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Four
AIA members who attended an October 16 course in Verona, Italy,
on architectural stone applications all came back with fond recollections.
Offered by Veronafiere with cosponsors Stone World and the Italian Trade
Commission, the seminar was held concurrently with Marmomacc, the International
Exhibition of Marble, Stone, and Technology. The seminars were informative,
the attendees concurred, but the real learning happened away from the
classroom. Here's what they said when we asked: Winslow C. Kosior, AIA What was certainly worthwhile about the program was going to the quarries and fabrication facilities. The Verona Fair was also interesting with all the equipment and machinery and the stone in blocks and slabs. It was a big eye opener. I had the opportunity to talk to several stone-fabricator representatives. I concentrated on Spain, because we are currently working on the Torre Espacio in Madrid. I hadn't realized what a large producer of stone Spain is. Being able to talk to these people was particularly valuable to me. Perhaps if CES providers got more information on people's background, their seminars could be catered more to people with either more or less experience. That said, I would like to find other programs such as thisin Carrara, for example, because I haven't been all the way up to the quarries there. Patrick Leahy, AIA Another nice thing about going to Italy for continuing education is that it gave me a reason to go see all the architectural cities and places that I had always wanted to see. I planned another week over there to tour the country. I'd been wanting to go forever, and it kind of pushed me over. I may never get back again, so this was a great experience. The opportunity for making contacts was also good, with other U.S. architects, designers from other parts of the world, and Italian suppliers and artisans. I met a stone consultant from Brazil and one from China. I met people from the Italian Trade Commission and a couple of architects from Canada. Seeing the quarries was really great, because I'd never been to one. I wished I would have had more time to go to the Marmomacc exhibition, though. It was huge. Half was for people who quarry and half for material suppliers. They had stone from tiles to slabs and blocks and everything you can imagine made with it. You could have spent the entire three days and still not seen everything in there. It would be worth a trip just to go to that stone conference. If you're going to use stone, you probably want to get one of these stone consultants involved because they know where to get what you need, what it costs, and what it's properties are. You might even learn more than going to a seminar, since you can pick and choose the things you want to see and learn. You might not get any continuing education credits for it, though. Jay Lee, Assoc. AIA Then there's all the history that goes along with Italy that you wouldn't necessarily get here. In reality, I suppose someone could put together a good continuing education course on stone architecture right here in Boston. Because I live here, though, it's easy not to pay attention to the things we have in this city. I got to meet some good people there, too. We are planning on pooling our photographs and distributing them to everyone who attended. That hasn't happened yet because you tend to get back to work and get busy. It was fun. John Lesak, AIA I have a specialty of rehabilitating and restoring historic façades. One of the things that's always real difficult in rehabilitation projects is finding a modern way to recreate something that was done by hand 100 years ago. The skills are either gone or very few people have them. So it was interesting to see all these different toolsdiamond blades and wiresand technologies that are more modern and available, yet still have the appearance I need. I've already been in touch with one manufacturer I met while in Italy. I needed to find a particular color of red marble, and I saw some that might work when I was there. The supplier had a nice display of all kinds of different marble. They gave me a piece of the one that looked like the red I needed. I brought it back, took it to the building, and sure enough, it was what I was looking for. So from that standpoint, it was fantastic. Copyright 2002 The American Institute of Architects. All rights reserved. |
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