Interior Design Department Europe Study Tour 2006
The 2006 Interior Design Spring Break Study Tour was designed to give 19 of our students a chance to experience three very different cultural and geographical settings and to explore their impact on art and architecture. In each city we started with an introductory tour providing the necessary background information for our students to better understand the cultural context they were in.
The tour started in the unique lagoon city of Venice where we enjoyed architectural and culinary masterworks ranging from renaissance architecture, like the Pallazzo Ducale and the Basilica of San Marco, to the best pistachio gelato ever made.
Crossing the cultural division line of the Alps we traveled by overnight train to Vienna, to see the beautiful gothic cathedral of St. Stephan, the baroque representational architecture of the former Austrian Hungarian Empire and numerous icons of nineteenth and twentieth century architecture. Special attention was of course given to the famous Viennese chocolate pastries. To complete the picture we spent an entire day in the museum quarter with its famous collections of masterworks in classical and contemporary art.
Finally, we moved on to the "Golden City" of Prague, the vibrant multicultural capital of the Czech Republic with its unparalleled concentration of styles like Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque, Art Nouveau, and Czech Modernism. In between exploring the city, visiting the museums, sampling the famous Czech dumplings, and shopping for souvenirs, some of our students even managed to find time to see a fantastic hockey game.
In short, we had a great time and are currently working on making the Interior Design Department Study Tour an annual event.
Jörg Schnier
Associate Professor
Interior Design Department