From May 20 to June 18, 2024, the second workshop of the SustainabITALY project took place in the spaces of the University of Arkansas Rome Center at Palazzo Taverna. The objective was to work on the exhibition designed by the students of the previous semester and develop a communication strategy for the entire exhibition. The summer semester students had to understand the intentions of the winning proposal, a project that experiments with the concept of reuse, modularity, multiple spatial combinations, easy assembly and disassembly, and the possibility of air shipping, hence the concept of an itinerant exhibition.
In the months leading up to the workshop, the SustainabITALY coordinator, in collaboration with the University of Arkansas Rome Center, GBC Italia, and various architectural firms whose projects were selected for the exhibition, collected the material constituting the exhibition content, namely images, drawings, descriptive texts on architectural and sustainable aspects, LEED score cards, and credits. At this stage, it emerged that not all interlocutors had material suitable for an architectural exhibition or all the required information; therefore, the number of good practices was reduced to ten. This turned out to be a very important aspect as less space was needed to illustrate the projects, allowing more to be dedicated to the collected ones, giving greater prominence to images and texts. By the start of the workshop, all the necessary material had been collected, selected, edited, and, where necessary, translated into English to have all the elements to set up the graphic strategy.
Each student adopted a case study and became its direct responsible. The class was divided into three groups, each of which had to propose a graphic layout. The instructors at the University of Arkansas Rome Center chose the best proposal in terms of aesthetic and communicative quality and versatility. Each student then proceeded to layout the adopted case, choosing the most effective images, adding any quotes, and appropriately organizing all the texts. All the exhibition projects were equipped with a QR code so that by connecting to the site, more information could be viewed.
Tagi2000 Srl, a local company based in Monte Compatri, Rome, Italy, and specialized in the production of exhibitions and setups made of wood, made its know-how available to SustainabITALY. The project leader of the winning project, Arch. Khadija Kouki Amri, having followed the project development together with the students, offered to make the executive drawings, updating the various details based on the feasibility indications provided by Tagi2000. The CNC machines connected to the 3D model allowed the production of a 1:1 scale prototype, fundamental for making some necessary structural modifications.
Once production began on June 13, the students visited the company, got to know the family tradition of Tagi2000, and saw one of the wooden elements ready for assembly. Since the students themselves are responsible for the setup and dismantling, they had to learn to manage the assembly and disassembly phases independently.