The University of Idaho Argonaut

University of Idaho students Will Krahn, left, Matt Geserick, back left, Morgan Maiolie, front left, Staci Dobbins, front right, and Caty Foye, right, along with program advisor Matt Brehm, back right, were part of an architecture program that took them to Rome for two months over the summer. Jake Barber/Argonaut

This summer 10 University of Idaho architecture and interior design students had an opportunity to study architecture and design outside of Moscow. For eight weeks they left American soil to study the history, culture and art of Rome.
“Roma: Student Work from the Rome Studies Program 2008” is the exhibit currently on display at the Reflections Gallery in the Idaho Commons. It features sketches, paintings, photographs and projects the students created while they studied abroad.
Matthew Brehm, the program’s director and architecture and interior design instructor, said the eight-week study program for 4th and 5th year students first got its start in the summer of 2007 and is something they plan to do again each year.
“I started the program because I did a similar program when I was a student,” Brehm said. “I spent a full school year in Rome and it changed the way I looked at design.”
Brehm said while in Rome the students did studio work and analyzed the public spaces in the area as well as went on two field trips, each about four days long, to different parts of the country. He said they also went on walking tours with experts who have been teaching about the city for a very long time.
“For students coming out of the third year professional degree program it isn’t intended as an introductory course, but as more of a rigorous study program,” he said.
The course is for people who have already studied architecture for some time and know how to draw and know the basics.
“It’s intended to give them a big boost and this transformational learning experience about history and another culture, as well as ancient and historic design,” Brehm said.
Monika Kuhnau, an architecture and interior design double major, said the experience was life-changing, especially for a student studying architecture.
“You get to understand the history and see the detail and care that’s put into buildings over there,” Kuhnau said. “Here the oldest buildings are maybe 200-300 years old, while there they are thousands of years old.”
Morgan Maiolie, who is also an architecture major, said Rome is where architecture got its start and the buildings there have an effect on people.
Students get to see the importance of how architecture shapes people’s perspective of the world, Maiolie said.
“I’m not religious, but I walked into a church and felt religious,” Maiolie said. “I’ve never experienced that in America.”
Matt Geserick, another architecture major, said in Moscow he and his classmates have designed in major cities like Portland and visited them, but never got to stay for an extended period of time.
“Designing something in Moscow is for a small-scale community, whereas in Rome you’re designing on a much larger scale,” he said.
Now the students are back and settled into life in Moscow and have put the work from their trip on display.
Kuhnau said while most all of the students put up their main studio projects, she opted to put up her pictures.
“I probably came back with the most pictures,” she said. “I always had my camera strapped to me.”
Kuhnau said that one of the design projects the students worked on involved each student having two Roman piazzas to study the entire time they were there.
“We studied them and got to know them, and it was a nice way to get out in the city and away from our comfort zone of the group,” Kuhnau said. “Some of them were across the city from each other, and we had to walk between them so we got to go out and do a lot of exploring.”
The exhibit will run through Oct. 14.