Studio - Torino Style

So, I'm sorry I haven't been updating too much, but the "study" part of "study abroad" has really been hitting me and my classmates hard. School here is an interesting contrast to school in the States. At our university in New York, we archies (short for "architecture students") have an entire building to ourselves. In said building, each year of archies has their own rooms, known as studios, where each student has a large drafting desk, chair, and workspace where he or she can keep belongings of an architectural nature, leave out unfinished work, and work at any hour of the day or night, any day of the week.

Here in Torino, no one has a designated desk. There is no place for students to keep their architectural belongings at school. There are simply large classrooms with rather vague rules about who may occupy them at any given time (for example, during a class, there may be people who are not enrolled in the class camped out in the back of the room doing work and chattering). In addition to this, the entire school closes at 7 P.M. every weekday, and is closed on weekends. So students have to work from home. It's a completely different way of working than that to which we studenti americani are used. So, of course, we establish our own rules and bend things to our will. We are architects, after all.

Our place of residence is odd. I have no idea what to call it...it's a collection of buildings containing dormitory-esque rooms, and it's run by priests -- we've been fondly referring to it as "the Cloister" due to the midnight curfew and other odd restrictions, or "the Eagle's Nest" due to its location at the top of 270 concrete stairs. The 22 of us live on two floors of on of the buildings of the Cloister, with various other random Italian students. On one floor of our building is a large circular computer room (I'm actually sitting in said room as I type). When we got here, the room contained a few mismatched desks and chairs, some ancient desktop computers, and four hardwired connection ports. Now the room is outfitted with a wireless router (we bought it ourselves) and many more desks and chairs, dragged from our bedrooms and crammed in alongside one another.

This tiny room has become our makeshift studio. At night, we all squeeze in here with our laptops to work on the massive project we've been assigned. Many of the Italian students with whom we are working on the project join us too. It's like the condensed version of studio - very loud (at least two people are blasting music at a time, and everyone is discussing projects at the top of their lungs, over the music), very tightly packed (2-4 people to a desk, no room to move around the desks), and very pungent (most of the Italians smoke, and about half of all of the students are drinking some sort of alcoholic beverage as they work). But it's pretty cool. I've always enjoyed the studio culture of American architecture school, and this "studio" we've created merely shows our persistence to get things done on our own terms.

Sorry about the lack of pictures this post. The internet here is quite sluggish (perhaps it's because we have thirty people on one router?) and it's tricky to upload pictures. Not to worry, though, they're on the way.

Keep the comments coming! I want to know what everyone who reads this thinks about what I'm doing!
Ciao,
Rachel