Design and Architecture Summer Abroad takes place in Barcelona
August 11, 2026
BY rawad nahhas
This summer, our students enrolled in three faculty-led courses in Barcelona, Spain. For a combined total of six weeks, students moved through the city's built environment, not as tourists, but as practitioners.
The first cohort arrived in late May for an intensive seminar on collective housing. Over nine days, fourteen students traced Barcelona's evolving approach to urban dwelling, from historic examples to contemporary interventions. They presented case studies, walked neighborhoods, and stood inside the spaces they'd researched, a pedagogical method that transforms architecture from abstract concept to lived experience.
The second wave stayed on for a one-month studio course. Nineteen architecture and design students worked inside the Fundacio Enric Miralles, a foundation housing both a model archive and the offices of renowned architect Benedetta Tagliabue's firm. Their project is specific and demanding: an adaptive reuse and expansion of a building near Sagrada Familia, programmed as an Art Production Center that bridges productive, collective, and domestic functions. The design students developed a parallel exhibition exploring Spanish cultural narratives within the same space.
Embedded in Barcelona's Gothic Quarter, the students attended evening lectures by leading Spanish architects, Bach, Inaraja, Luzarraga, and others, who frame their work within the city's architectural dialogue. A weekend excursion to Valencia. A city tour with only paper maps. The Eixample neighborhood observed on foot.
Student Samuel Daw summarized his trip abroad by stating the following, "During my time in Barcelona, I participated in both the Housing Seminar and the Advanced Research Studio. The Housing Seminar gave me the opportunity to experience unique architecture by exploring the different urban fabrics that make up Barcelona and studying a variety of approaches to collective housing. Taking a studio abroad taught me to think about design beyond an American perspective. Outside of the classroom, experiencing a different culture broadened my understanding of how other people go about their daily lives and their different ways of living."
This is immersion by design where students learn architecture not by reading about Barcelona's urban logic, but by working within it.
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