This Week’s Class 

In class this week, we examined the structure of corporate governance and its implications. On Tuesday we held debates in on two topics under the umbrella of corporate governance and social responsibility. The first debate was about the morality of banks charging interest on mortgages for people who are just trying to put a roof over their heads. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this one and asking questions after. The team that was arguing that charging interest was immoral did a very good job defending a point that is very difficult to defend. We also explored liability in our system and when the responsibility of public safety falls on companies versus the state. On Wednesday Sachi presented her WSJ article assessment on the legal action against Red 3 dye that is commonly found in candies like Skittles. We discussed the efficacy of FDA regulation and the responsibility of state governments to protect their citizens.

My Internship 

This week Le and I completed our research into finding sponsors that may be interested in the Fondazione and our young architect incubator program. I am starting to really enjoy working together with Le and Arianna, our immediate supervisor. Together we have researched similar programs around the world and investigated their funding. In the coming weeks we will curate a presentation to pitch to potential sponsors. On Thursday we were lucky enough to host a group of Swedish architects who were visiting Milan to learn about Italian architecture. We gave them a tour of the studio and gave them a presentation on the design method of Franco Albini, our founder. It was very interesting to learn more about the culture and history of my workplace and see more about what they do for the architecture and design community.

Cultural Immersion

This past week has been absolutely lovely. Due to the Italian holiday on Friday, the group had the day off work and got to travel to the beautiful city of Verona. I had no idea but Verona is the setting of Romeo and Juliet and the Montagues and Capulets were royalty in the city and the tragedy is based on true events. We had a lovely tour guide who showed us all of the sights in the city and took us to the top of the Arena, taught us a little etymology and connected some Italian words with English ones. I would’ve loved to stay in Verona much longer but the next day a small group of us had plans to travel to Lugano, Switzerland. Lugano was absolutely stunning in both the landscape and the city itself. It was an incredibly affluent place and the shopping district was lined with expensive Swiss watches and jewelry. The people mostly spoke Italian there which was very interesting as well. It was a lovely weekend and I look forward to exploring more of this beautiful part of the world.