Architecture students take on housing challenges in Italy
The students’ final projects were featured in Puglia: Migration and Housing Studio, an exhibit at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura di Toronto (external link) .
Affordable, safe housing has become a global crisis. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (external link) (UNHCR) has reported that at the end of 2022, the number of people across the world who have been displaced from their homes by war, insecurity, persecution and climate-driven upheaval hit a record of 108.4 million.
To address this ever-increasing challenge of displaced people, a group of 27 fourth-year architectural science students from TMU travelled to Bari, Italy during the spring 2023 semester.
Under the instruction and guidance of professors Umberto Berardi and June Komisar, the students were tasked with designing affordable neighbourhoods and housing for recent immigrants and refugees in the towns of Cervaro, Mezzanone and Segezia in the region of Puglia.
The design studio abroad was in partnership with the Department of Architecture, Construction and Design at the Polytechnic University of Bari.
While popular study abroad locations in Italy for architecture students usually include Rome, Florence or Venice, Bari presented a different learning opportunity for these students. “Bari is much more emblematic of the crises that are happening in the world. It's a coastal city and migrants come in at that entry point, so it made for a very compelling studio topic,” said Komisar.
To prepare for the trip, students attended a few weeks of classes in Toronto before travelling to Bari. They learned about refugees, flexible and affordable housing, and the local materials available in the region of Puglia.
Once overseas, to orient their projects, students were encouraged to visit surrounding areas, attend seminars on social housing in Puglia, all while exchanging ideas with local architecture students from the Polytechnic University of Bari.
“Immigration is a crisis in Italy, it is a crisis in Canada,” said Berardi. “It’s a global issue and we wanted the project to have global significance.”
Student work featured designs for neighbourhood housing, education and training facilities, and places to worship and gather.
From the classroom to the community
Some students are now back at TMU finishing the final year of their undergraduate degree, and others have just graduated. The students can apply much of what they learned through this project in their own communities – from using affordable materials, to designing micro, flexible units that can switch from day to night use, to utilizing adaptive reuse strategies that repurpose existing structures and buildings in the community.
“A big part of this project for me was designing with a different mindset,” said Anthony Maiorano, an architectural science student who participated in the study abroad program. “This project took a lot more thought, considering the circumstances. It also gave me more perspective on how to reuse or adapt spaces to meet the needs of the actual people who will use it.”
“I think the students are much more aware of the various crises that they're going to be facing as architecture professionals and that it's not a profession where we just build middle-class high rises,” said Komisar. “These students are about to be launched into the world and hopefully will become advocates for solving our housing crisis. I think they are the generation that's going to find a solution.”