U.VA. ARCHITECTURE PROGRAM IN VENICE
WINS NATIONAL EDUCATION AWARD AND INTRODUCTORY ARCHITECTURE COURSE
WINS HONORABLE MENTION 

	CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., April 16 -- A University of Virginia
School of Architecture graduate program that uses Venice as a living
model of a human-scaled city built in harmony with its environment is
one of three courses nationally to be selected by the American
Institute of Architects for a 1997 Education Honors Award.
	The annual AIA education program jury also chose the U.Va.
architecture school's undergraduate "Introduction to Design" studio,
which stresses the importance of an integral understanding of the city
and landscape over piecemeal building projects, for one of five
honorable-mention awards in the national competition. The first model
for beginning students in the course is Thomas Jefferson's design for
their own university: the "academical village."
	The Venice Program, taught by professor Mario di Valmarana and
associate professor William H. Sherman, and the "Introduction to
Design" studio, taught by assistant professor Maurice Cox and lecturer
Wendy Lathrop, were chosen from among 77 courses submitted by 50 North
American schools of architecture. Architecture courses taught at
Virginia Tech and at the University of Washington-Seattle also won top
honors.  Faculty for the three first-place programs will be invited to
discuss their courses at an AIA Teachers Seminar for architecture
educators in June. 
	U.Va.'s Venice Program, designed and co-taught by Valmarana
for nearly two decades, uses Venice as an on-site model for
interdisciplinary study each fall.  The one-semester, fifteen- credit
course is open to advanced masters-degree students in architecture,
landscape architecture, urban and environmental planning, and
architectural history and explores the common ground among those
disciplines.  Students spend eight weeks in Venice and the surrounding
Veneto region, tracing how the area developed culturally from earliest
times, and then six weeks at U.Va. on design projects and further
research.
	While traditional architecture abroad-programs often
concentrate on the design of famous buildings, the U.Va. Venice course
focuses on how the fragile surrounding landscape, with its lagoon and
marshes, was a precondition for the emergence the canal-filled,
walkable city treasured for its human scale, said Sherman, who
co-taught the course the last two years with Valmarana.  This
consideration for people and the land are keys not only to Venice's
famous attractions but to "ethically responsible and physically
meaningful architecture," he said, noting that Valmarana's "personal
commitment" to those ideals has guided a generation of students in the
award-winning program.
	The Venice program offers students in a professional
curriculum a chance to observe and reflect on what makes good
architecture, and "the city is our studio," said Valmarana.  Upon
their return to U.Va., students collaborate on design projects and
also bring a new understanding to the architecture of Piedmont
Virginia, because of the links between Thomas Jefferson's architecture
and the architecture of Palladio in the region around Venice.
	The undergraduate "Introduction to Design" studio at the U.Va.
School of Architecture differs from many beginning architecture
courses by focusing not simply on building design but on the
relationship between architecture and place.  Cox and Lathrop's
award-winning application of the course stresses that there are
ethical in addition to artistic and pragmatic considerations in
architectural design. 
	The first exercise in the course is a close analysis of the
U.Va. Lawn and "academical village" designed by Jefferson.
Jefferson's plan for the University provides a model not only for
building design but "a clear example of an ideal urban and
architectural design carefully interwoven with its landscape and
surroundings," Cox and Lathrop say in their course description.
	Following their work on the Lawn, students study several
nearby urban areas and make site visits to cities in the region.  The
final component of the course is a building design project that takes
into close account its place in its surrounding natural and
architectural context.  Students learn that architects are not just
"individual creators" but work "as collaborators within the context of
their community, and charged with the preservation and furtherance of
the public realm," Lathrop said.
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April 15, 1997
	For additional information about these award-winning courses,
Valmarana, Sherman, Cox and Lathrop may be reached at the U.Va. School
of Architecture at (804) 924-3715.  Television reporters should call
our TV News Office at (804) 924-7550.