Every summer hundreds of architectural students embark on a grand tour to continue their education on the ground. This time honored tradition has been a rite of passage toward the process of becoming a thoughtful and imbued architect. Traditionally this well-heeled education began in Italy, or more specifically in Rome, but today young aspiring architects travel all over the earth seeking personal growth and inspiration. Archinect has conscripted a few Yale School of Architecture students (class of 2011), awardees of various travel fellowships (George Nelson Scholarship, David M. Schwarz and Takenaka Fellowships), to blog about their experiences.

MARIJA BRDARSKI | 2010 GEORGE NELSON SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
Marija's Travel Blog

Bio:
Marija Brdarski was born in Belgrade, Serbia, grew up in Akron, Ohio and now resides in Connecticut. She is currently in her last year of graduate studies at Yale’s M.Arch I Program. She is the recipient (along with Emmett Zeifman) of the 2010 George Nelson Scholarship, which is awarded each year to a second-year student in the first professional degree program for support for an independent course of study.

Research:
This research is driven to uncover and examine the idiosyncrasies of the architecture that grew out of social modernism in Yugoslavia in the 60s and 70s. Through my travels to the Ex-Yugoslav republics, I will investigate the ways in which these characteristics are informed, urbanistically and architecturally, by the historical, social and –above all- built domain of the preceding decades in Yugoslavia –i.e., the relationship between the historic, ‘regional’ city core, the post-war ‘Yugoslavian’ new town, and increasingly ‘iconic’ projects inserted amongst old and new. I aim to approach these projects through a collective analysis that struggles to find a way to gauge the delicate balance between tradition and modernity.

Tentative Travels:

• Serbia: Belgrade, Novi Sad
• Croatia: Zagreb, Osijek, Split
• Slovenia: Ljubljana, Maribor
• Bosnia + Herzegovina: Sarajevo
• Montenegro: Kolasin, Podgorica
• Macedonia: Skoplje, Bitola

Marija's tentative travels

EMMETT ZEIFMAN | 2010 GEORGE NELSON SCHOLARSHIP RECIPIENT
Emmett's Travel Blog

Bio:
Emmett Zeifman was born and raised in Toronto. He received his B.A. (English Literature) in 2006 from McGill University. In 2008 he began the M.Arch I program at Yale. This year he (along with Marija Brdarski) was awarded the George Nelson Scholarship, which funds travelling research in the summer following the second year.

Research:
His research is focused on the diverse and shifting positions of architecture within Francoist Spain (1939-1975). It pursues a number of related questions, examining the relations between institutions of architecture and the regime, the function of architecture at the intersection of totalitarianism and an increasingly free market, and the evolution of architecture in Spain in the void left by the post-Civil War rejection of international modernism. The hope is to offer insight into the ways in which architecture can function within and against the structures and ideals of totalitarian regimes, a subject of continuing relevance today.

Tentative Travels:
Rome, Florence, Bologna, Milan, Lyon, Barcelona, Madrid, Tarragona, Valencia, Granada, Seville, Cordoba, Lisbon, Porto, Santiago De Compostela, Gijon, Bilbao, London


Emmett's tentative travels

BRIAN BUTTERFIELD | 2010 TAKENAKA FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENT
Brian's Travel Blog

Bio:
Brian Butterfield was born in California, but grew up in the cornfields of Iowa. After getting his Bachelors Degree from Washington University in St. Louis in 2004, Brian lived and worked in Brooklyn, NY. Now in his final year of the M.Arch I program at Yale, Brian is spending the summer in Osaka, Japan as this years recipient of the Takenaka Internship.

Fellowship Overview:
The Takenaka Internship is granted yearly to one student each from the architecture schools of Yale, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania. The Takenaka Corporation traces its history back more than four hundred years and this internship provides American students of architecture with a summer of valuable training at Japan's oldest architecture, engineering and construction firm. Based out of the Osaka design office, interns participate in various aspects of design and also accompany architects on a series of site visits to see the impressive (and often very foreign) aspects of today's Japanese construction. A monthly stipend helps fund weekend travel excursions to further the students cultural immersion in Japan.

Tentative Travels:
Kansai, Kyoto, Osaka, Nara, Awaji Island, Himeji, Chubu, Kanazawa, Gifu, Chugoku, Naoshima, Hiroshima, Kyushu, Fukuoka, Nakatsu, Tokyo & Yokohama


Brian's tentative travels

MARK TALBOT | 2010 DAVID M. SCHWARZ FELLOWSHIP RECIPIENT
Mark's Travel Blog

Bio:
British born and raised between Switzerland, California, Kansas and Ohio, Mark C. Talbot earned a Bachelors of Architecture with distinction from the Ohio State University in 2008, and has since worked for several firms including Bureau Spectacular in Toronto, Canada and MOS in New Haven, Connecticut where he is currently working toward a Masters of Architecture from the Yale School of Architecture. Mark is the recipient of the David M. Schwarz fellowship with which he will travel to Turkey.

Agenda:
Turkey is at the crossroads of the Middle East and Europe, to this day its unique geographic position has brought with it tremendous conflict. It has been occupied by such diverse civilizations as the Hittites, the Trojans, Lyceans, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantine and Ottomans, finally leading to the establishment of the modern Turkish state. In the wake of these periods of occupation, architecture from each has been deposited throughout the country.

The intention of the travel is not only to document the myriad architectures deposited by these diverse civilizations, but to investigate the influence of these architectures on perhaps the only historically consistently "Turkish" architecture, the parochial building practice of the central Anatolian region of Cappadocia.

Destinations:
Istanbul, Edirne, Canakkale, Troy, Izmir, Ankara, Nevsehir, Goreme, Malatya, Van


Mark's tentative travels