学生奖学金

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乔凡尼Florenca’s parents arrived in California as immigrants from South Africa in 1996. 关心贫困, crime and political turmoil in Johannesburg — prevalent even as the apartheid era ended and improved race relations hung on the horizon — they sought stability near family.

In pursuit of their American Dream, however, they met an unexpected reality.

Florenca’s dad couldn’t find a job in his specialized field of butchery. 还有他妈妈, 验光师的助理, didn’t have the education required to pursue a similar path in the U.S.

于是他们成了洛杉矶高楼的看门人. The family lived in a one-room apartment and furnishings were scant. 一个纸板箱作为他们的餐桌. 因此，弗洛伦萨花了很多时间在户外.

“My mom, to this day, says all I need is a ball and a set of wheels and I’m set,” Florenca said. “That’s basically all I did growing up because I did not like being indoors.”

Now a master’s student in the 365滚球官网’s 艺术与建筑学院, Florenca, 24, 试图将自然世界融入到他的设计中. He attributes this influence to his out-of-doors upbringing and return trips to South Africa, 他在哪里见证了建筑美学, 基于安全和必要性, 他认为这与他自己的观点完全相反.

“In South Africa, people give themselves a lot of protection with buildings,” Florenca said. “You can go by any community and there’s going to be barbed wire or electrical fencing around the top of the housing — or gated communities or high walls.”

Florenca also remembers the pervasiveness of shantytowns, “基本上就是用锡和木头做的房子,” surrounded by clouds of smoke as people burned combustibles to stay warm.

追求童年对设计的热爱

The first-generation college student stayed the course after singling out architecture as his career ambition during an elementary school career fair. Florenca started his undergraduate studies at California Lutheran University with the help of academic and athletic scholarships in soccer and track and field. 第二年的时候, he concurrently enrolled in design courses at Ventura College — with hopes his coursework would transfer to a nationally accredited architecture program.

弗洛伦萨很快就在365滚球官网找到了这个项目, 以及基于实际需要的奖学金, 计划去莫斯科旅行. 他被校园里爬满常春藤的建筑所震撼, the accessibility of faculty and success of the program’s alumni.

体系结构 can influence people’s subconscious and social interactions within a space. 乔凡尼Florenca

现在是他硕士课程的第二年, 弗洛伦卡预计将于2020年5月毕业, 他还获得了几个学生设计奖, 奖学金和助教奖学金. 最近, he won the 2019 Building Technology Educators’ Society Student Award for design concepts he created for a potential U of I 访问or Center.

Interested in how “architecture can influence people’s subconscious and social interactions within a space,” Florenca seems the perfect fit for designing such accommodations. The young designer is also intent on achieving innovation by “relating nature back to architecture.” Accordingly, he incorporated a sophisticated daylighting model into his winning design.

最终, Florenca wants to give back to the university by educating future students on “how architecture affects people’s lives.”

“My other goal involves going around the country and designing small mobile homes, 用集装箱和可重复使用的材料, 例如, 既便宜又创新,他说.

在这条道路上, Florenca hopes to help others achieve upward mobility, regardless of social class or circumstance — the essence of the American dream his parents chased.

Article by Kate Keenan, 艺术与建筑学院.

Published in the Fall 2019 issue of Here We Have Idaho.