My journey in Alsace and Bruges

By Rafe Donahue,

Former student of the Bruges and Alsace Summer Schools of Architecture & Crafts 2024

I am not an architect, nor an architecture student, nor an artist, nor fine craftsman. I am simply a husband, father, and grandfather, a retired mathematician, an amateur woodworker, and a lover of beautiful things. As such, the TRA summer schools in Alsace and Bruges in Summer 2024 seemed to me a stretch but they resulted in perhaps the most memorable summer in my nearly six decades.

The application for the schools was highly daunting for me: an essay? Three drawings? Any other reasons to accept me? Goodness; if the points were allocated 1, 3, and 1 to those categories, I felt I would be lucky to score 2 points total. So I practiced my drawings and polished and polished and polished my essay and sent my application package to TRA a day before the deadline.

With great surprise and joy, I was accepted in early April and made plans to spend the summer in Europe, six time zones away from my home in Indiana.

The first summer school, two weeks in Barr, Alsace, France with a dozen other students, was an experience unlike any other for me, akin to the scene in Wizard of Oz when Dorothy opens the door of the black-and-white cabin to reveal the magical full Technicolor world of Oz.  Every day brought new marvels.

Barr is a small light-industrial town of approximately 7,000 people. Small cobbled streets snake through the city revealing a breath-taking parade of half-timber houses and shops.  It is like a fairy tale but filled with real people. After meeting all the students on a Sunday afternoon, class started bright and early Monday morning with a tour of the city and drawing sessions. At once it was obvious that the students there were of a caliber that I previously could only have imagined. Precisely drawing local wonders into sketchbooks in pencil in a quality that I could not achieve using my digital camera, they blew me away. But Nadia, the instructor, and all the students, were open, warm, welcoming, and accepting of me and my meager skills, providing assistance and tips, tricks, and techniques to aid in my drawings; their patience and tolerance for my weak skills was humbling but I never felt not part of the group.  

Over two weeks in Barr and the surrounding Alsace region, we were exposed to the details of design and construction of churches and houses, storefronts and cathedrals, city gates and civic squares.  We were taught fundamentals of building arches and trusses, church support pillars and wall buttresses, timber framing, stone carving, and all other manners of local building that Alsacians had been doing for centuries.

And we drew.  And drew.  And drew.  Nadia’s attention to detail and gentle but insistent encouragement to do good work, better work, and excellent work got everyone to give more than anyone thought possible.  

At the end of the two weeks, all our projects for adjustments or additions or adornments for Barr were presented to the Mayor and everyone else in the town. The presentation room was packed and students proudly explained their thoughts and plans. It was a Joy to watch the presentation of the gifts of the students to the city be so graciously given and so happily received. 

While I was in graduate school way back in the last century, our department chair told us the first day that he sought to give us two things: competence and confidence. A similar gift was given to the students at the ASSAC in summer 2024: in the two weeks we were in Barr, there is no question in my mind that the students picked up both of these attributes in spades, and they did it with grace, humor, and humility.

And then I went to Bruges in Belgium and did it all again at BSSAC, this time with 3 dozen other students for five weeks.

Again, we learned local traditions and customs for architecture and building. And we practiced crafts and techniques. And we were treated to not just the mechanics of architecture and design but also the philosophy behind why people build the way they do.  The faculty was absolutely first rate, guest lectures from great names from across the globe.  

And, just like in Barr, there was camaraderie and companionship, shared learning, and a free exchanging of skill sets and techniques. And it was all done with the good nature, humility, and grace that I found in Barr.

And again we drew like crazy. All by hand. Pencils, straight edges, compasses. Measuring with tape measures and footsteps. And the work that this group produced was equally impressive.

And again, at the end, there was a presentation to an enraptured audience. There was Joy in the grand reception of the designs. There was Pride in a team job well done. And there was Sorrow at the imminent departure from new lifelong friends.

All in all, summer 2024 in the TRA summer schools in Alsace and Bruges was unlike any other summer of mine. I saw so much that was new and beautiful, I learned so much that was practical and exciting, I did so much work that was beyond what I thought I could do.  All this I owe to Nadia, Noé, and Audity and all those involved with TRA.

Looking back, I’m not exactly sure what I had hoped to learn during the summer schools. As the oldest student in the schools but having no formal architecture background, I suppose I was hoping to just learn why some buildings give me feelings of Wonder and Grandeur and why some buildings repulse me. But it turned out to be more than that.

We read in Genesis that God put Adam and Eve in paradise (a “walled garden”) to tend it and keep it.  And we also learn that God is Creator of things that are Good and Very Good and that Adam and Eve were made in the Image and Likeness of God; therefore, we say they are manifestations of Imago Dei. And, hence, you and I and all those around us are infinitely unique and valuable manifestations of Imago Dei as well.

The TRA summer schools revealed to me a deep and profound Truth: they showed me that the buildings that we build are temporary physical manifestations of things that fundamentally True, Good, Beautiful, and Everlasting. I see now that architectural design work, the process and practice of giving form to those things, therefore, is Mankind fulfilling his role as Imago Dei, where we act as creator, putting into physical form those things that are transcendental. And to do this well, we must produce things that are Good and Very Good. TRA summer schools provide the tool to help us fulfill our telos as Imago Dei.

But beyond all that, what I will remember most about summer 2024 is the wonderful people I met. I have come to realize that those things that are of the world that I was privileged to see - the stones and staircases, the drawings and doorways, the canals and croissants, the interlaced arches and ice creams, the buttresses and beams - will all pass away. What will remain are those things beneath them that were truly Real: the Excitement of trying difficult things, the Joy of working as a team, the Love of finding new friends, and the Wonder of learning something new.

I returned home to Indiana a much richer man than when I left and for that I am forever indebted to the folks at TRA.

Rafe Donahue