Usually coming back home from a trip abroad is sobering and sad. I started this trip with my classmates but truly feel like I ended this trip with my friends. Although it is sad to see this trip end, I’m more excited and hopeful for the future.
The concepts and ideas that I’ve learned from seeing these sites of memory and museums will help me immensely in my design career. It was great to see how those with different cultural backgrounds lay out, approach and utilize space. Hearing other Normandy Scholar’s opinions on a space’s function and form was refreshing and gave me new perspectives. Seeing towns with buildings that are hundreds of years old made me reconsider the importance of historical relevance and reference in architecture.
Seeing sites that contrast so drastically in theme, like Napoleon’s Tomb and the Shoah Memorial, create such profound and contemplative scenery was the experience of a life time. Being able to see places with that much rich and informative history is impossible back in the U.S, and is something that is rarely seen. As I’ve been on this tour around parts of Europe, I’ve seen great ways to approach human experience and memory, and how important every piece of architecture is to portraying those elements.
