Debbie Chen

Assistant Professor
Image
head shot of Debbie Chen
BArch, University of Southern California
MArch, Princeton University

Debbie Chen is interested in systems of organization that transform the pragmatic into the sublime. Her projects often leverage mundane and overlooked considerations of material ecologies and industrial processes to produce rhizomatic and euphoric understandings of our built environment, rendering the invisible yet wide-reaching forces of infrastructure palpable. A licensed architect in New York and Wisconsin, Chen currently serves as Graduate Program Director and Assistant Professor at RISD. Prior to RISD, she was the 2021–22 Architectural Activism Fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee School of Architecture and Urban Planning, where she explored the representation of climate activism through gameplay.

Courses

Fall 2023 Courses

ARCH 101G-01 - GRADUATE CORE STUDIO 1: SUBJECTS. TOOLS. PROCESS.
Level Graduate
Unit Architecture
Subject Architecture
Period Fall 2023
Credits 6
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

ARCH 101G-01

GRADUATE CORE STUDIO 1: SUBJECTS. TOOLS. PROCESS.

Level Graduate
Unit Architecture
Subject Architecture
Period Fall 2023
Credits 6
Format Studio
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2023-09-06 to 2023-12-13
Times: MTH | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PM Instructor(s): Debbie Chen Location(s): Bayard Ewing Building, Room 302 Enrolled / Capacity: 12 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

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

Spring 2024 Courses

ARCH 2352-01 - ADVANCED TOPICS IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY
Level Undergraduate
Unit Architecture
Subject Architecture
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start date
End date

ARCH 2352-01

ADVANCED TOPICS IN ARCHITECTURAL THEORY

Level Undergraduate
Unit Architecture
Subject Architecture
Period Spring 2024
Credits 3
Format Seminar
Mode In-Person
Start and End 2024-02-15 to 2024-05-24
Times: T | 9:40 AM - 12:40 PM Instructor(s): Debbie Chen Location(s): Bayard Ewing Building, Room 317 Enrolled / Capacity: 14 Status: Open

SECTION DESCRIPTION

Theory offerings in the architecture department are deliberately consistent or complementary with our pedagogy, born and raised in an arts college. Theory based courses have a basis in empiricism, direct observation and experience of creative processes. Recognizing that discovery and invention often come between existing matrices of thought, offerings may be from disciplines other than architecture or branches of knowledge other than art and design. Objectives of the theory component of our curriculum are to:

  • Expand the capacity to speculate productively.
  • Develop the skeptic's eye and mind.
  • Equip the ability to recognize connections that trigger discovery and invention.

Preference is given to Junior, Senior, Fifth-year or Graduate Architecture Students.

Elective

Image
head shot of Debbie Chen
BArch, University of Southern California
MArch, Princeton University