When debating whether to embark on a semester-long study abroad through Europe, Chris Nguyen kept hearing the same thing from all the people around him.
“I was asking everyone I knew last summer, even my bosses at my internships, ‘Is this worthwhile? Should I do this?’” Nguyen said. “Everyone kept saying the same thing — do it.”
Whatever doubts that Nguyen might have had disappeared the moment he touched down in London, where he and a group of 10 peers from the College of Architecture spent their fall semester bouncing from city to city, studying new and classical architecture and meeting with some of the most prestigious firms in the world.
The first-year graduate student from Grand Island now knows the experience changed his outlook on what is possible for his future career as an architect while also expanding his global perspective. Meeting with architects from the same firms mentioned in (and even writing) his textbooks made a huge impact, offering insights into their processes that wouldn’t be possible to find anywhere else.
“Meeting with huge firms like Zaha Hadid that are all over our textbooks was incredible,” he said. “You can learn about them in a lecture hall, but to actually meet the people that worked on famous projects and get little details that you would have never known about unless you were actually there — that experience was just amazing.”
Even when they were not touring firms, holding classes in historic parks or deliberately seeking out certain buildings, Nguyen said it was next to impossible to not be constantly learning.
“My professor and I were walking around London and we just stumbled on the Lloyd’s building, which is one of my favorite buildings,” Nguyen said. “It’s a building where all the ducts and AC units and things like that are pushed outside to maximize space. It's very unique, and we suddenly got to stand there and discuss it together.”
As he returned to campus for the spring semester, Nguyen was eager to apply what he learned across his experience to his own work and share it with his fellow Huskers.
“I'm going to be a graduate teaching assistant this spring, so I'm going to be able to share a lot of this knowledge with other students," he said. "On top of that, I can be an advocate for this great opportunity.”
Information on the College of Architecture's education abroad programs can be found online.
