Premio Piranesi

Finally after two weeks of endless travel and work the Premio Piranesi has come to an end.For those of you who do not know the Premio Piranesi is a design competition, considered by Italians as one of the more important competitions, which focuses on design in the field of architecture and archeology.This year the project was at Villa Adriana and focused on the inclusion of universal access and an improved museum.The operation was organized by Accademia Adrianea and involved approximately 70 Italian architecture students from various schools around Italy as well as 30 Penn State architecture and 15 Penn State Landscape Architecture students.These students were divided into 15 groups of a mix of backgrounds and judged among 3 juries.

My group for this project consisted of only 2 Americans, myself and an architect, as well as 4 italians from Politecnico di Milano.Allessio, Luca, Ylenia, and Elena(my partners) all had completed their first 3 year degree and were pursuing their final full degree and from the get go seemed to be wonderful people.They were one of the only groups to speak English, not well by any means, but they tried.The first night we had a gala to get to know everyone, it included great food and lots of vino. By the end of the night Brendan(the other American) and I both began wonder how much work would actually get done because our group of Italians clearly liked to party more than the others.

Over the next week and a half the group showed they were fully capable of working.We created a fairly solid project though there were more than a few conflicts.For one, Italian students are not free thinking, they do exactly as their tutor tells them.Secondly they know little about design using form and function or even the development of a concept.In the end the night before the deadline, Brendan and I spent almost 2 hours arguing with them over the fact that they didn't have to do exactly as the tutors said for the architecture and that our own designs would have better potential.But they chose their own route as they considered this competition to be more their own then ours as a group.All in all the project went well, it was interesting to work with Italians and learn their culture.Some of the most fun was had while riding in the car with them as they continued to prove Italians are crazy in cars.On two separate occasions they drove the wrong way down one-way streets, one time directly in front of a cop.I also learned to use the transportation system during this week as I spent four hours every day commuting to the small town of Tivoli where the operation was centered in a crappy three-story school.

The final day was the day of judging.My presentation was given by Elena to the jury and I actually missed the first half due to the wonderful transportation system in Italy.It didn't matter no one spoke English anyways.It was announced in the afternoon that we earned the FIABA prize, one of three prizes per jury.This FIABA was the lowest, it was an honorable mention based solely on the ability of design to create universal accessibility.It was good to hear my professor say that most what jury found to be worthy of this award was a result of the work I did on the project as the only landscape architect.My group was pumped about it, they get a 65% scholarship to grad school from it, so do I, but I don't intend on going to an all Italian Masters in architecture.

The day ended with a huge meal just meters from the entrance to Rome along the Apian Way.The meal consisted of an appetizer course, primary pasta, second pasta, a rizzo, and a dolce as well as coffee.The dinner took a little over 2 hours to be served.The night was fun and my roommate was even "knighted" by the professor of the Italians with a lite-saber, a professor who has a very close resemblance to the slave trainer in the movie Gladiator.