line the store fronts and lights zigzag across the streets, it is starting to feel a lot like Christmas in Rome. Things in Rome have become more familiar, I do not need to use my google maps as much to get around, streets are becoming memory, and sometimes I order in Italian correctly. I almost feel like a local, a little removed from the chaotic hustle of tourists who swamp the city. I’ve learned that Romans apricate a slow morning and are often less concerned with time, the contrast from the convenience of American consumerism and emphasis on punctuality has been an adjustment. I’ve learned to accept the chaos of the Romans, to make adventures out of finding vanilla extract or a deck of playing cards, I have yet to find vanilla, bouncing between various grocery stores to pull together a recipe. The little things of normal life at home are just a little more roman.

This month in school we concentrated heavily on the development of our architecture studio projects. Our projects are centered around an urban design scheme for a periphery neighborhood of Rome. We have visited the site of our project numerous times and spoken to local municipality members and high school students to develop a project tailored to community wants and needs. For our final, each student is developing their own proposal that we will present to a jury of professors. This last month my professor took us to different sites around Rome to inspire our design work. Rome can be very deceiving from the exterior, home to world famous classical architecture and history, it can be hard to picture the contemporary lessons to be learned. Villa Giulia is a great example of this. Similar to an imposing fortress on the hill, Villa Giulia from the exterior façade presents a monolithic, heavy, and rigorous renaissance façade using large stone blocks. However, when entering the buildings narrow façade the linear process leads to the exterior courtyard on the other side. The arched entrance opens up to a series of 3 linear courts capped by a grand concave façade. A covered loggia creates the entrance to the center courtyard, leading into a large pit that descends 3 stories into the ground, revealing the larger villa structure beneath. The contrast of the two facades has a very strong effect and execution of architecture principles that I learned a lot from. While the styles and decorations may be old, the concepts and vision of the project is as strong as the day it was built.

This month I also traveled to Spain during our thanksgiving break. I spent the week in Madrid and took a day trip to Barcelona. This was my first thanksgiving away from my family, but we took advantage of our travels to explore the work of Antoni Gaudi in Barcelona and selgascano in Madrid. Our class had previously studied the work of Selgascano in Los Angeles and other projects around the USA. As a Madrid based firm, we took advantage of their proximity and visited one of their newer projects for thanksgiving, the Tramo Restaurant. It was amazing to see one of their projects in person after studying them in school. The architect worked closely with the client to design a space with environmentally friendly and recycled materials. Dinner was served over a long conversation about the interior design and discussion of the cable truss system for the roof. A perfect dinner conversation for a table of architecture students. November was a month of digging deeper, taking root and exploring the deep niches of Rome. It was also a month of exploration, taking my time in class learning about the city and applying that same analysis as I traveled beyond Italy.