Marywood University & University of Maryland Architecture
Introduction
The 2017 Spring Semester marked the beginning of the partnership between the ISI Florence Architecture Program and the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation at the University of Maryland (aka UMD).
In January that year, a first group of six shy undergraduate students made themselves comfortable at the desks of the architecture studio that I usually teach. Broadly speaking, the main objective of that course is the ‘discovery’ of both context and all the tools that allow designers to navigate unknown environments. More specifically, that Spring Semester the design goal was a housing program in the south district of “Firenze,” just outside the medieval city wall.…