Katie Battaglino | Arts & Culture Editor

RWU senior, Franco Iannacito, was immersed into the architecture program his freshman year of college and never looked back. Like many high school students, Iannacito was unsure of what career path to take. A lot of his friends were interested in business, but he liked the idea of having a job that was “hands-on.” He considered a profession like physical therapy, but an experience in his senior year of high school completely changed his mind.

After visiting his uncle’s architecture firm, he learned about the art and science behind architecture and realized it wasn’t about sitting in an office all day. Going to sites, client meetings, proposal meetings with the town and waiting for reviews are just some of the many tasks he found interesting about the career. He decided that architecture was really interesting and something he could see himself doing long-term.

“I loved the idea of making something out of nothing,” Iannacito said.

When Iannacito arrived at RWU, he began taking architecture courses for the first time. At RWU, a freshman architecture major starts out by taking all classes that are directly related to their field with everyone else in their year. “I thought [the program] was good, but it was difficult to transition from high school work to abstracted and conceptual work,” Iannacito said.

In his first year of classes, he was making models, hand drawing and learning technical architecture-specific terms. For someone who had little to no experience in drawing, Iannacito found it challenging at times.

“I had to put more time into hand drawing than most people because I was less experienced which was a big adjustment for me,” Iannacito said.

However, he is really glad that he was able to get into the architecture studio right away to know what he would be getting himself into as a future architect.

Now, Iannacito is working on creating an Art Incubator in South Boston. It is a semester-long project that he is working on in addition to short-term projects throughout the semester. Depending on his deadlines, he works an average of 20 extra hours in the studio outside of class time.

Although his career path is time-consuming, he really enjoys projects that he can delve into on a deeper level.

“Once you start doing something for so long, you want to put more time into it. It’s the idea of wanting to progress my project to a whole other level that keeps me interested,” Iannacito said.

It is important for his projects to look good when he is presenting to a client because he is not only selling his project, but he is selling himself and his ideas.