The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to dignity in their cities. In the market of the built environment, where does architecture start? You may think it is the napkin sketch or AutoCAD but think instead of something more mundane: the government official's zoning map or the development firm's financial projection. In the architectural profession, we often lament our lack of agency in the creation of space. The architect must wait for the client, the request for proposal, or the competition. We are then at the mercy of local, state, and federal policy-responding to regulations, sightlines, zoning, and more. But how can we see the mechanisms of governance and finance as inherent parts of design? The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to and dignity in their cities. Through assignments, readings, and discussions we will explore what is at stake in the urban environment and endeavor to discover new forms of design intervention that respond with nuance to those stakes.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to dignity in their cities. In the market of the built environment, where does architecture start? You may think it is the napkin sketch or AutoCAD but think instead of something more mundane: the government official's zoning map or the development firm's financial projection. In the architectural profession, we often lament our lack of agency in the creation of space. The architect must wait for the client, the request for proposal, or the competition. We are then at the mercy of local, state, and federal policy-responding to regulations, sightlines, zoning, and more. But how can we see the mechanisms of governance and finance as inherent parts of design? The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to and dignity in their cities. Through assignments, readings, and discussions we will explore what is at stake in the urban environment and endeavor to discover new forms of design intervention that respond with nuance to those stakes.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

Throughout the 1980’s, São Paulo was still reeling from the aftermath of a 21-year military dictatorship as well as the modernist architecture project of Brasilia. Left with an abundance of modernist buildings that had fallen into disrepair, compounded by the need for state-funded services, architectural practices around adaptive reuse exploded onto the newly democratic scene. Within two decades, former industrial buildings like factories became the framework for new architectural development for social services like housing, museums, and community centers. Of the many successful examples of adaptive reuse throughout Brazil, this course will focus on the prolific work of architect Lina Bo Bardi, which she developed from the 1960s through the 1990s in São Paulo and Salvador de Bahía. 

Adaptive reuse is the practice of rehabilitating existing, and often obsolescent, buildings. Obsolescence in buildings happens when a structure is no longer able to function as designed, either technically or socially. Technical obsolescence occurs when a building’s systems are unable to operate efficiently, while social obsolescence occurs when a building no longer serves the needs of the publics that occupy the space. Contemporary discourse around adaptive reuse affirms that the most sustainable building is one that already exists; as a practice for building, adaptive reuse produces less carbon emissions than new construction, while simultaneously retaining the identity and memory of a place. 

Through our travels, we will encounter a number of adaptive reuse projects in São Paulo and Salvador de Bahía, including SESC Pompéia, Teatro Oficina, Centro Cívico LBA, and Museum of Modern Art of Bahia to name a few. Each of these projects address technological and social reuse; they imbue new cultural significance into existing and vernacular buildings. In the case of SESC Pompéia, Bo Bardi converts a decommissioned factory into a cultural and sports center. Teatro Oficina is Bo Bardi’s rehabilitation of a historic office building that was destroyed in a tragic fire into a community theater. Each of the projects will investigate the unique, place-based history of the existing structure and its respective public. 

Lina Bo Bardi (1914 - 1992) was an Italian-born Brazilian architect whose work combined a Modernist sensitivity with a profound commitment to the preservation of the vernacular and a design process guided by social responsibility. Today, Lina Bo Bardi is considered one of the most prominent and consequential Modernist architects, and her body of work is appreciated for its ability to reflect the common, the vernacular, and the artisanal as an intrinsic part of a contemporary culture. 

Though today we can easily point to her work as examples of successful reuse, Lina Bo Bardi never explicitly described her practice or projects as adaptive reuse. Instead, she was particularly interested in thinking through human interfaces as a method for the reclamation of new public spaces. Her inherent knowledge of and appreciation for traditional and local methods of building had profound effects on her realized projects; her work is distinguishable from other examples of adaptive reuse precisely because she was able to focus on local knowledge that had been previously marginalized through the advent of modernism. 

Bo Bardi often developed her projects in-situ, opting to design and work on a live building site, which allowed her to develop collective and experimental relationships with local craftsmen, artists and builders. Furthermore, Bo Bardi’s office never produced standard technical drawings and plans for construction. Most of her drawings were understood as a collection of singular ideas that existed within a wide range of scales, patterns, relationships, and themes. She often crafted colorful and expressive drawings using a plethora of pens, paints, watercolors and brushes. Together, we will investigate the strategies in which Lina Bo Bardi communicated and implemented these feminist ideas and practices within the urban contexts of São Paulo and Salvador de Bahía. 

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.

This course connects the methods, traditions, and conventions of architectural drawing with contemporary technology and representational cultures. This course recognizes that for architects to operate productively, politically, socially, and ethically given the ubiquity of the digital image, both an advanced command of computational techniques and drawing techniques are immediately and primarily necessary. The digital image is the standard by which aesthetic content is transmitted, published and processed. Its pervasive role in contemporary architectural culture-and humanity-is mediated and confronted in this course. Relatedly, material drawing traditions are essential, valuable and provocative. The techniques covered in this studio-taught course include the manual and automated manipulation of digital images and material drawings at dramatically varied scales and dimensions. A structure of creative prompts continually positions the drawing and the image in parallel, with an emphasis on developing students' sensibilities, and capacity for both improvisational and scripted constructions. Students will create from memory, from life, from imagination, and from reference. As a result, students develop an architectural language that can engage multiple media and subjects.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This course connects the methods, traditions, and conventions of architectural drawing with contemporary technology and representational cultures. This course recognizes that for architects to operate productively, politically, socially, and ethically given the ubiquity of the digital image, both an advanced command of computational techniques and drawing techniques are immediately and primarily necessary. The digital image is the standard by which aesthetic content is transmitted, published and processed. Its pervasive role in contemporary architectural culture-and humanity-is mediated and confronted in this course. Relatedly, material drawing traditions are essential, valuable and provocative. The techniques covered in this studio-taught course include the manual and automated manipulation of digital images and material drawings at dramatically varied scales and dimensions. A structure of creative prompts continually positions the drawing and the image in parallel, with an emphasis on developing students' sensibilities, and capacity for both improvisational and scripted constructions. Students will create from memory, from life, from imagination, and from reference. As a result, students develop an architectural language that can engage multiple media and subjects.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This course connects the methods, traditions, and conventions of architectural drawing with contemporary technology and representational cultures. This course recognizes that for architects to operate productively, politically, socially, and ethically given the ubiquity of the digital image, both an advanced command of computational techniques and drawing techniques are immediately and primarily necessary. The digital image is the standard by which aesthetic content is transmitted, published and processed. Its pervasive role in contemporary architectural culture-and humanity-is mediated and confronted in this course. Relatedly, material drawing traditions are essential, valuable and provocative. The techniques covered in this studio-taught course include the manual and automated manipulation of digital images and material drawings at dramatically varied scales and dimensions. A structure of creative prompts continually positions the drawing and the image in parallel, with an emphasis on developing students' sensibilities, and capacity for both improvisational and scripted constructions. Students will create from memory, from life, from imagination, and from reference. As a result, students develop an architectural language that can engage multiple media and subjects.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This course, the first in a two semester sequence, explores design principles specific to architecture. Two interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

• the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

• meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course, the first in a two semester sequence, explores design principles specific to architecture. Two interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

• the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

• meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course, the first in a two semester sequence, explores design principles specific to architecture. Two interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

• the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

• meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course, the first in a two semester sequence, explores design principles specific to architecture. Two interrelated aspects of design are pursued:

• the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation

• meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

The Urban Ecologies core studio introduces students to the city as a designed environment with an emphasis on sustainability, giving them the tools to work through impressions, analysis and design operations as ways to understand the relationship between naturally formed and culturally constructed landscapes and strategies for urban ecological development. Students confront the design of housing as a way to order social relationships and shape the public realm and attack the problems of structure, construction, access and code compliance in the context of a complex large-scale architectural design.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

The Urban Ecologies core studio introduces students to the city as a designed environment with an emphasis on sustainability, giving them the tools to work through impressions, analysis and design operations as ways to understand the relationship between naturally formed and culturally constructed landscapes and strategies for urban ecological development. Students confront the design of housing as a way to order social relationships and shape the public realm and attack the problems of structure, construction, access and code compliance in the context of a complex large-scale architectural design.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

The Urban Ecologies core studio introduces students to the city as a designed environment with an emphasis on sustainability, giving them the tools to work through impressions, analysis and design operations as ways to understand the relationship between naturally formed and culturally constructed landscapes and strategies for urban ecological development. Students confront the design of housing as a way to order social relationships and shape the public realm and attack the problems of structure, construction, access and code compliance in the context of a complex large-scale architectural design.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course introduces the beginning student to the origins, media, geometries and role(s) of projection drawing in the design and construction process. The student will learn systems of projection drawing from direct experience, and be challenged to work both from life and to life. Subjects such as transparency, figure/ground, sciagraphy, oblique projection, surface development, volumetric intersections, spatial manipulation and analytic operations will build on the basics of orthographic and conic projection. The course involves line and tone drawing, hand drafting, computer drawing (Autocad) and computer modeling (Rhino).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $20.00 - $100.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course introduces the beginning student to the origins, media, geometries and role(s) of projection drawing in the design and construction process. The student will learn systems of projection drawing from direct experience, and be challenged to work both from life and to life. Subjects such as transparency, figure/ground, sciagraphy, oblique projection, surface development, volumetric intersections, spatial manipulation and analytic operations will build on the basics of orthographic and conic projection. The course involves line and tone drawing, hand drafting, computer drawing (Autocad) and computer modeling (Rhino).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $20.00 - $100.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course introduces the beginning student to the origins, media, geometries and role(s) of projection drawing in the design and construction process. The student will learn systems of projection drawing from direct experience, and be challenged to work both from life and to life. Subjects such as transparency, figure/ground, sciagraphy, oblique projection, surface development, volumetric intersections, spatial manipulation and analytic operations will build on the basics of orthographic and conic projection. The course involves line and tone drawing, hand drafting, computer drawing (Autocad) and computer modeling (Rhino).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $20.00 - $100.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture