Celebrating 25 Years of Vicenza Institute Of Architecture

Join the celebration

Twenty-five years ago, the School of Architecture at the University of Florida made a profound commitment to the education of its students by starting an education and research center in the Veneto Region of Italy.

The northern Italian town of Vicenza, a UNESCO World Heritage Centre, was chosen as the site for the first off-campus Institute of Architecture. Since the opening of VIA, 1744 students have spent a semester living in Vicenza, studying architecture and traveling through Europe.

In recognition of this milestone, the current leadership of the Institute would like to honor all contributors, especially all former students who have given VIA its energy and its reason for being.

A Retrospective Exhibition with selected samples of VIA student work and research will open with a party at the premises of the Vicenza Institute of Architecture on Saturday Sept. 4, 2010.

After its initial run, the exhibit will travel to the gallery of the College of Design Construction and Planning at the University of Florida’s Gainesville campus, and later to the new facilities of the Urban Center the School of Architecture and DCP have recently inaugurated in Orlando in collaboration with the University of Central Florida.

Following the exhibit in Vicenza, Professor Alfonso Perez-Mendez will lead a five-day tour of Basel, Switzerland and surrounding areas to visit the works of Le Corbusier, Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron, Zaha Hadid and many others. The tour will include alumni, architects and students currently enrolled in the VIA program and will qualify architects for 22 HSW continuing education credits. Contact alfperez@ufl.edu for more information.

This is an exciting moment for us as we celebrate 25 years in Italy, consider our accomplishments and chart the course for the next 25 years.

I hope you will be able to join us.

Martin A. Gold, AIA
Director