Fay Jones School, Rome Center Participate in Prestigious Festival

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The U of A's Fay Jones School of Architecture and Design and the Rome Center in the Graduate School and International Education participated in this year's Festival of Architecture, a prestigious weeklong annual event held each June in Rome.

The center and school were involved in the festival in several capacities, most notably a showcase of "A South Forty," an exhibition coordinated by the Fay Jones School that features contemporary architecture and design in the South. The exhibit was displayed in the Acquario Romano, the headquarters of the Association of Architects of Rome.

The exhibit, coordinated in partnership with Oxford American magazine, focuses on place-based design, attentive to the necessities of climate, materials, labor and purpose, but also attentive to overlooked or undervalued typologies, constituencies and locales. The exhibit was also on display during the 2021 Venice Architecture Biennale in Venice, Italy. It will be installed this fall in Vol Walker Hall on the U of A campus.

"The Festival of Architecture in Rome offered a superb setting for the Fay Jones School to demonstrate its commitments to international education, to our multiple programs at the U of A Rome Center and to the enhanced understanding of American architecture, particularly of our region," said Peter MacKeith, dean of the Fay Jones School for Architecture and Design. "We're grateful to Professor Bedeschi of the Rome Center for his advocacy of the school and university. The exchanges and outcomes of the festival for us were stimulating and productive."

Additionally, MacKeith and Rome Center Director Francesco Bedeschi served on a roundtable discussion around the topics of tourism and culture in Rome and the role that the city plays in the education of American architecture students.

"The participation of the Rome Center at the Festival of Architecture has been a great opportunity for sharing with the local community of practitioners and other stakeholders the value that study abroad programs in Rome bring to all our students," Bedeschi said. "The Rome Center is actively involved in several initiatives of community outreach with a particular focus on urban issues. In addition, we were there to represent also the larger community of American universities which belong to the AACUPI association. Every year, almost 35,000 students come to Italy for a study abroad program, and about 60 percent of them are located in Rome."

Marlon Blackwell, Distinguished Professor and the E. Fay Jones Chair in Architecture, also delivered a keynote lecture and presentation as part of the festival, and U of A architecture students participated in a weeklong urban design workshop, where they worked with local students on different areas within Rome.

The students, comprising teams of American students as well as local students and young professionals, worked on four different projects inside the Ostiense neighborhood of Rome. The results were presented during the closing ceremony of the Festival of Architecture in front of about 100 citizens and local authorities, including the mayor of Rome, Roberto Gualtieri.

"It was an honor to celebrate architecture with our students, citizens and fellow Roman architects in the Eternal City," Blackwell said. "It was especially meaningful to share our work with the audience in person and online in the historic elliptical hall at the magnificent Acquario Romano."

About the Festival of Architecture

The Festival of Architecture was established by the Order of Architects of Rome and was first held in June 2019. The festival focuses on the themes that create the urban, social and cultural transformations of the great contemporary metropolises, with a specific focus on capital cities.