Italian Hill Town: Sustainable or Nostalgic Architecture and Urban Design(ARC, FIA, 3 credits, undergraduate)
The course investigates the Italian hill town as forms of sustainable architectural and urban design. Individual sites are studied in three frameworks: their historical origins, the environmental and social/political sustainability of the original designs, and the viability of the towns today. Students are called to look critically at historical sites, assessing the viability of individual towns when first built, at various moments across their histories, and today. The entire course is taught on-site, with site visits and day trips in Tuscany, and one two-day trip to Umbria. Classes will include professor and student presentations of sites, and participation in local traditional and contemporary festivities and public performances, ... Students will develop critical tools to see past apparent quaintness in order to evaluate the capacity of a community to sustain its built and natural environments, population, economy, culture, and political self-determination, in the face of local and global, historical and contemporary factors. Syracuse University Study Abroad, Florence, Italy.