In the Spring of 2020, UTSA Architecture and Music students took a journey to Italy, and then into the unknown. They arrived just a month before the entire country was driven into mandatory lockdowns, forcing the closure of universities, museums and all public places including restaurants, shops and bars, as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic’s rapid spread through Italy, and then to the rest of Europe and ultimately the entire planet. All of the students and their instructors were brought back to the US by the University without incident and without a single case of the virus.
Prior to that the students had organized and paid for their own trip to Venice’s famous carnival, and had taken course related field trips to Pesaro, Bologna, and Rome.
When they returned they resumed the semester online. In order to make sense of the rapid change of circumstance, to sort out their feelings, and to comprehend this profound experience, they were asked to select sites they had visited in Urbino and design memorials for the victims of the global pandemic. The work seen here is the result of the impact of that semester on the student’s studies, and lives.
