Finn Chosen for Visiting Artist/Visiting Scholar Program at the American Academy in Rome

J. Scott Finn, Associate Professor in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, has been accepted into the American Academy in Rome’s Visiting Artist/ Visiting Scholar program this fall. The American Academy in Rome “supports innovative artists, writers, and scholars living and working together in a dynamic international community that includes Fellows, Residents, Visiting Artists and Scholars.”

Finn will be at the AAR from October 17 through November 7 continuing his research on the neighborhoods of modern and contemporary Rome for a forthcoming manuscript. He will also participate in the symposium sponsored in part by the AAR celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture.

Drawing on his 13 years’ experience as Director of Auburn’s Architecture Program in Rome, Finn will create a text for students, teachers, tourists and travelers who are studying the Eternal City. He will collaborate with Professor Davide Vitali, an Auburn affiliate faculty member at the University of Arkansas Rome Center, and Dr. Antonella De Michelis, of the University of California Rome Center, to develop the lessons from classes they have taught together into a guide that offers a critical perspective on the nature of visual and historical analysis in understanding and experiencing of place, and how the long history and culture of Rome has shaped the city we inhabit today.

“My research time at the American Academy in Rome will be tied to my long-time interest in community and neighborhood and making place. These things are always part of my thinking about the collective nature of architecture and urban design,” says Finn, who, in addition to teaching at the APLA Urban Studio, spent three years in Birmingham designing and building a new community—the Town of Mt Laurel. His previous architectural practice in the historic community of Nantucket provided crucial precedent for the project.

Finn has been on the Auburn faculty since 1987. He has taught in all curricula in the School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, with a concentration in studio design, history, urban design and the impact of place on people. He teaches “Appreciation of Architecture” as a core curriculum offering for non-majors, encouraging each student to engage the built environment around them, and to become strong stewards and pro-active citizens in shaping that world. In 2015 Finn was named to the University’s Global Teaching Academy, an Auburn University program that recognizes and celebrates members for exceptional teaching in an international context.