From Mexico to Italy: my study abroad experience in the interior design summer course.

Our mexican young student Ana Caro has choosen the one month interior design short summer course. A short essay of her experience in the Studio and what she has understood.

Living in Florence between arts, culture and gastronomy.

Life in Florence is something amazing for the architecture and art. You can breathe tranquility, peace, and security. Florence is an ideal place to come and get astonished by its greatness and its history. As you walk through the streets you can find musicians delighting with beautiful instrumental melodies singing in romantic places.

Every corner, every street is an opportunity to study history of art, Italian language and Architecture.

Walking through the streets you can easily find typical Italian restaurants: from a bakery to a pizzeria to the most luxurious Italian places with a variety of delicious dishes. I recommend you to do not miss the incomparable cappuccino, the fundamental drink for a typical italian breakfast.

Furthermore, how do not fall in love with the famous gelato? It can be of hundreds different flavors: fruit, creamy, chocolates and many more. I went twice a week. It’s delicious and healthy!

When I first arrived in the city I did a tour around the historical center and what really stole my attention was the “Ponte Vecchio” (which means old bridge), a gigantic stone structure on the Arno river that has always been the place of the most famous jewelrys in Florence. Another place that astonished me was the Duomo with its amazing dome surrounding the roofs of the cities since the Renaissance age.

What I have learned in the one month summer course.

What I liked most about the workshop is the theory and history of Florence of different architects or designers.

I found very interesting the lectures of Giovanni about perception in design: time, melody and harmony are constants that you can always find in the design process and in the composition of architecture and interior design. I am very grateful to the teachers, very good people and professionals; I found the course very motivating and exciting even if in the beginning I thought the course would have focus more on the general basics of interior design. Since I finished my first year of college in fashion design having just a few lessons about basic interior design, I found the course a little bit difficult for my skills since I had to design personally a complete furniture for a bar. Anyway the professional approach of Milena and Giovanni helped me a lot to complete the difficult task and I think I’ve learned really a lot with this experience. It surely has improved my design skills.

It would be wonderful to come next summer and attend another summer short course about history of design and furniture design. The school seems to me fantastic since they give an opportunity to all the students of the world to come to learn the history of Florence and its architecture as well as its gastronomy, its people and its culture. And looking for the best projects in these times.

I think for the next summer I will come more prepared about 3d modeling tools such as Sketchup or Rhinoceros. In this short month experience I found hard to apply the basic knowledge of the software I had on the real furniture project, so that’s why I would like to improve them and come next year to study more in depth the design process, from sketch drawing to 3d modeling.

Therefore in conclusion I want to thank all the staff of the Studio that have given me the right tools, information and advices to improve in the future my design skills. Knowing Giovanni, Milena and other students coming from different part of the world, has given me the possibility to become a grown up person. It has been hard to live alone for the first time in my life in another country, with different people and different lifestyle, but trust me, if you are in Italy and you come to study in Studium Architecturae everything will become easier thanks to the kindness and professionality of the teachers and the rest of the staff.