Mainstream games, such as Monopoly and Settlers of Catan, normalize extractive behavior, othering stereotypes, and bitter competition between players. Meanwhile, tools used in “community engagement” and “participatory design” in architecture, design, and planning fields create illusions of choice and public approval by gamifying public processes. This studio asks, how can games encourage alternative relationships and interactions between players, and be a medium through which folks of all ages can practice care, collaboration, and learning at the grassroots level?

After examining our positionalities and analyzing existing board games, students will work in teams to develop their own semi-cooperative board games. The game development process will be introduced in stages as students critically discuss how design can both help and/or harm people alongside reflections about relevant personal, social, and political perspectives. The work will include concept sketches, worldbuilding stories, rulebooks, zines, physical crafted prototypes and components, and student-organized playtesting sessions. The primary challenges for students in this studio lie in discovering how to align design decisions with core values and goals, how to source materials ethically, and how their game can be played and produced in community - all while ensuring the game is replayable and fun!

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

Have we considered what it truly means to critique? This course explores the role of critique, dissects real-life cases, and challenges existing methodologies to foster more just and equitable ways to look at design.

Well closely examine how professionals, clients, and stakeholders present and evaluate design work to critically reflect on methods within ID and further consider how ethical and inclusive practices take place in the field of industrial design. Students will actively engage in research workshops, role-playing, and discussions to reshape their understanding of design and critique.

By the conclusion of the studio, students will have designed tools and models for public and private critique. Through this, students will be equipped with enriched perspectives and a comprehensive toolkit of critique and discussion methodologies that are continuously applicable in future practices.

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

Concept to Clothing is a 3-credit elective undergraduate studio course open to undergraduate and graduate students (with the approval of faculty member Meg DeCubellis) who seek to learn the fundamental and technical principles of garment development, construction and design. This is a critical making studio which will focus on basic garment making for prototypes as well as supporting individual projects to be worn on the body. Students are expected to show evidence of physical making throughout this course while developing a deeper relationship to making clothing. Students will also tour local factories to witness the making of varying quantities of garments. A professional studio practice will filter through skill building in the areas of construction, draping, pattern making, garment development, fitting, industrial machine skills, and hand sewing techniques. The development process will include conceptualization, creating specifications, fabricating iterative prototypes, conducting supplier and material research to support each student’s thesis of study. Students are expected to have a project in mind which can be something that they have started to develop in their major. Because class discussion and participation is at the heart of this course, you are required to be in class for all demos and meetings which will determine a large portion of the final grade. Prior sewing experience is required.

Estimated Material Costs: $150.00 - $300.00

THE FACULTY MEMBER AND THE DEPARTMENT MAY ADJUST THE INFORMATION LISTED IN THIS SYLLABUS AND COURSE OUTLINE THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER. THE AIM ALWAYS BEING TO BETTER SERVE STUDENTS BASED ON STUDIO PROGRESS, PERFORMANCE AND UNFORESEEN CONDITIONS.

Elective

Industrial design’s authorized histories are often produced through designed infrastructures such as museums, textbooks, libraries, corporate archives, websites, and interfaces. These systems do not simply store history; they shape it by determining what is preserved, how it is classified, who is credited, and what becomes accessible.

In this studio, students will design and build a living counter-archive using core industrial design methods including but not limited to systems mapping, prototyping, model-making, interface design, and publication. Projects may take the form of installations, portable kits, shelving or display systems, tool libraries, publications, websites, series of objects, or hybrid platforms. Each project will propose alternative ways of knowing, crediting, and sharing design histories.

The course centers BIPOC designers, makers, and communities, and foregrounds practices often absent from mainstream narratives, including repair cultures, collective authorship, maintenance, hidden labor, and vernacular engineering. Students will examine how design structures can reinforce or challenge inequity and explore strategies for more inclusive and accessible knowledge systems.

Through hands-on exercises, case studies, critiques, and iterative prototyping, students will develop a functioning archive. The studio moves between archive, exhibition, object, and interface design, culminating in a designed counter-archive that expands how industrial design knowledge is represented and shared.

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

Sophomore Jewelry I is the first of two introductory studio classes which will familiarize students with the creative jewelry studio environment. Fundamental tools and techniques integral to working with metal are introduced during class demonstrations over the semester. Class projects are structured to blend the use of tools with techniques and are introduced in order of complexity. The course begins with designing and constructing structurally sound 3D objects from 2D metal sheet stock. By the conclusion of the semester students are equipped with technical skills to make jewelry informed with an awareness of the body as site. This is the first of a two-semester course.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

In this studio course, second-year students identify and pursue personally driven research. Weekly individual meetings and studio visits take place with the instructor, and also with scheduled first-year and second-year group critiques. Students are required to maintain a continuous record of their research and development through drawings, writings, samples, models, etc. Active participation in group discussions and critiques is mandatory.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

This course will provide the foundation for the creation of an archival painting practice for both traditional and contemporary painting methods. Topics covered will include tools, preparation process for both canvas and wood panels, sizes and grounds, drying oils, varnishes and resins, pigments, solvents, painting procedures, and the care of finished paintings. A historical overview of traditional methods and materials including egg tempera and oil paint will be covered, in addition to modern alkyd resins and acrylics. RISD's Environmental Health & Safety practices that pertain to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course. A short research paper is required to supplement studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This course will provide the foundation for the creation of an archival painting practice for both traditional and contemporary painting methods. Topics covered will include tools, preparation process for both canvas and wood panels, sizes and grounds, drying oils, varnishes and resins, pigments, solvents, painting procedures, and the care of finished paintings. A historical overview of traditional methods and materials including egg tempera and oil paint will be covered, in addition to modern alkyd resins and acrylics. RISD's Environmental Health & Safety practices that pertain to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course. A short research paper is required to supplement studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA Painting

This course with its focus on curriculum development and pedagogical practices for students in grades 7-12 has been designed as the companion to TLAD-611G, where the focus is students in grades PK-6. In this manner, this pair of courses provides graduate students with an essential foundation to teaching the Visual Arts (art and design) from pre-K to 12th grade. This course explores the development of a conceptual framework for studio-based teaching and learning for students in grades 7-12 that aligns with the National Visual Arts Standards (NVAS). The course is guided by the belief all middle and high school students have creative capacity and that visual arts education plays an extraordinarily important role in its development. Further, the course places emphasis on instructional design that encourages curiosity, discovery, creativity and importantly personal point of view. Throughout the course, there is a focus on curriculum development and pedagogical strategies crafted to meet the cognitive and social development of learners as well as the personal interests of students while simultaneously introducing the work of a diverse range artists from historic to contemporary as models of practice. The course introduces an approach to pedagogy for art and design education that is informed by the graduate student's personal artistic practice combined with their understanding of the rich diversity of human visual expression. The course places special emphasis on the development of studio-based learning that centers on the intersecting domains of making and responding. In this way, curriculum and instruction is designed to deepen secondary students' (7-12) understanding of art and design as expression of enduring ideas. Graduate students examine these concepts through their own studio practice, critical readings, the development curriculum maps and lesson plans and through an integrated practicum experience that provides an authentic opportunity to implement instruction with high school students in the TLAD-Studio Lab.

Enrollment in this course is limited to Teaching + Learning in Art + Design Students.

Major Requirement | MA, MAT Teaching + Learning in Art + Design

This interdisciplinary Advanced Topic Studio begins from the premise that architecture has often claimed authority by prescribing how people should live through established canons, fixed typologies, and disciplinary conventions. Forms of Living, Forms of Building reverses that logic by asking how architecture might instead emerge from living itself: from use, adaptation, repair, maintenance, occupation, and the gradual transformation of space over time. Using informality as a lens, the course understands these everyday practices not as signs of disorder or lack, but as forms of spatial intelligence and material knowledge. In doing so, it examines how the built environment is shaped by unequal access to land and resources, racialized labor, extractive economies, and the social and environmental conditions under which architecture is produced.

Open to students across RISD, the studio treats approaches to architecture through diverse forms of material production as a way of decentering architectural authority and questioning its conventional tools, methods, and assumptions. Through seminar discussion, collective research, mapping, visual analysis, material inquiry, and project-based experimentation, students will investigate how forms of living generate forms of building, and how design might open more just, situated, and sustainable ways of making space. In this sense, the studio connects everyday practices of habitation to broader struggles over extraction, justice, and the possibility of producing architecture from lived practices.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This class explores form and space through the addition of dynamic light, with particular emphasis on the importance and weight that it holds within a photographic image. Students will investigate and answer the essential question: how does light serve an image? The course encourages critical examination of how artificial light is employed in fine art, documentary, commercial, and advertising photography to emphasize concepts, emotions or illustrate objects and space, placing a strong focus on contemporary works. Throughout the semester, students will gain the necessary skills to work in a professional photography studio, helping them build a strong foundation for greater control of their own projects. Additionally, the class covers the practical skills required for professional roles related to commercial photography, such as lighting technician, digital technician, art director, creative director, and studio management.

Active participation in live demonstrations, both in studio and on location will give students crucial hands-on experience. Starting with the basics, students will learn fundamental principles of light and grow confident in handling all types. Whether hard, soft, painterly, illustrative, high-key, low-key, gelled, natural, flash, and continuous, eliminate any fear of working with light when photographing people places or objects. By the end of the class, students will feel empowered and ready to keep learning about light, gaining a new confidence in approaching lighting challenges throughout their creative journey. 

Elective

Introduction to Computation focuses on computational techniques, methods, and ideas in the context of art and design. Studio projects first center on the design of algorithms then shift to involve computer programming and scripting. Critical attention is given to code as a body of crafted text with significant aesthetic, philosophical, and social dimensions, as well as the tension, conflict, and potential possible when computation generates, informs, or interacts with drawings, materials, forms, and spaces. Historical and contemporary works of computational art and design will be presented and assigned for analysis. This course is open to students of all majors and is designed for those with little or no experience in programming. In order to conduct work in this course, students will need a laptop computer. This course fulfills one of two core studio requirements for the CTC Concentration.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation

Introduction to Computation focuses on computational techniques, methods, and ideas in the context of art and design. Studio projects first center on the design of algorithms then shift to involve computer programming and scripting. Critical attention is given to code as a body of crafted text with significant aesthetic, philosophical, and social dimensions, as well as the tension, conflict, and potential possible when computation generates, informs, or interacts with drawings, materials, forms, and spaces. Historical and contemporary works of computational art and design will be presented and assigned for analysis. This course is open to students of all majors and is designed for those with little or no experience in programming. In order to conduct work in this course, students will need a laptop computer. This course fulfills one of two core studio requirements for the CTC Concentration.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation

This course combines the business of art and design, transforming the creative impulse to a marketable deliverable. Students are encouraged to think beyond the confines of traditional markets, working collaboratively toward the goal of employing inventive thinking in the workplace with the goal of an independently owned and operated enterprise. A fundamental objective of this class is for students to understand a basic business vocabulary, to explore how design-driven business and creative studio thinking overlap, and to understand how creative skills can be used to identify and execute business opportunities. Students will be introduced to business concepts through lectures, case studies, assignments and class discussion. Assignments will work off the classroom pedagogy and topics covered will be business models, marketing, finance, and strategy as they relate to studio activity.

Elective

Three Critics will offer graduate students the opportunity to get inside the art critic's head and learn how writers think about the visual. Students will be exposed to a wide range of viewpoints and discourse on contemporary art issues as defined by the interests of three different, practicing critics. Each critic will become part of the RISD community for approximately one month, conducting 3 sessions on campus and one in New York or Boston. On-campus meetings will consist of lectures, reading and writing assignments, group critiques and one-on-one studio visits. Off-campus trips will include visits to museums, galleries and artist studios. Small groups of students will be expected to lead several classes. Outside coursework and full participation in class discussion required for successful completion.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

This course examines Chinese Ming dynasty furniture as a system of material intelligence that challenges dominant Western industrial design paradigms. Through the study of Chinese woodworking traditions, students engage with alternative ways of making, learning, and knowing—rooted in handcraft, material sensitivity, and structural logic. Using primarily hand tools, the studio emphasizes making and drawing as methods to understand joinery and structure as generative design frameworks.

In contrast to dominant narratives of design innovation, Chinese furniture demonstrates a continuity of form across time, where transformation occurs through subtle variations, adaptations, and cultural layering rather than radical formal reinvention. This course frames such continuity as a critical alternative to prevailing notions of progress and authorship.

Students will also investigate questions of knowledge production, cultural visibility, and the conditions under which certain design histories become legible or overlooked.

Hands-on making is approached as an embodied method of inquiry rather than technical mastery. Students will produce a series of studies, including joinery prototypes, material investigations, and analytical drawings, leading to the final project. Outcomes may take the form of furniture or spatial/system-based proposals that reinterpret these principles in a contemporary context, articulating a clear design position grounded in structure, material logic, and cultural understanding.

This studio is a Reassembling Industrial Design (REID) Special Topic Studio, which meets the graduation requirement for an SEI tagged class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

This course will explore the technical and conceptual fundamentals of computer programming in the broader context of a sustained studio practice. In addition to teaching basic software coding skills from the ground up, the course will focus on the social and historical backgrounds of these technologies and how they shape the growth of media, identity, politics and the everyday. Related works from the contemporary art and design fields will be examined, ranging from visual, performance and sound art to architecture, product design and beyond. Students will be expected to engage with computer coding and related technologies conceptually or technically in their studio work. The course will consist of introductory exercises in computer programming, discussions of articles related to contemporary digital media, frequent critiques, and an intensive final project that pushes the boundaries of computer coding as a creative tool. Mistakes, pitfalls and frustrations will be expected and encouraged as students navigate this quickly changing medium. No prior programming experience is necessary. Open to non-majors pending seat availability and permission of the department.

Elective

The purpose of S301 is for students to engage in scholarly exploration of topics that are of interest to them (including topics that directly impact their studio practice). Students will be guided by the particular expertise of their faculty, and the epistemological frameworks of a given HPSS discipline or interdisciplinary area, to build a liberal arts-based practice that deepens and expands understanding of their area of focus. Placement in the junior year is scaffolded to allow students to have had the time to take several liberal arts electives and be far enough along in their major to start to develop specific interests and questions that could benefit from deeper exploration and integration across bodies of knowledge. The project-based focus of the course should allow students to start to gain background understanding of a topic of interest that may serve them as they enter their final year of study at RISD, including optionally a reflection about the relevance of the project to their studio work.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch

Introduction to means of representation of ideas for Interior Architecture through various types of drawings: orthographics, axonometrics, perspectives, freehand sketching and mixed media. Work will be done on site from existing structures as well as in the studio concentrating on concept development through drawing.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Introduction to means of representation of ideas for Interior Architecture through various types of drawings: orthographics, axonometrics, perspectives, freehand sketching and mixed media. Work will be done on site from existing structures as well as in the studio concentrating on concept development through drawing.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies