Institute for Traditional Architecture (ITA) is scheduled

Institute for Traditional Architecture (ITA) is scheduled for an official kickoff in February, 2000. The event will take place in a new chapel/community hall designed by Leon Krier, at Windsor in Vero Beach, Florida. Directors of the ITA are Krier, Andres Duany, and Ray Gindroz, all architects prominent in the New Urbanism movement. ITA will be based in Miami, at the office of ITA executive director Richard John, the former director of the Prince of Wales’s Institute of Architecture. Instruction will be provided by about 20 “masters,” all of whom are working, professional architects throughout the country. They will take on student apprentices who pay tuition (about $6,000/year, according to Duany). The pace of the year-long course will allow students to continue to work full-time at a profession, Duany says. Work will be judged by rotating pairs of masters. Students must successfully complete a series of projects in order to receive credit. The first academic year will begin in September, 2000. Students and masters will gather three times a year in week long symposiums. The ITA will accept both architects and skilled nonarchitects (such as builders). The purpose is to fill a gap in the current system of architectural training, according to Duany. Schools of architecture mostly do not provide training in traditional architecture, he explains. Meanwhile, Duany also is organizing the Academy of Town Planning, which will be based in a building next to Duany Plater-Zyberk’s offices in Miami. Instruction at this academy is slated to begin in the fall of 2001. Instructors will come from the staff of Duany Plater-Zyberk, the University of Miami (where Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk is the dean of architecture), and visiting instructors. The academy will offer everything from three-day seminars to graduate school courses, says Duany. The building for the academy is being funded by the sale of lots owned by DPZ in towns that the firm has designed (some clients have paid DPZ in lots). Both ITA and the academy have been incorporated as not-for-profit organizations.