A YEAR IN GENOVA
Back in August 1985 as a twenty-two year old fresh out of architecture school I left Asheville for Genoa Italy to start graduate studies at Clemson’s program there. The semester-long program was, unsurprisingly, an extraordinary life-changing experience that had profound impacts on how I thought about myself, thought about architecture, and how I understood the world. When the semester ended I didn’t go back to Clemson. Clemson then was devoid of art, culture, or architecture, and anything ”urban” was hours away. So I bailed on grad school and went off to New Haven for a while, then on to Chicago where I did my M.ARCH, found my architectural home and started a practice. I also started teaching at IIT’s College of Architecture.
Almost ten years after I left for Italy as a student, I left again in the winter of 1995 to be the professor in residence at IIT’s program in Tuscany. I stayed on in Italy through the summer of 2000 when we moved IIT’s program from Montepulciano to Paris. After another five years in Paris I finally repatriated to Chicago in August 2005. Reopened my practice and continued to to travel globally directing IIT’s international programs.
In August 2015 I came back to Southern Appalachia and in August 2025 departed once again for Genova. This time as the professor in residence for the same Clemson program I joined in 1985. This time for the full academic year. It has again been an extraordinary experience that has had profound impacts on how I think about architecture, and understand the world.
My project for the past year was a fairly simple and straight-forward extension of work I’d been doing all the time I was abroad and traveling. It was to explore my practice of keeping a sketchbook while also figuring out what the work in the sketchbook was trying to do. Yet another version of the insistent question of critical practice, “what is it that we’re doing when we’re doing whatever it is that we do?”.
Having now cataloged all the work in this past year’s sixteen sketchbooks a few things are clear. One is that it took a few weeks to get used to working in a sketchbook again. Drawing in the field means working on foot, I rarely sit and draw as I do in the studio so having that muscle memory come back was critical. Second, having used the same pencil for so long (Faber-Castell 9000 series H) this year I worked with a slew of different pencils and pens. Color via Conté pastels, ink washes, water-color, and oil pastel. No surprise in the realization that what you use informs how you’re looking.
The answer to this long-standing question about the purpose of the sketchbook hasn’t changed. The sketchbook is simply where I work, whether using the pencil as a wrecking bar to figure out what I’m looking at or drawing my way into a design project. I don’t make drawings. I don’t compose, frame, do proportions, or think at all about the drawing as a thing. The drawing is a kind of remnant of the process of looking. Drawing is a way of thinking through whatever I’m looking at right then. My query always begins the same - “how does that work?” - and then I just draw. Working by hand on paper is how I work. Unlike construction drawings which are about clear and concise conveyance of information, these sketchbook drawings are me talking with myself in some odd interior language.
The organization of the Genova program means the faculty sent over from campus is essentially on sabbatical with a teaching role directing the design studio. So there’s an incredible amount of time for looking at buildings. Program travel allowed me to revisit buildings which were part of my IIT itineraries (and see a few new sites), weekends and semester breaks meant I saw a lot. Having been based in Tuscany for so long, I hadn’t spent much time in Piemonte, Lombardia and Emilia-Romagna. But the bulk of my time was spent in Liguria and Genova itself. The year’s highlights were a two-week trip from Marseille to Paris via la Tourette, Besançon, Ronchamp, and Strasbourg. I was back in the Valdichiana several times and got to Urbino for the first time since 1996. Bordighera, Vernazza, Alba, Torino, Aosta, Bolzano, Bassano della Grappa, Scarpa’s Gipsoteca in Possagno, and Parma were all revelatory.
Best of all however were all the places I saw from my bike. I took my gravel bike along with me and rode as often as possible, including two trips to Montepulciano that featured rides on much-loved strade bianche. The year’s only big miss was my not coupling rides with the sketchbook.
