The World of Education at the ICAA: January 2025

The ICAA is pleased to present the January 2025 edition of World of Education, a month-by-month roundup of recent education news and a look ahead to upcoming programs. This edition highlights education activity from the Summer/Fall session - June through December 2024.

---

The ICAA's busy summer season—which has a special focus on teaching and mentoring university students—began with the Summer Studio in Classical Architecture. This annual cornerstone of the ICAA curriculum provides an opportunity for twenty university students to spend four weeks at the ICAA National Office exploring the foundations of traditional design, including studio sessions on the orders, proportion, wash rendering, and more; field drawing throughout New York City; mentorship with emerging professionals in the field; and a final design project for a proposed entry pavilion to Prospect Park.

Additionally, the ICAA launched a new five-day summer program entitled Great Buildings: Classical Architecture in Washington, D.C. Taking place in July during the week following the Summer Studio in Classical Architecture, students in this advanced-level program used the city of Washington, DC to study a wide variety of precedents in situ and understand how they can be used to inform architectural and urban design today.

The program involved studio work and lectures alongside in-person visits to observe, draw, and learn from the monuments, government buildings, commercial structures, and residential buildings of Washington D.C., dating from between 1890 to 1940 and including works by John Russell Pope, Carrere & Hastings, Charles Platt, McKim, Mead & White, Paul Cret, Cass Gilbert, and more.

Applications are now open for the 2025 Summer Studio and the 2025 Great Buildings program.

In the ICAA's Cast Hall, the summer also marked the occasion of a special exhibition with artist Lucian Moriyama featuring his work in the historic decorative plaster technique of scagliola, a trompe l'œil technique popularized in Baroque Italy that mimics marble. The exhibit, entitled Blue Pavilion: Authenticity, Fantasy, & Trickery, was open to the public from for the entirety of the summer and additionally featured a special opening reception and artist's talk by Moriyama, in which he illustrated his artistic process of working in scagliola and the resonance of working with this historically significant material.

In October, the Cast Hall participated in Open House New York, allowing the public to experience the artistry on display with the cast collection. Visitors had the opportunity to hear gallery talks throughout the day describing the history of the casts as well as the stories behind some of the pieces. Additionally, visitors were encouraged to sketch the work on display.

This past fall, there were a variety of youth programs held at the ICAA in partnership with middle and high schools. Our fourth New Heights program with Mather Building Arts & Craftsmanship High School gave students instruction and demonstration on the plaster arts and its importance in the history of classical architecture and art. Multiple Jersey City high schools attended an advanced drawing course that gave students the opportunity to draw from sculptures in the cast hall and learn techniques on how to study and draw from life.

Throughout the summer and fall, the ICAA hosted a variety of Continuing Education classes open to the Institute's general membership, including programs in The Elements of Classical Architecture series, which introduces participants to the construction of mouldings and the classical orders and their use in design; walking and sketching tours in locations such as Prospect Park; and field studies in measured and analytical drawing.

A particular highlight among this fall's programming was a special day-long visit to Edgewater (Barrytown, NY), a beautiful 1824 Hudson Valley home that now serves as a learning laboratory for architecture, conservation, craftsmanship, interior design, and landscape design under the stewardship of the Richard Hampton Jenrette Foundation. The course provided an opportunity for professionals with experience in measured drawing to carefully study a wide variety of elements and details from the exterior and interior, including the Doric portico, doors and windows, mantles, stair details, interior mouldings, millwork, and more. The course also incorporated discussion on the elements, details, and precedent sources of early-to-mid-nineteenth century American Neo-Classical architecture, with special presentations by lead instructor Stephen Chrisman and Foundation President Benjamin Prosky.

This past fall, the ICAA hosted several University Workshops in Classical Architecture. The Workshop at Samford University in Homewood, Alabama became the ICAA's largest-ever program at a university, with 125 undergraduate students attending in total from the Architecture and Interior Design departments. In order to make such a large undertaking possible, the ICAA (in collaboration with the ICAA's Southeast Chapter) brought on a local teaching & TA team of six architects from Georgia and Alabama, whose work and experiences resonated with the students.

In October, the ICAA also held a Workshop in Denver, Colorado in collaboration with the ICAA Rocky Mountain Chapter, with architecture students joining from the University of Colorado Denver, the Community College of Denver, and Pikes Peak State College.

In November, the ICAA hosted its last Workshop of the year: the annual Open Access Workshop, a program held online via Zoom and open to all students, which saw 70 architecture and interior design students register from around the world.

The ICAA hosted two large-scale programs: the Christopher H. Browne Drawing Tour in New Orleans and the Intensive in Classical Architecture in Newport, Rhode Island.

The New Orleans Drawing Tour provided a special opportunity for participants to study one of the country's richest cultural cities and understand its unique precedents through measured and analytical drawing. The program was led by Louisiana native Jacques Levet and ICAA Education Committee member Stephen Chrisman. You can read an account of Jacques' experience leading the program—and his journey as an architect and teacher—here. The ICAA is thrilled to announce that 2025’s iterations of the Christopher H. Browne Drawing Tour program will take place in Santa Barbara, California and Verona, Italy (with an optional additional segment at Villa Saraceno).

The Intensive in Classical Architecture—a one-week program for professionals in design fields that delves into the ICAA's Core Curriculum—was hosted in Newport, Rhode Island for the first time ever this year in collaboration with the ICAA's New England Chapter. The cohort included architects, interior designers, university students, and more from across the globe (including participants from Canada, Guatemala, and the United Kingdom). See more about the experience of the Intensive through a video exploration of the program.

Rounding out the education calendar for 2024, the ICAA once again hosted a new series of interviews in The Architecture of Place series featuring three established architects from around the world: John Smiley, Tiffany Abernathy, and Patricia Canelas.

The ICAA's Winter 2025 season kicked off with the annual New York Intensive in Classical Architecture in January, and will be followed by February's The Architecture of Place series with a focus on the next generation of designers, alongside a number of new Continuing Education programs both online and in-person.

Read more about recent education news and programs on the ICAA's website and visit ICAA Education for upcoming program details, dates, and information on scholarships and registration.

Tags: world of education