The
Rome Studies Program of the University of Notre Dame was founded in 1969
as an integral part of the University's five-year degree program leading
to the Bachelor's of Architecture. From the beginning, it was made a required
component of the curriculum, coming in the students' third year of study.
The program offers students the opportunity to acquire an in-depth understanding
and appreciation of one of the great European centers for architecture and
urbanism. Its focus is based upon a re-exploration of the language of classical
and traditional architecture.
The Notre Dame Rome Studies Program is the only year-long foreign studies program among American university architecture schools that is required for all its students. In recent years, the graduate program has also included one semester of study in Rome. There is an average enrollment of 50 students, and its faculty is composed of three design instructors, one artist, and two architectural historian/theorists.
During their year in Rome undergraduate students take two semesters of design studio, the first aimed at introducing them to the architectural elements that compose the traditional city. They are asked to analyze a city quarter, a piazza, a street, a palazzo, and a church as essential elements of the urban context. They begin with a design on the urban scale and work their way down to the scale of a building and a single room.
Not only is the teaching of classical and traditional architecture important
to Notre Dame, but so too are the principles of traditional urbanism, ones
that can only be learned from direct study in Italy. Urban issues are addressed
in studio projects that engage real design projects in Rome and other Italian
cities, often done as counter proposals to projects done by professional
architects. They are also addressed in the theory and history classes,
where issues of the forum, the piazza, building types, patterns of development,
city boundaries, patronage, and social and economic determinants are studied.
Term projects include reconstruction drawings of ancient and Renaissance
buildings, and analytical studies of cities and towns. The sketching and
watercolor courses concentrate on representing different Roman settings
in various formats and give the students experience with a variety of drawing
mediums.
Perhaps the most unique and inspiring aspect of the program is the four yearly field trips taken to different regions of Italy. The first goes to Tuscany and the Marche, traveling to towns like Assisi, Urbino, Florence, Siena, and Pisa. The second goes to northern Italy, including Bologna, Ravenna, and Rimini, then on to Vicenza and Venice. In the spring semester, the students go to the south, to the region of Naples, including Pompeii, Paestum, and the Amalfi coast. Finally, they travel to Sicily and visit cities like Palermo, Catania, and Taormina, plus all of the major ancient Greek cities, Segesta, Selinus, Akragas, and Syracuse.
The Rome Studies Program is used as a forum where history, theory, and artistic activity can join architectural design in enriching projects with the vitality and spirit of Rome. The value of study in Rome is to gain firsthand experience with the complex and many-layered forms of meaning inherent in classical and traditional architecture and urban design, and to understand how they can influence design in the modern world.
- John Stamper, Associate Chair and Associate Professor
