Ephemeral Traces - A Conversation in Light with Borromini During a Travel Abroad Seminar

A cosmopolitan architect can accept otherness and embrace it. In order to accept otherness, one needs to be exposed to it, and perhaps even immersed within it during their architectural education. Programs that are located ‘abroad,’ i.e.in an environment that is foreign to the students, immerse them deeply into another cultural setting that allows them to develop open-mindedness. Can we as architecture educators heighten the degree of immersion beyond a gaze? Can we temporarily interact and physically imbue the artifact with our insights? In this paper I would like to propose the potential of extreme and active immersion by using light installation as a medium to intervene within architecture while in a travel abroad program. I will explore how light is a medium that can heighten a sense of immersion in a site-specific context. The work that I will discuss are installation projects within a lighting seminar in a study abroad program in Rome. For their final project for the program, students were asked to create a thesis in light anchored within the history and context of the Falconieri Crypt by Francesco Borromini. Each installation was a temporary site specific intervention using different light strategies and exposed different parts of the building’s past and memory.

https://doi.org/10.35483/ACSA.Teach.2023.43

Volume Editors
Massimo Santanicchia

ISBN
978-1-944214-44-9