Students at RTU Summer School in 2015

ABOUT RTU SUMMER SCHOOL:

Riga Technical University organises every year two-week International Summer School in Latvian town Cesis. In 2015, the School was organised from the 25th of July – 8th of August. For students, RTU Summer School represent the possibility to explore new approaches in research and design that are different from those offered by higher education institutions in regular programmes. The School aims to develop students’ skills such as mapping, data collection, community studies and the visualisation, by working on defined assignment.

In July 2015, three students of the first year of master studies in architecture at the Faculty of Technical Sciences in Kosovska Mitrovica were selected to join RTU International Summer School in Cesis.

Milivoje Vukićević Nevena Radosavljević Živan Miletić

DEPARTURE:

The journey from Belgrade to Riga was interesting; the feelings of uncertainty and low self-confidence about our English language skills were mixed with the excitement to participate in such an event for the first time in our students’ career.

ON THE WAY:

We flew on relation Belgrade – Moscow – Riga. In total, the flight to Riga lasted around 7 hours. It was new, exciting and interesting experience.

ARRIVAL:

We arrived to Riga at 8 o’clock in the evening on the 24th of July 2015. We were greeted at the airport by Ieva Laube – the volunteer who was helping students to travel from Riga to Cesis. We traveled by bus for about 2 hours until arrival to the place in Cesis where we were supposed to stay.

We moved in to the eight – bedded dormitory room, and that was the total number of male candidates at the Summer School 2015. The total number of participants was 36.

On the next day, we met with the candidates admitted to the Summer School. There were colleagues from all over the world (Japan, China, Belarus, Czech Republic, Russia, Brazil, Serbia, Poland, Italy…). At the beginning, everybody was shy, but this changed later on.

The first day was devoted to socializing with candidates and organizers, and for exploring Cesis’ landmarks. In addition, we had a chance to see what our colleagues did at last year’s summer school (2014).

RTU International Summer School 2015 was named ARCADIA. Arcadia is a poetic phantasy symbolising pastoral paradise.

The participants of Arcadia were divided into three groups:

1.Supernatural

2.Wild Thing

3.The Missing Map

SUPERNATURAL:

Through materials and prototype, the team is working to create a series of delicate spatial structures that help viewers to create a personal image of Arcadia.

The map of the valley where participants set their installations

Ether of the nature is a collection of panoramas, mountains and valleys, as well as objects of art that can be played with a physical characteristics of wind and water in the accession valley. Therefore, two, wind and water inspired, installations were presented.

Installation “Water” is a prickly, shinny object that lures visitors to delve deeper into the desert, trying to attract attention with its unusual shape.

Installation “Wind” is a fleet of sailing ships which sail through the fog and recall the legend of the flying lake that is looking for landing spot.

WILD THING:

Wild Thing observatory is designed to open new views of picturesque place. It should be a wildflower in the valley and a corridor to biodiversity.

Participants’ responses to Wild Thing theme:

Wild Thing is a structure that appears as a foreign object behind the forest and becomes attraction detail in the Pirstupat valley. It has a little cabin at 4.5m above the ground; inside the cabin, there are two benches to seat 6 people. The walls of the cabin are not static – they can be raised to allow horisontal viewing of parts of the valley, while the openings up and down allow the viewer to observe the valley on all sides.

THE MISSING MAP:

By studying available maps and flyers of the information center in Cesis, the team realized that the rail cut Cesis into two parts; while one part is a tourist-shaped, the other is intact. The task was to bring closer the intact part of Cesis to tourists by making touristic map for that part of the town.

The group has proposed several ideas for exciting tourism in Cesis, such as obsessive-compulsive tourism, scare tourism, manufacture tourism etc.

Initiation of the search for locations with the potential for exciting tourism:

Mobile stand for tourist map distribution – analyses:

There were days when we worked longer in order to complete the work in time…

Printed maps were shared to the citizens and turists

ANYTHING ANYWHERE CAN BECOME A TOURIST ATTRACTION

Presentation matters!

Although it seemed at first glance that the language barrier is a big problem, we were able to overcome this, and that the Summer School left us all a great experience and memory of the incredible friendship. The hard thing was getting used to the food, which is very different from the food in our country …

FINAL EXHIBITION:

At the opening of the final exhibition each group presented its work through the material that was produced and collected for two weeks. The material was first presented in the exhibition hall; later on, all participants went to visit locations where new structures were installed.

CERTIFICATE AWARD:

Socializing continued until late night. The party was organized in the form of a picnic at the place where we spent all 15 days… there were dancing, singing, laughter, photos…