FIBE Cohort 2 student Deryck Chan contemplates Italian masonry while attending the Wikimania conference in Italy thanks to Estorick Scholarship from Magdalene College
Deryck Chan from FIBE cohort 2 travelled to Milan and Esino Lario in late June to learn about Italian architecture and attend the Wikimania conference. He was sponsored by the Estorick Italian travel scholarship of Magdalene College.
FIBE students learned about natural ventilation in the core lecture series on environmental architecture. Part of the series focused on the environmental control of heavy masonry buildings in Italy and Deryck observed many such designs as he visited historic churches in Milan. He also spontaneously attended a landscape design workshop in the Milan Polytechnic.
In the Alpine village of Esino Lario, he attended Wikimania, the annual international conference on Wikipedia and related projects. He learnt about recent developments in open knowledge software and emerging best practices in knowledge dissemination.
His time in Italy coincided with the announcement of the UK-EU referendum’s result. He said that being in central Europe on that momentous day had enriched his perspective about the ongoing debate. His long-term career goal is to influence policy with his engineering expertise and he said the lessons he learnt on this trip would be useful in the future.