A trio of Alfred State students in the Department of Architecture and Design were recently honored with Bob Pahl Sketching Awards. Theresa D’Amato-Neff (Schenectady, NY) was honored with first prize, Connor Dolan (Corinth, NY), was awarded second, and Alessandra Santoro (Oceanside, NY) earned third.
Bob Pahl, a Boston-area architect, graduated from ASC in 1981 with a degree in architectural engineering technology. Pahl donates monetary prizes to the honorees. As a first-year student, Pahl was inspired by the introduction to architecture course taught by the late Jeffrey Johnston who founded the Sorrento Study Abroad program.
The trio of students traveled to Sorrento with Professor Alan Vlakancic, last spring. “This award is a great incentive for the students to carefully document their travel experiences and observations. The students had a variety of sketching assignments throughout the experience to expand on their sketching and journaling.”
The award, which has been given annually since 2012, recognizes three students who kept the top sketch journals while studying abroad in Sorrento, Italy, as part of their Urban Sketching & Journaling course. The Architecture professors at Alfred State review and judge the contest.
Vlakancic continued, “Thank you to Bob Pahl, the Sant'Anna Institute and Alfred State for allowing us to inspire students to be both effective design communicators and supporting students both financially and pedagogically. Congratulations to the three winners; I hope that you continue to exercise these skills into your professional life.
“Urban Sketching and Journaling taught me how to capture emotions in the moment and find meaning in the smallest details,” commented D’Amato-Neff. “Being able to develop these skills while studying in Italy was an experience I will always treasure, and I am incredibly grateful to have received this award in recognition of that experience.”
Studio Sorrento at the Sant’Anna Institute is a program is open to Alfred State architecture students in their third year of study and provides participants a unique opportunity for a spring semester experience that also includes courses in Italian and Archeology in addition to Studio Sorrento.
Dolan added, "I feel blessed not only to have had the opportunity to see what we study in real life, but also to have the time to fully interact with it through urban sketching. There is a unique sense of intimacy that is built when you spend the time sketching every detail of a building.”
Having the opportunity to study and take classes in Italy was life changing for Santoro, “Learning from Simo (Capecchi) taught me more about my personal connection to art than just sketching technique. Through this class I have strengthened my ability to translate my perspectives to paper through my art.
