Nearly 80 percent of the fourth-year SU architecture students participate in the program, taking required design studios and professional architecture electives and choosing from a number of arts and sciences and Italian language and literature courses.
Traditionally, travel and sketching are important aspects in an architect’s education. From centrally located Florence, students take frequent sketching trips to other sites of architectural significance such as Venice, Milan, Rome, Lucca, and Pisa.
The design work is intensified during the Florence program by the presence of a distinguished visiting European critic who joins the SU faculty each semester.
This exposes students to yet another theoretical viewpoint with an international orientation. Final semester reviews bring highly-acclaimed European critics to the program.
Undergraduate students typically enrol for fifteen-credit hours a semester while in the program: six credits of design and three credits of related field study each semester are required.
Students choose their other courses from the architectural history and selected-topics offerings.
There is a language requirement, and students will be automatically enrolled in a conversational Italian class, typically for half a semester.