Summer Study Abroad Recap: CAP Students Journey to Rome, Chile, and Japan

Students visited Rome, Chile, and Japan this summer season as a part of the CU Denver Global Education program. These alternatives for worldwide examine present college students with immersive experiences, introducing them to cultures and views that they may carry with them all through their lives and careers. 

Rome | CU Denver in Italy: Architecture and the Urban Context of Rome

Rome is a layered metropolis, shaped by centuries of an ever-evolving city panorama. With Rome because the classroom for CU Denver in Italy: Architecture and the Urban Context, college students spent 4 weeks of intensive examine by way of excursions, analysis, and sketching, and concluding with displays of large-format, hand-generated in situ drawings that mirror not solely a capability to characterize a web site, but additionally a capability to interpret the convergence of structure, historical past, city context, and modern use in a single place.

Assistant Professor Matt Shea directed the Rome examine overseas program. He stated that Rome is a vital place for college students to discover as a result of town itself tells a permanent city narrative. Experiencing that story in-person gives college students an in-depth understanding {that a} case examine can’t absolutely seize.

“They study sites as part of a continuum that span the early Roman kingdom and the Republican, Imperial, Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Fascist, Modern, and Contemporary periods,” stated Shea. “At the same time, they recognize the sites as part of a contemporary, living city that is used daily. This condition is rarely found in North American cities. In Rome, layers of architecture and urbanism from very different periods exist simultaneously and often physically overlap.”

“A student can immediately see how a building, piazza, street, monument, or infrastructure has been reused, reimagined, or simply continued to function over centuries,” he continued. “This allows students to think about preservation, change, reuse, and the permanence of public space in relation to contemporary urban life.”

Each day all through this system, college students adopted an analogous schedule of commentary, drawing, critique, and refinement. “The sketchbook was vital as a record of field investigation and as a tool for architectural analysis,” stated Shea. “Students recorded proportion and scale, geometry, axes, solid and void, thresholds, materials, function, historical period, and more through plans, sections, elevations, oblique drawings, perspectives, diagrams, visual notes, and annotated images.”

Shea continued, “Rather than being a souvenir travel journal, the sketchbook slows students down, makes them observe attentively, and prompts them to think about what they see. It is a work in progress that students can return to and develop over the course of the program, as they observe their increasing ability to analyze and record a site.”

Photos supplied by Matt Shea.

Santiago, Chile | Santiago Public Space Studio

Written by Cassa Niedringhaus

A hall by way of Lo Espejo—a municipality in Santiago, Chile—gives a chance to extend connectivity and neighborhood. 

For their 2026 Public Spaces Studio, college students from the College of Architecture and Planning at CU Denver traveled to Santiago and labored in collaboration with native public officers and neighborhood members to organize a plan for a brand new city greenway referred to as the Corredor Biológico Salvador Allende. 

The plan defines a imaginative and prescient for the hall as a serious connector with enhanced pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, improved greening methods, and curated play and public artwork components. This features a multi-use path, in addition to new vegetation and different inexperienced infrastructure to cut back floor temperatures, mitigate flood impacts, and help habitat connectivity for wildlife. 

In May and June, CU Denver college students pursuing a master of urban and regional planning (MURP) and master of urban design (MUD) carried out public area surveys, collected area notes, met with native officers, and solicited suggestions from residents to develop the plan. They additionally collaborated with school from University of Chile’s Facultad de Arquitectura y Urbanismo. 

This plan will fill a essential hole within the area’s broader inexperienced infrastructure plan, stated Professor of Urban and Regional Planning Austin Troy, PhD, who served as certainly one of three instructors on the journey. It gave college students an opportunity to get real-world expertise, too. 

“The students were able to design for a large area with such a rigorous level of detail,” Troy stated. “I was amazed by their creativity in coming up with design and programming choices for the space and finding ways to make thematic areas of the site transition logically across space.” 

Troy added that college students and school discovered the chance to attach with locals to be probably the most rewarding components of the studio. 

“It was rewarding to work with the staff and community members from Lo Espejo, none of whom spoke English, but all of whom were incredibly welcoming, friendly and generous with their time,” Troy stated. 

The remaining Corredor Biológico Salvador Allende Design plan, introduced by the scholars on the finish of the four-week examine overseas, can be utilized by the Lo Espejo neighborhood as they search funding to convey their proposals to fruition. Learn extra about this and different world schooling alternatives by visiting the Office of Global Education. 

Photos supplied by Austin Troy.

Japan | CU Denver in Japan: Tectonics in Context – Japan Lab

Japan’s cities inform a narrative of speedy modernization. In the many years following World War II, Japan reworked, reshaping its cities and introducing a few of the world’s most modern and complicated architectural works. Students within the Summer 2026 CU Denver in Japan: Tectonics in Context examine overseas program traveled throughout Japan, immersing them within the Japanese context, whereas finishing design prompts to raised perceive the variety of constructing tradition on the opposite aspect of the globe.

The Tectonics in Context course in Japan was led by Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Architecture Studies Rick Sommerfeld and Associate Professor and Director of Undergraduate Architecture Studies Kevin Hirth. During the 2 and half week program, college students traveled to Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, Naoshima, and Kyoto.

Japanese structure “engages site, context, materiality, and tectonics in ways shaped by Japan’s cultural traditions, dense urban environments, and varied climate,” stated Sommerfeld. “Japan has eight Pritzker Architecture Prizes Laureates (often described as architecture’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize) making it the most recognized country in the award’s history (tied with the USA). Experiencing the work of these architects’ in-person exposes students to perspectives and design practices that differ substantially from those typically encountered in Western architectural education.”

Students have been inspired to maneuver past merely documenting what they noticed on their excursions. Through drawing, they made shut observations of how infrastructure, mild, context, sequence, and cultural concepts inform the architectural expertise.

“At Shinjuku Station in Tokyo, students produce isometric drawings to map and interpret the scale and complexity of Japan’s transportation infrastructure,” stated Sommerfeld. “On the island of Naoshima, they study shade and shadow to understand the subtle spatial and material qualities of Tadao Ando’s Chichu Art Museum. In Osaka and Kobe, comparative drawing exercises ask students to examine how similar building types respond to different urban and cultural contexts. In Kyoto, students use perspective drawing to explore Ma—the Japanese concept of spatial and temporal intervals—through the repetition and rhythm of traditional torii gates.”

By experiencing Japan firsthand, college students gained a deeper understanding of how structure responds to tradition, local weather, infrastructure, and place. Immersive studying past the classroom provides college students an appreciation for the cities, traditions, and cultures that inform the constructed setting.

Photos supplied by Rick Sommerfeld.

Summer 2027 Study Abroad

While planning remains to be underway for the Summer 2027 examine overseas schedule, CAP is presently planning to journey to Japan, Chile, and Finland.

Applications for these applications are usually not but open however keep tuned for data periods throughout the fall semester, and go to the Study Abroad Portal to look the obtainable applications obtainable to CAP college students.