Students concentrate on designing with 'cut and sew' knit fabric. Through draping with knit fabrics on the form, students learn to utilize the inherent properties of knits. Instruction in 'cut and sew' construction is combined with pattern making techniques, enabling students to execute their concepts as finished garments.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

This course centers around the digital model as a thing to be built, as a multivalent medium for architectural discourse, and as representation of built form. This course uses abstraction as the common thread between its prerequisite, Architectural Drawing, and an inquiry into the elements, natures, structures, and forms of the complex, temporal, cultural, material and political construct often referred to as "the building." Operations in the course are the techniques of analysis, translation and synthesis. The contemporary digital model is delimited and constrained by architectural software. This course recognizes that expertise in multiple digital modeling software-from Rhino to Building Information Modeling (BIM)-is as imperative as are skills to manipulate, undermine, link, automate and hack the media that dominate the discipline of architecture. A series of creative prompts engage the computational principles that underpin all digital modeling software. This "under the hood" approach is balanced by "over the hood" approaches that see students designing workflows, automation and output between software and material. The course engages the digital model as sample, system, and database as well as continually interrogates the translational relationship between model and drawing and model and image.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This course centers around the digital model as a thing to be built, as a multivalent medium for architectural discourse, and as representation of built form. This course uses abstraction as the common thread between its prerequisite, Architectural Drawing, and an inquiry into the elements, natures, structures, and forms of the complex, temporal, cultural, material and political construct often referred to as "the building." Operations in the course are the techniques of analysis, translation and synthesis. The contemporary digital model is delimited and constrained by architectural software. This course recognizes that expertise in multiple digital modeling software-from Rhino to Building Information Modeling (BIM)-is as imperative as are skills to manipulate, undermine, link, automate and hack the media that dominate the discipline of architecture. A series of creative prompts engage the computational principles that underpin all digital modeling software. This "under the hood" approach is balanced by "over the hood" approaches that see students designing workflows, automation and output between software and material. The course engages the digital model as sample, system, and database as well as continually interrogates the translational relationship between model and drawing and model and image.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

Graduate Glass II continues with the objectives of the preceding semester. It is expected that students continue artistic experimentation and individual growth at an increasingly professional level.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

Major Requirement | MFA Glass

This course concludes the Graduate Thesis through iterative prototyping, application and verification that positions and delivers a human-centered, discipline-engaging proposal that will be communicated through an exhibition format, product, product prototype and a final Graduate Thesis document.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Industrial Design Students.

Major Requirement | MID Industrial Design

This course concludes the Graduate Thesis through iterative prototyping, application and verification that positions and delivers a human-centered, discipline-engaging proposal that will be communicated through an exhibition format, product, product prototype and a final Graduate Thesis document.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Industrial Design Students.

Major Requirement | MID Industrial Design

This period is designed for the students to evaluate and analyze the directions he/she established as an undergraduate. Criticisms of the student's work will be aimed at identifying strengths and weaknesses and help the students clarify fundamental objectives. Group and individual critiques will occur by resident faculty and visiting artists and critics during the semester. Successful completion of this course is a prerequisite for continuance in the program.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

This period is designed for development and presentation of a body of work supported by a written thesis in consultation with resident faculty, visiting artists and critics during the semester. A final exhibition of work will be evaluated by a jury of Painting Faculty Members.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

The majority of manufactured objects today rely on precision CNC machining in some form, either directly or indirectly. Many high-value, low-volume products are produced through direct machining, while high-volume, low-value products are typically made using molds, dies, and tooling that were themselves created through CNC processes. In either case, objects must be designed with machining in mind.

This studio explores the possibilities that emerge when subtractive fabrication is treated not simply as a method of production, but as a design framework. Working with CNC milling and routing processes, students will investigate how form emerges through material removal, and how considerations such as tool geometry, cutting strategy, fixturing, surface finish, and tolerances shape both the possibilities and limits of manufactured objects.

Through a series of projects, students will develop an understanding of machining as both a conceptual and practical tool for production, using its logic and constraints as a generative starting point. Projects will involve both direct machining and indirect production through molds, patterns, and tooling, examining what it means to design for machining, how machines, tools, and materials influence form, and how subtractive processes can be combined with other methods of fabrication to expand the range of object possibilities.

This course is designed for students interested in moving their work into production, whether independently or in collaboration with manufacturers, where communicating intent and navigating the transition from design to production are essential.

Autodesk Fusion will be the primary CAD/CAM application. Prior 3D modeling experience is recommended but not required.

This class builds upon the department’s metal curriculum and as such Metals II (ID 2452) is required to take this class.

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design, MID (2.5yr): Industrial Design

This course builds on the themes covered in the prerequisite Core Studio 1, introducing more advanced digital production methods and themes. Students are encouraged to explore and develop personal working methods and interests through studio projects, fostering a self-directed practice that culminates in a final end-of-year critique.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

Sophomore Sculpture: Studio I is a rigorous introduction to the practices and techniques of contemporary sculpture, with a focus on metal, wood, and various assembly techniques. In this course, students will move through material and time-based modules in order to develop a basis for a multi-dimensional practice. Sophomore Studio I, is coordinated with Sculptural Practices and Seminar I: Methods, Materials, Makers. Sculptural Practices I provides an introduction to shop tooling and accompanying technical skills. Seminar I provides an introduction to the discourses, histories, and methods that compose the expansive and transdisciplinary field of sculpture and its relationship to contemporary art practices and discourses. 

In the field of Sculpture, ideas and materials are inextricably bound together. With that in mind, this course is the fulcrum where students make things happen in physical space while thinking through the ramifications of critical and conceptual space. These physical, material, critical, and conceptual explorations serve as a foundation for project prompts, individual research, discourse, and readings. Ultimately this course will lay the foundation for students to develop their own voice to contribute meaningfully to ongoing conversations in our field.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Sophomore Sculpture: Studio I is a rigorous introduction to the practices and techniques of contemporary sculpture, with a focus on metal, wood, and various assembly techniques. In this course, students will move through material and time-based modules in order to develop a basis for a multi-dimensional practice. Sophomore Studio I, is coordinated with Sculptural Practices and Seminar I: Methods, Materials, Makers. Sculptural Practices I provides an introduction to shop tooling and accompanying technical skills. Seminar I provides an introduction to the discourses, histories, and methods that compose the expansive and transdisciplinary field of sculpture and its relationship to contemporary art practices and discourses. 

In the field of Sculpture, ideas and materials are inextricably bound together. With that in mind, this course is the fulcrum where students make things happen in physical space while thinking through the ramifications of critical and conceptual space. These physical, material, critical, and conceptual explorations serve as a foundation for project prompts, individual research, discourse, and readings. Ultimately this course will lay the foundation for students to develop their own voice to contribute meaningfully to ongoing conversations in our field.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Recording Strategies Studio (working title) is a research-driven studio course focused on the physical practice of recording. We will examine how this historically has been defined and utilized, and also explore the many ways it can be re-interpreted to fit artist and designer needs. Additionally, we will use repetition as a variable to explore how recordings have the potential to shape observance, design thinking and build research practices.

We will begin the semester by watching the 2019 documentary Recorder: The Marion Stokes Project, which chronicles American archivist Marion Stokes, who recorded mainstream television news twenty-four hours a day, for thirty-five years. As a class, we will discuss the history behind this project, and how specific formal decisions she made influences the way we engage with this body of work.

We will then spend the next few lessons breaking down three crucial components that make up the structural practice of recording: the physical tools that we use to record, the content we choose to memorialize, and how recordings are archived. These lessons will include historical examples from practicing artists and designers who approach these methodologies in different ways. Simultaneously, from the onset of the semester, students will be directed to record one aspect of daily life every day, over the entire timeline of the course.

Elective

This 6-credit advanced elective studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices.

This studio focuses on New England's material cultures' environmental, geological, and socio-cultural influences and the impact of current land use and manufacturing practices on the professional design industry. This studio will explore one selected material each year through three main components. First, students will study the histories and stories of the selected material and land use and how they have shaped different regions of New England and become entangled in power relations, value systems, and wider networks of material exchange. Second, they will explore the selected material’s behavior, its unique property dynamics, and how they have influenced its different uses. Finally, using both digital and analog fabrication, students will develop iterative creative processes that explore sustainable ways of drawing and making with the selected materials as modular and in-situ techniques.  

This is a co-requisite course. Students must register for LDAR/INTAR-500G - Sustainability Lab: Advanced Research Studio and LDAR/INTAR-501G - Sustainability Lab: Material Explorations.

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

Elective

Publishing has never been a fixed notion. What is publishing today? remains a relevant inquiry, but with an increasingly expanded field of response, as platforms, channels and modes of production mutate and multiply. Let's begin with the post, exposing its origins as a physical note publicly nailed to a piece of wood. Its descendants persist today, plainly visible on the wall, in the feed and in the stream as traces of a deeper history of documents - the scriptural economy. Is posting (always) publishing? We'll examine substrate, blankness and the possibility of saying nothing as a post-media publishing strategy. And as certain legacies recede (privacy, authorship, copyright), how is publishing still "making public?" Let's unpack (and entangle) these and other ways to explore the public circulation of work in a post-digital space. We'll draw trajectories to and from the emergence of the networked artist in the 20th century, into the last twenty years, and particularly around the last two, as self-publishing becomes more and more inseparable from the artist's ambient practice (and work) itself. The semester will be devoted to the creation of our own performing publishing studio, disseminating work as a highly diffused, ongoing performance, rather than discrete events. The development of publishing manifestos and projects, working in public, research-based exploration, non-traditional tools and platforms, experimentation and collaboration will be encouraged.

Elective

This period is designed for the student to evaluate and analyze and pursue the directions he/she established in Grad Paint Studio Critique I. Group and individual critiques will occur by resident faculty and visiting artists and critics during the semester.

Major Requirement | MFA Painting

As a culmination of the MFA program, this intensive studio challenges students to design and craft a significant, topically-focused body of work. Although students may choose creative formats and media according to their own interests, they must publish thesis work produced in class. Publication through digital platforms (podcasts, websites, apps, etc.) will be coordinated with analog forms when possible and appropriate to the project. Together with the research and writing produced in ILLUS 606G Paradigms and Contexts: Publishing the Thesis and Beyond, a comprehensive body of work and a written thesis document will be produced.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $1,500.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

This course introduces the core themes of computational art and design, including interaction, networks, and simulation. Students will engage with these topics through modern digital production techniques, examining them from formal, material, historical, and social perspectives.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

This course introduces the core themes of computational art and design, including interaction, networks, and simulation. Students will engage with these topics through modern digital production techniques, examining them from formal, material, historical, and social perspectives.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound

This course deepens the exploration of computational art and design, pushing students to experiment with more complex methods. Emphasizing independent inquiry, students will refine their creative process and technical skills, developing a cohesive body of work. The course encourages critical engagement with emerging technologies and their social, cultural, and artistic implications. This course also provides guidance for students to articulate and present their body of work, engage in discussions about the field, and explore various directions to position their practice.

Major Requirement | BFA Art + Computation, BFA Sound