HAAARCH's blog

Nikita Costantini is a senior at the University of Pittsburgh majoring in History of Art and Architecture and double minoring in German Language Studies and Museum Studies. After graduation in December 2016, she plans to move to Germany to work and practice her language skills.

A non-traditional student, Michael Guttilla, re-started an architectural education begun at Blair Academy.  His hiatus from the conventional path was spent drafting, cooking, cage fighting, and collecting credits at community college.  Upon entering the University of Pittsburgh, Michael declared Architectural Studies as his major and competed for the Pitt Snowboard Freesytle Team. He will graduate this April.

The Cathedral of Learning’s Japanese Nationality room highlights 18^th century minka style architecture and includes a variety of cultural elements illuminating Japanese traditions of all social classes. The room, dedicated on July 25, 1999, differs in purpose compared to the other nationality rooms.

The Hungarian Room that exists today combines folk artistic traditions with a visual timeline to narrate the nation’s complicated history. The Hungarian Committee formed in 1927, and with great enthusiasm became the first committee to put forward a donation to the Nationality Room Council and grew to include Magyars from surrounding Pittsburgh suburbs.

My interests have led me to research the Czechoslovak Nationality Room, in that it represents the distinct and deliberate joining of two or more peoples into a single nation.  Formed as a nation in 1918, Czechoslovakia represented a unified nation of multiple ethnicities.  However, these self-identifying ethnic groups had (and still have) very different traditions and identities, including language, art, history, and way of life.  Since the vast majority of Czech and Slovak immigrants arrived in the Unit

Max Adzema is from Pittsburgh. He is currently a senior studying History of Art and Architecture with a minor in Museum Studies.  Among other classes this semester, he is taking HAA 1010 and HAA 1020 which are exhibited in HAAARCH.  He will be presenting a thesis on the Czechoslovak Nationality Room, which investigates the challenges and benefits of having both Czech and Slovak identities reflected in a single room.

Edited by Stefan Proost

Kieran Bell is a freshman Civil Engineering student in the Swanson School of Engineering hoping to complete a program of study in Architecture and focus on structural engineering. He takes HAA classes as electives to fulfill requirements while working toward his engineering degree, and finds them an enjoyable and interesting departure from his normal course work.