Architectural Design
ARCH 3100, 3101, 3102, 4100, 4101, 4102, 5100 DESIGN STUDIO (6 credits)
Instructors: Daniele Durante and Val Warke
Emphasis is placed on analytic and synthetic problems specific to the Rome experience. Specific content for the Rome studio will be determined by the instructor. Design studio is offered every semester. Visiting students must be enrolled in a five-year B.Arch. program to enroll for this course.
ARCH 5110 THESIS INTRODUCTION (3 credits)
Instructor: Val Warke
Lectures, seminars, and independent research leading to complete development of the student’s thesis program. General instruction in the definition, programming, and development of a thesis. Research should be directed toward a site and/or theme using the city and its environs as a source of inspiration and ideas. Must be taken in conjunction with ARCH 5100.
Architectural History
ARCH 3819 SPECIAL TOPICS IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM: Urban Design, Architecture and Art in Renaissance and Baroque Rome (3 credits)
Instructor: Jeffrey Blanchard
This course will focus principally upon the Renaissance and Baroque phases of Rome's history (15th–18th centuries). However, the first class sessions will survey the city's growth and structure from its origins to the present, and throughout the semester the course will often turn to those earlier and later events, without an understanding of which the Renaissance and Baroque developments would be only partially intelligible.
The history of architecture in Rome will be treated more thoroughly and systematically than the arts of painting and sculpture, but these latter topics will occasionally be a main focus, and will often be a secondary one.
While the overall organization of the syllabus is essentially a chronological one, each lecture tends to reflect other criteria of selection as well: topographic (a particular zone of the city); typological (a particular architectural type, e.g. the 16th century palazzo); monographic (the work of a single artist).
ARCH 3820 SPECIAL TOPICS IN THE HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE & URBANISM: Urban History and Architecture of Ancient and Medieval Rome (3 credits)
Instructor: Jan Gadeyne
Rome is a prisoner of its past. The entire city confronts the student with almost 30 centuries of urban and architectural history. This course intends to reconstruct the urban history of Rome from its origins through the Middle Ages (10th century BC–12th century AD). The purpose of this course will be to discover the layers of Rome, combining archaeology with literature, architecture, and urban history with art history. The goal is a thorough and direct knowledge of the Roman and Medieval urban landscape, and the way this landscape has sometimes survived until today.
Special attention will be given to Roman and Medieval building typology, both private and public, and the development of the urban infrastructure (street system, water supply, fortifications, etc.). Strong emphasis will be placed upon continuity, use/reuse and transformation of buildings and spaces, etc. Every week one or two different "regions" will be explored that are typical for a particular moment of the urban history. Visits to sites outside Rome also will be used to address the issue of urban history in Italy in antiquity and the middle ages.
Architecture Theory / Visual Representation
(Elective offerings vary each semester.)
ARCH 4509/459 SPECIAL TOPICS IN VISUAL REPRESENTATION I (3 credits/variable)
Additional topics may be announced before preregistration.
ARCH 4509/459 INTRODUCTION TO PHOTOGRAPHY (3 credits)
Instructor: Liana Miuccio
Rome is a visual feast for photographers. In this course, students will learn the art of photography while documenting the Eternal City's urban landscape. The technical component of the course consists of mastering camera operation, exposure, and digital input and output. Students will gain an understanding of the aesthetic possibilities of photography through weekly assignments, lectures on important photographers, photo field trips in Rome and visits to contemporary photo exhibits. By the conclusion of the course, students will have produced a visual diary of their European experience.
Students can choose to work with traditional or digital photography. A camera with manual functions is required. Digital cameras must have a minimum of 4 megapixels. The required digital or analog camera may have automatic functions but must also have manual override options. Students will be required to photograph approximately two rolls of 36 exposure film or 72 digital images per week. The film or digital files must be accompanied by printed contact sheets and two prints per assignment. A minimum of 20 rolls, 20 proof sheets and 30 final prints are required for the final individual critiques. Students should expect to spend approximately $500 on processing and photographic paper during the semester. If students take advantage of the Cornell in Rome digital facilities to scan film, output proofs, and final prints, the student cost will be greatly reduced. Both technical and aesthetic excellence will be evaluated in the final grade.
ARCH 3308/338 SPECIAL TOPICS: Theory of Architecture I (3 credits)
Instructor: Gabriele Mastrigli
The course will investigate the complexity and richness of cities through lectures, readings, walks, and through the contributions of architects, artists, writers, and geographers.
The city is the natural artificial surrounding of mankind. More than 60% of us live in cities, and this trend is on the rise. In cities, we live, work, relax, and enjoy ourselves. In cities, we realize our social, symbolic, and public identities.
We will start our discussion of the city using Rome, our temporary urban surrounding, the city in which we will live for four months, and contribute to its transformation, too. Having the city as a case study will permit us to explore and confront different ways to perceive, to explain, to intend, and to project our context. This program is open to all students of architecture, art and urban planning.
Prerequisite: permission of instructor. Not offered every term. Topic TBA before preregistration.
ARCH 3117/317 CONTEMPORARY ITALIAN CULTURE THROUGH FILM (1 credit)
Instructor: Carolina Ciampiglia
This one-credit course is designed to give an outline of Italian cinema during the '60s through the films the most representative directors. For Italy, these years represented a period of economic growth known as the years of the “economic boom” which resulted in a process of radical transformation of Italian society.
The movies featured in the course portray different aspects of Italian life in a moment of great transition from old to new. During the seminars followed by each of the four required films we will discuss how the changes taking place in Italy were witnessed and registered in the films of the period and analyze the different styles that characterized each director. Course begins in the second month of the semester and finishes before final exams.
Studio Art
ART 4000 ROME STUDIO (4 credits)
Instructor: Buzz Spector
This experience provides an exciting opportunity for aesthetic and conceptual growth. Fine arts students from various media concentrations are exposed to a wide variety of methods and subjects. Specific content for the studio will be determined by the instructor. Studio criticism and reviews are supplemented by local and international artists as part of the Visiting Artist series in Rome. Emphasis is divided between work accomplished in the studio and work executed in the environs of the city. Media consist primarily of painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, and sculpture; or those assigned by the instructor. Fulfills four credits of the fine arts concentration requirement for Cornell art majors. Required course. For majors only.
ART 3702-222 SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART: Intermediate / Advanced Drawing Studio (3 credits)
Instructor: Pola Wickham
Syllabus varies from semester to semester. The schedule includes outdoor sketching on site, at museums and in master drawing, and print collections, as well as indoor studio practice, and life drawing from a model. Open to art and architecture students; open to liberal studies students with approval of instructor.
ART 3702-224 SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART: Artists' Books (3 credits)
Instructor: Buzz Spector
The class will approach the book as a 3-D object that uses found and crafted materials to create a sequence of complex ideas. Students will make artists' books and book objects, employing studio mediums, writing, and installation art practices. We will cover a few bookbinding techniques and research alternative bindings and structures for individual books. The class will include studio assignments and also topical discussions, group critiques, and possible forays into other media. Bookbinding experience is not necessary.
ART 3709 INDEPENDENT STUDIO IN ROME (4 credits/variable)
Allows students the opportunity to pursue special interests in fine arts not treated in regularly scheduled courses. The student plans a course of study or projects that meet the approval of the faculty member selected to guide his or her progress and evaluate the results. Permission of instructor required.
ARCH 4509 SPECIAL TOPICS IN VISUAL STUDIES: Photography (3 credits)
Instructor: Liana Miuccio
Rome is a visual feast for photographers. In this course, students will learn the art of photography while documenting the Eternal City's urban landscape. The technical component of the course consists of mastering camera operation, exposure, and digital input and output. Students will gain an understanding of the aesthetic possibilities of photography through weekly assignments, lectures on important photographers, photo field trips in Rome and visits to contemporary photo exhibits. By the conclusion of the course, students will have produced a visual diary of their European experience.
Students can choose to work with traditional or digital photography. A camera with manual functions is required. Digital cameras must have a minimum of 4 megapixels. The required digital or analog camera may have automatic functions but also must have manual override options. Students will be required to photograph approximately two rolls of 36 exposure film or 72 digital images per week. The film or digital files must be accompanied by printed contact sheets and two prints per assignment. A minimum of 20 rolls, 20 proof sheets and 30 final prints are required for the final individual critiques. Students should expect to spend approximately $500 on processing and photographic paper during the semester. If students take advantage of the Cornell Rome digital facilities to scan film, output proofs, and final prints, the student cost will be greatly reduced. Both technical and aesthetic excellence will be evaluated in the final grade. Does not fulfill prerequisite for upper-level Cornell photography classes.
Art History
ART 3702-220 SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY: Rome from Constantine to Cavallini: Art, Architecture & Transformations of the City, 312-1300
Instructor: Lila Yawn
Generally offered in the spring. This course examines the metamorphoses and continuities that characterize Roman artistic culture and its urban and architectural settings during the thousand-year "Age in the Middle" between pagan Roman Antiquity and the Early Renaissance. Class meetings take place on location in the city, permitting first-hand study of extant works in situ. These range chronologically from the grand Constantinian projects of the fourth century to the illusionistic experiments of Pietro Cavallini and Jacopo Torriti, which immediately preceded and inspired those of Giotto. Monumental painting, mosaic, architecture, and stone sculpture constitute major foci of the course, as do other arts high in the medieval hierarchy of media such as manuscript illumination, ivory and wood carving, metalwork, textiles and embroidery, and the multi-media events — liturgies, processions, coronations, pilgrimages — in whose service much medieval Roman art and architecture were created.
ART 3702 SPECIAL TOPICS IN ART HISTORY: Baroque Rome
Instructor: Paolo Alei
This course analyzes the masterpieces of Roman Baroque art and architecture from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 18th century. In this period Rome was a leading center of the arts in Europe. Popes, cardinals, nobles, intellectuals, and church officials continued to sponsor the Renaissance project of renovatio urbis, the restoration and embellishment of the city. While analyzing urbanism, architecture, sculpture, and painting by some of the major artists of the period (Caravaggio, Bernini, Borromini, Cortona), the course considers the artistic trends that characterize the patterns of patronage in Counter-Reformation and Baroque Rome. Special attention will be given not only to the literary sources that shaped art theory, practice and criticism, but also to important issues such as propaganda, the viewer’s emotional engagement and the artist’s social status. The unity of the visual arts, rhetorical effects, artistic rivalry, scenic urbanism, the relation between art and poetry, the use of classical and “bizarre” vocabulary, the concept of pastoral, the representation of ecstasy, and the idealization of death will be some of the themes explored in this course. Each art work, building or urban plan will be studied as a document to understand broader concepts related to politics, religion, music, science, theatre, and philosophy. Offered fall only.
ART 3102 MODERN ART IN ITALY: Contemporary Issues
Instructor: Shara Wasserman
This course is designed to introduce the student to the contemporary art scene in Rome. The class is a type of workshop of contemporary art, touching on all aspects of art work, from idea and creator to realization to exhibition to collection.
Class discussions focus on the artist, work of art, gallery, museum and exhibition space. The class will consider the gallery as a cultural, didactic and commercial institution, and explore its relationship and responsibility to the artist and to the promotion of art, taking into consideration prices, values and art as investment. The class will define the function and role of the museum as an important facility in the preservation and display of art. The class focuses heavily on the means of viewing art and on exhibitions, and will consider the process of formulating an idea for an exhibition, on carrying out the selection, and on installation methods.
An important part of class discussion will be the process of selling and collecting, from private to corporate to commercial to institutional. The class will visit artists in their studios and in the gallery, and invite artists to speak in the classroom.
The course includes several lectures on Italian art, beginning with Futurism and its roots in the late 19th century and moving to about 1980. The intention is to make the student familiar with these movements and with the artists that had an international impact, and also to trace a lineage for the contemporary.
City and Regional Planning Undergraduate Courses
Urban and regional studies courses are only offered during the spring semester of Cornell in Rome.
Undergraduate Courses
CRP 3720 (372) TWENTIETH CENTURY ITALY: Politics and Society (3 credits)
Instructor: Gregory Smith
This course provides a comprehensive survey of Italian society today, starting with Italy's geography and the historical forces which shaped the nation. It discusses the tensions between north and south, and such broad features of Italian social life as community structure, urban development, and family forms. It then reviews selected institutional issues, such as gender, the system of education, problems of criminality and justice, economic reform, social class, religion and politics.
CRP 4160 (416) THE EUROPEAN CITY: Public Sphere and Public Space (6 credits)
Instructor: Greg Smith/Gilda Berruti
A brief overview of urban affairs and planning in Europe, with particular focus on Italy and Rome. Other Rome courses examine urban physical growth, the development of cities since the Roman empire and their role in politics and culture. This course concentrates on contemporary Rome, its people, their housing, public places and activities, society, politics, economy, and use of the territory. Readings and discussions will be brief and focused, but field work in Roman neighborhoods will be extensive and intensive, occupying scheduled class time with other hours to be informally scheduled. This course is open to the urban studies studio participants only.
CRP 3721 ITALY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION (4 credits)
Instructor: Marco Cremaschi
Graduate Courses
CRP 6711 (679) ITALY AND THE EUROPEAN UNION (4 credits)
Instructor: Marco Cremaschi
CRP 7940 (794) PLANNING INTERNSHIP (1–12 credits/variable)
Individually arranged assignment with an international agency located in Rome. Students must submit a resume and statement of purpose with their application to the program.
CRP 8900 (890) PLANNING RESEARCH SEMINAR (1 credit)
Weekly meetings related to the practical aspects of internships. Objectives are to place the practicum in a theoretical context; sharpen the focus of issues and approaches; report regularly on progress; and receive assistance in the preparation of final work product. This course is offered with CRP 794 Planning Internship.
ITALA 1110 ELEMENTARY ITALIAN IN ROME (4 credits)
For beginners. Provides basic structures of the language and vocabulary to cope with everyday situations. Listening and speaking are emphasized, reading and writing included.
ITALA 1120 ELEMENTARY ITALIAN IN ROME II (4 credits)
Intended for beginners or intermediate beginners (second-semester equivalent). A thorough grounding is given in all the language skills: listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Language practice is in small groups. Lectures cover grammar and cultural information.
Prerequisite: ITALA 121 or equivalent.
ITALA 2110 INTERMEDIATE COMPOSITION AND CONVERSATION IN ROME (4 credits)
Guided conversation, composition, reading, pronunciation, and grammar review emphasizing the development of accurate and idiomatic expression in the language.
Prerequisite: a score of 560 or higher on the Italian Skills Assessment Test. Not offered every semester.
Independent studies may be arranged for advanced students contingent on an approved proposal for study, submitted in advance to the Italian program in Ithaca.
BEGINNING ITALIAN (non-credit, two weeks only)
This course is for complete beginners and provides the basic structures of the Italian language. Vocabulary and grammar are presented through dialogues, articles, and other teaching materials that refer to situations relevant to the students’ experience in Italy, and are practiced through role-playing, street assignments, research reports, and discussions. Situations that often represent obstacles to newcomers to Italy are presented to assist students in learning to live in a new country and a new culture. The two weeks include cultural activities such as opera performances, concerts, theater, exhibitions, and a “didactic supper,” in which students learn to prepare authentic Italian dishes while speaking Italian. A $200 course fee plus activity charges are required.
