Firenze 21.2.-27.2.

I took part in an Erasmus 4E's project. The project was about entrepreneurship and product designing. There were three countries in the project, which were Italy, England and Finland. There were one workshop in each of them. I was choosen to the one in Florence, Italy.

Even if the workshop started at Monday, we arrived already on Sunday. First we went to the hotel and after we were settled there, we went to explore the town. At first we came to eat at the rastaurant and then we spend time to wandering around. The one of the most magnificents things we saw was Duomo, the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

The whole Cathedral was so big that it didn't fit in the one picture.

Our workshop was held in the Florentine school. There we met the other students from England and Italy. At the first day the Architect Ramin Razani told us about his designing techniques. He said that he makes a lot of paper models which are folded like origamis. He showed us some of these works.

There are some of Ramin Razanis paper models

He also told us about his lampshade collection.

After a Razani's audition, we divided to the smaller groups and the italian students showed us their school. Then we started to work with our task. First we had to come up with a name of our group. We decided to be a "Buontalenti" whitch is an italian word and it means something like "talented". It was also a name of the local icecream flavour. Each team had to design some product and make a short presentation of it. The presentations were in the end of a week. Our team decided to do a backpack which will transform in to a beautiful vest. We took some inspirations of Razani's works.

There in some of the first sketch.

Some inspirations for the backpack

On a second day we continued to design our product.

After a lunch, we went to the Boboli gardens, Museo Salvatore Ferragamo and Palazzo Vecchio.

Boboli gardens was a beautilful park near by School. The garden was a part of the Pitti Palace and there were a many sculptures from the 16th through the 18th centuries.

The garden was really beautiful.

This one was a very cute statue.

Some of the many statues. (And some fool tourist.)

Then we moved to the next place, Museo Ferragamo. Salvatore Ferragamo (born in 1898) was a distinguished Italian shoe designer, whose shoes were skillfully done. Ferragamo made shoes fot the many Hollywood stars and his company is still doing well. 

Some of the shoes in Museo Ferragamo.

Palazzo Vecchio means "old Palace" and it is the town hall of Florence. It is completed in 1299. There were also many statues and beautiful freskos.

It was pretty gorgeous from outside.

The roofs were gorgeous in Palazzo Vecchio.

This cute lion seemed a little confused.

On wednesday we went in to an Artex company, Museo Piaggio and visited in Pisa. In the Artex, they told us about their business and products. The company is the center of artistic and traditional craftsmanship which promotes inovation and development of artistic and traditional handicrafts.

This beautiful lamp was in Artex.

There were cute plates designed for kids.

Piaggio museum was about the Vespa scooters. There we learned a history of Vespa and got some tips about productization.

This was the very first model of Vespa.

There were also some design Vespas.

This one was very cute.

In Pisa we obviously went to see the tover and the catedral. They vere beautiful and I was so happy to had an opportunity to see them. We also had time to walk around the town.

I guess it was a little bit leaning.

On Thursday we continued with our project and prepared the presentation of it.

This was the shape of our vest.

We did a patterns, which we used to draw the final version on fabric.

Our vest without the bakcpakc.

On Friday we presented our finale product to the others. We had to hurry up in order to got everythin ready by the deadline. So I guess that our product would have been even more better if we had had more time. But that was the result to which we were capable in a very short time.

This is our final bakcpakc.

The backpack expanded when needed.

After a presentations we filled our Europasses and then we were free to go to the town still for one night.

I wanted to wisit in the Uffizi gallery, and now I had the change. So me and few of my friends went there. The gallery was huge and we spend almost three hours there. And we still didin't saw everythin.

There were a huge collection of paintings.

And statues.

 

And this was only just one of those long corridors.

We were meant to leave home in the next morning, so we all game together and went to eat pizza.

The last pizza in that trip.

This trip was a great experience and I am so happy that I had an opportunity to be a part of this project. I met a new wanderful people and learned much of Italian culture.