News - January 25, 2008
SU Florence School of Architecture coordinator curates international architecture exhibition
The exhibition S(E)OUL SCAPE. Towards a New Urbanity in Korea, curated by Francisco Sanin, Coordinator of the SU Florence School of Architecture, opened to the Florentine public on January 24.
Sanin’s involvement with Korea goes back many years, to when he was a visiting professor for one year at the Korean National University of the Arts. During that time he also won an international competition for his project for a Buddhist monastery. Sanin is fascinated with this country of many paradoxes and, since his return to academic life with SU and SU Florence, has maintained his contacts with architects he met while in Korea. He has juried work in many Korean architectural competitions, and has entered his own work in many others.
This has led to several distinctive academic opportunities for SU Florence architecture students over the past years, as the Korean architects have accepted Sanin’s invitations to come to Florence and lecture for SUF students, as well as having hosted a group of SUF students brought to Korea by Sanin.
Six among the most well-known Korean architects are the protagonists: Chung Guyon, Joh Sung-yong, Kim Young-joon, Min Hyun-sik Seung H-sang, and Yi Jong-ho, all representing the generation of those who have been able to trigger a debate, an interaction, and research aimed at rousing Korea from a feverish moment of great political turmoil. Their architecture testifies to the consequences of this transformation. Said Sanin, “This exhibit presents a unique opportunity for SUF students to get a close-up glimpse of the contemporary phenomena that is the emerging metropolis of Seoul.”
Sanin introduced the architects during a conference that took place in the Salone dei Duecento of Palazzo Vecchio just prior to the exhibition opening, where the architects presented their research. Also participating in the events were Gianni Biagi, Councilor for Urban Planning at the Municipality of Florence and Raimondo Innocenti, Dean of the School of Architecture in Florence.
The exhibition, done in cooperation with the city of Florence and the University of Florence, will travel from Florence to principal international cities.
Whistler exhibit gives an encore opening at SUF Art Gallery
The SUF Art Gallery gave newly-arrived spring 2008 students the chance to see the widely-successful exhibit An American in Italy: James McNeill Whistler and his Legacy: Thirty-five Prints by the Artist and his Followers. The show, inaugurated November 20, 2007, had already finished its slated run for the public (from November 23, 2007 to January 12, 2008) and was so popular that SUF Director Barbara Deimling and SUF Art Gallery Coordinator Devorah Block decided to keep it up one extra week, offering spring students a private ‘mini-opening’ complete with reception on the last day of orientation. Said Deimling, “We agreed an exhibit of this caliber should be shared with as many students as possible, and that this also presented an opportunity for spring students to get acquainted with our Gallery space prior to the next event.”
Almost 100 students took time out of a busy orientation schedule to come peruse the art and were enthusiastic about both the exhibit and SUF’s exhibition space, with several noting how unusual it was for a study-abroad program to have its own Art Gallery open to the public.
The next event at the SUF Art Gallery will take place on January 30, with the vernissage of the exhibition 1938-1945: The Persecution of Jews in Italy, and will see the extraordinary participation of Graziano Cioni, Safety Superintendent for the city of Florence, Nora Dempsey, Consul General of the United States of America in Florence, and Michele Sarfatti, Director of the Italian Jewish Documentation Center in Milan. Fall 2007 students translated most of the thirty-eight exhibition panels from Italian to English, under the guidance of their instructors. The exhibit is part of a series of events SUF has dedicated to the European Holocaust Memorial on January 27.
