User:Balthasar104/sandbox

This is the user sandbox of Balthasar104. A user sandbox is a subpage of the user's user page. It serves as a testing spot and page development space for the user and is not an encyclopedia article. Create or edit your own sandbox here. Other sandboxes: Main sandbox | Template sandbox Finished writing a draft article? Are you ready to request review of it by an experienced editor for possible inclusion in Wikipedia? Submit your draft for review!

The world tour program, known to the Ball State University College of Architecture and Planning as the Polyark Tour, is an intensive trip for architecture, urban planning, and landscape students. A 3 credit hour prep-course is required for the trip, where students enhance their sketching ability and research cultural do’s and don’ts. During the tour period from early-January until mid-April, both faculty and accepted students embark on a 15 week long trip travelling to numerous cities across the globe. An average group size is 40 students and 2 faculty advisors. Travelling plans include numerous days of linear travel, alternating with approximately three 4-6 day residential based periods linked with local Universities and/or design/planning institutions. While abroad, the architecture department curriculum includes a required 15 credit hours of intensive studio coursework, daily visitations and guided tours, and an overarching final project upon their return home. The goal of the trip is for the students to identify the design principles of the past, present, and future cultures of countries visited. Students are encouraged to use the “world” as their studio as they visit urban, rural, and natural environments. Via the P18/WT4 course work web site, family members and friends can also visit a consistently updated website that acts as the class blog. Here, visitors will have opportunities to review course work in progress while the students are en-route. These websites now serve as archives for trip experiences, coursework, and reflections from the students. Initiated over 30 years ago, this trip occurs periodically only every few years with internet blogs dating back to 2004. Originally started by architecture professors Les Smith and Rod Underwood, the trip was only to single countries for a month at a time, only having turned into a semester-long excursion in 2000.^[1]

Each year the trips expand in scope and understanding, so online blogs were formed to tailor to the goals of the students as the trip progresses. In addition to the blogs, the Ball State University website also has a Digital Media Repository that contains a gallery of compiled pictures from the trips for architecture students to use as references back home.

This year, like many others, the students did extensive research in a prerequesite course to prepare them for the trip. The included cultural do's and don'ts on the blog along with some travel tips. This blog includes exmples of travel sites that helped prepare the students, such as Itchy Feet, Know Our World, Boots 'n All, and Travel Notes. The site also includes sections for analysis, design, participant profiles, and daily journal entries. Examples of countries visited included Austria, China, Cyprus, Malaysia, Poland, Singapore, Spain, and India. ^[2]

This year only 33 students made it in the application process for the World Tour. This trip visited major countries such as Spain, Italy, Egypt, and China. This blog began the tradition of students including memorable quotes from the trip^[3]

The first country visited on this tour was Dublin, Ireland. The initial flight overseas took over 18 hours with multiple obstacles along the way. Some interesting facts about the trip in 2010 were that 8,948,660 steps were taken, 50,000 photos were snapped, and 5,600 sketches were made. These facts were accumulated by students during their day-to-day documentation of every aspect of the trip. This year, students were asked to develop and maintain an extensive set of drawings and sketches in order to record their observations throughout the tour.^[4]

1. Design Studio: Hometown Intervention/Improvement Project

2. Analytical Drawing & Sketching

3. Colloquium: Sustainable Environments & Globalization

4. Theory/Design Principles: (History/Theory – Indigenous to Contemporary: Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban/City/Town/Village Planning)

Southern Europe

• Spain

• Italy

• Greece

• Turkey

• Egypt

Far East

• Thailand

• Cambodia

• Vietnam

• Singapore / Kula Lumpur

• Hong Kong

• China

Central East

• Mongolia

• Kazakhstan

• Scandinavia

• Finland

• Sweden

Eastern Europe

• Lithuania

• Estonia

• Latvia

• Hungary

Northern/Central Europe

• Poland

• Czechoslovakia

• Austria

• Germany

• France

• Belgium

• Netherlands

• Great Britain

• Ireland