This studio course offers an opportunity to explore advanced biomaterials, engage with experts, collaborate with peers, and develop innovative climate solutions for water scarcity. Over the semester, we will work alongside faculty and students from the Department of Architecture, specifically within the ARCH-21ST: The Tall Building Workshop studio course. Together, we will design atmospheric water generators for tall buildings in arid regions, utilizing responsive biomaterials to transform dry desert air into liquid water.

In 2010, the United Nations recognized access to water as a fundamental human right and included it in the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals (SDG 6.1). However, ensuring clean water access remains a challenge, particularly in climate-affected areas where global warming disrupts rainfall patterns, intensifies droughts, and depletes water resources. As freshwater availability declines due to environmental pressures, this project focuses on harnessing hygroscopic biocomposites and biodesign principles to support arid communities in adapting to climate change. The approach spans multiple scales, from standalone devices and installations to integrated roof and façade systems for skyscrapers.

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

Each of us are walking, talking, living stories. From the time we wake up in the morning to tell ourselves what our day will be like to the moment we remember who we've been and who we want to be, we are telling ourselves the stories of our life. Storytelling is a fundamental human act that crosses cultures, ages, ethnicities and genders. Artists often think in pictures, so this course will explore the act of storytelling through the exploration of the visuals in concert with the creation of the words. This course will start with an exercise in multiple iteration of character ideas, story development from the visual, and an investigation of additional characters who provide the foundation for environments and a series of illustrations for a story concept. Ideation, composition, color, discussion of media, style, format, expression of narrative and materials will be reviewed through lecture, guest lecturers in the field, and discussion-both individual and group centered. The format of the course will explore research, mood boards, character development, facial expressions, turn arounds, character interactions, asset creation, thumbnails, color studies and finished illustrations. The focus of the course will be a deep dive into stories that resonate and reflect idiosyncratic and personal interests expressed in any medium that best suits the storytelling.

Elective

Did you know that the red signals of traffic lights are inspired by the warning colors found in red species in nature? Nature is rich with messages conveyed through visual, auditory, olfactory, tactile, and even chemical signals; yet humans often overlook them. This interdisciplinary course invites art and design students to explore how understanding these natural messages can inspire more regenerative creative practices.

Through discussions, readings, and observational experiments, we will investigate the evolution of communication and ecological interactions in nature and their influence on art and design. Hands-on activities at the Nature Lab and in natural environments around Providence will provide opportunities to engage directly with the world’s inherent systems of communication. Students will also explore how cultural ecological perspectives shape interpretations of nature’s signals and synthesize their learning into a final visual and written project.

This course encourages curiosity and openness to observing and interpreting nature’s messages, fostering creative practices rooted in sustainability, cultural understanding, and scientific principles. No prior science background is required. Whether you’re sketching patterns, designing systems, or crafting narratives, this course will help you bridge the gap between art, design, and the natural world.

Elective

For millions of people, work takes place in shared spaces (i.e. offices) dedicated to bringing people together to pursue a shared goal. The way we experience work has constantly evolved throughout history due to technological advancements and cultural influences. The way we address work has changed with the increased awareness of the impact of work on the health of individuals, environmental change, and societal change. With the recent dramatic shift in the modality of work and intensified economic disparities brought on by the global pandemic, the world needs new experiments and explorations in how we work.

This class will investigate the past, present, and future of work. We'll examine the history, the evolution, and the changes that have taken place in the workspace. We'll redefine what work means by understanding human needs and behavioral motivations. Students will identify opportunities for current work trends and work speculatively into the future, pushing boundaries of what exists today. Students will also discuss the role and responsibility of designers to build a more inclusive and ethical future of work. This class consists of lectures, intensive research, field trips, experiments, prototyping, collective projects as well as independent projects. 

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

Is there a right way to design and a wrong way? In this studio, we will explore that question as we forge new paths to creativity by dissecting and rebuilding the design process itself. We will be questioning everything about how we design: purposely doing things “incorrectly”, borrowing approaches from other disciplines and drawing inspiration from other thinkers and makers, whether human, animal or plant. We will then put everything back together and test our newly minted design methodologies by creating new objects.

As a point of departure, we will explore our current design process through three experiments to test how our design process impacts our designs. In the second part of the semester, we will each build a newly constructed design process and then use it to address a concern of our choice through design. Throughout the semester, we will be working in both groups and individually, with inspiration from the Nature Lab, the RISD Museum and a few short readings.

If you want to be partners in your learning, if you are interested in both a bird’s-eye-view of design and hands-on, no-limits experimentation, this is the studio for you!

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

Digital text is an interface for so much of our emotive, interpersonal, industrial, and political lives. Language in digital space is inseparable from the aesthetics of automation, network culture, and its origins within computational history. What is the role of a graphic designer in digital space-where language is simultaneously content and code, and exists at such scales that we begin to call it data.

This course will be a laboratory for designers to explore the relationship between computation and language. We will transform text using processes such as paper cut-up, copy paste, autocomplete, crowdsourcing, and Natural Language Processing models. Through projects, we will explore questions like, How does the addition of computational ingredients- networks, automation, randomness, etc- affect the visual form and meaning of language? Who produces digitally-based language, and how?

Students will create projects through a range of expressions, including but not limited to websites, printed objects, and readings-out-loud. Students will be supported if they want to pursue project work through HTML/CSS, p5.js, RiTa.js, Twine, Scratch, or NLP engines like GPT2. As part of this class, we will also discuss the ongoing relationships between computation, reading, and writing in a social context - transcription workers, human computers, web moderators, and so on. Basic HTML, CSS and/or programming experience is helpful but not required.

Elective

Millions of people around the world have been forced from their homes by interlinked factors including persecution, armed conflict and war, natural disasters, structural violence, and development projects. The seminar explores the “refugee” and “migrant” status and examines the refugee crisis and forced migration in a global perspective and through an interdisciplinary lens. It provides a historical background of the formation of the “refugee” concept going back to inter-war Europe and placing emphasis both on its construction in international law and on the precarious state that refugees and migrants face today globally through various case studies. The seminar also addresses the politics of humanitarianism, the role of international organizations, especially UNHCR, and the securitization of human rights as well as the ethnic, gendered, and religious identities being reshaped by forced displacement. 

The course is organized both chronologically and thematically, to understand the ways in which global migration and contemporary refugee crises have changed over time, highlighting continuities and ruptures especially in the construction of the refugee and the migrant as the “other.” Lectures and readings provide a global perspective but focus on regional case studies, often using a comparative and transdisciplinary framework. Similarly, writing assignments, lectures, and class materials will draw upon international relations, anthropology, gender studies, sociology, and history, and examine different types of sources, including academic books and journal articles, first-person narratives, and visual resources.

Elective

Design is often seen as neutral, sleek, and detached—but what happens when we reclaim it as a tool for protest, liberation, and authentic self-expression? In this social design course, we reject the sterile in favor of the deeply personal, exploring how our identities and lived experiences shape the way we create. We break down barriers between art and design, 2D and 3D, institution and student body, working across disciplines to foster a design practice that is engaged, intersectional, and community-driven. Through a three-part exploration—self, personal community, and wider community—students will develop both an individual project and a collaborative project of substance with a local community partner. Discussions with institutional leaders, Rhode Island-based artists, designers, and changemakers will deepen our understanding of how design can be leveraged for social impact.

This SEI-tagged course provides a space to engage with social justice topics such as race, gender, sexuality, class, and human rights in a collaborative and supportive environment. We center historically marginalized voices, welcoming QTPOC and those who have struggled to integrate their lived experiences into their creative work. Here, design is not just a profession—it is a practice of care, resistance, and transformation. Whether you are an artist, activist, or simply someone looking to make meaningful work, you will find a space to explore, create, and connect.
 

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

This course provides a cultural history of landscape and landscape architecture through various voices, lenses, and built examples. Following a loose chronology, this seminar will trace the shifting trajectory of landscapes at multiple scales, including lawns, gardens, and suburbs; roads and sanitary infrastructure; agricultural and energy landscapes; rivers and waterfronts, among others. As the second history-theory course in the sequence, we will continue to build upon key concepts explored in History-Theory 1, such as the relationship between Nature and culture, land ethics, systems thinking and ecology, and how landscape architecture has operated as a site for unequal, racialized distributions of power. To that end, we will study, define, critique, and attempt to make sense of the multiplicity of actors that shape environments, including the role of the Designer and the inextricably intertwined forces of colonization and capitalism, federal policies, non-humans, shifting attitudes about Nature, etc. 
 
To provoke critical thinking about the development of landscape form and ideas, readings will be drawn from various perspectives, including landscape architecture, social and environmental history, anthropology, science and technology studies, queer and feminist studies, and geography. These fields will help us understand history as a foundation for thinking about the landscape’s relationship between past and present and center and margin. By critically probing landscape architecture’s canon and its counter-narratives, we will consider how we can be better poised to understand and articulate our own contributions to the field as future practitioners.

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

How we die says as much about us as how we live. As a result, much can be learned by exploring America's changing attitudes toward death and dying, funeral rites, burial practices, and mourning rituals. Part personal tragedy, part communal experience, and part political event, our individual and collective responses to death should be treated as socially constructed artifacts, offering valuable insight into complex cultural, historical, and socio-economic forces. Buried within the American way of death are clues to understanding how this nation's physical, spiritual, economic, scientific, and political landscapes have changed over time. Rituals and practices surrounding death reflect the realities of class conflict, gender politics, race relations, and an increasingly diverse population. So often, deathcare has often been at the forefront of major cultural shifts and national debates over who belongs here, the role of government, the shape of our cities and towns, patterns of consumption, and, more recently, the future of our planet. Growing interest in green burials suggests not only a burgeoning concern with the carbon footprint of human remains, but shifting ideas about our individual legacies and what we leave behind. A discussion-based course, student engagement and active participation are key. Each student will be required to select a portion of the assigned reading to present to the class. In addition, students will work in small groups to craft a 20-minute oral presentation that examines and contextualizes the funeralization practices of a particular segment of the American people. Finally, each student will complete a 5 - 7 page research paper using a combination of primary and secondary sources (to be approved by the instructor) that elucidate and interrogate a specific aspect of the American way of death.

Elective

Violence threatens and impedes human civilization. As the world becomes more connected through high-speed internet, artificial intelligence, and the global economy, people's peace of mind and inner connection may get less attention. Someone who lacks the understanding and practice of peace and nonviolence may resort to violence when conflict arises in our competitive world. Above all, even a single act of violence may cause long-lasting harm to society. But, as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, we can choose: nonviolent coexistence or violent co-annihilation." Unlike outbursts of violence, peace and nonviolence require creative study, practice, effort, and courage. Thus, the study of nonviolence and peace is emerging as a critically important field of scholarship, research, and training in both academic and non-academic settings. This course aims to provide introductory but crucial knowledge in the field of Nonviolence and Peace Studies. The course focuses on philosophical, social, and psychological factors contributing to violence and the creation of peace and nonviolence, particularly relevant to personal, interpersonal, and global mental health and well-being. Students will learn about ancient and modern nonviolence and peace philosophies and well-known thinkers, including Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., the Dalai Lama, Maha Ghosananda, and Aung San Suu Kyi. We will also explore nonviolent strategies and tactics applied to social change movements, and contemporary research studies on nonviolence and peace. Course assignments will include applied learning opportunities to personal and community settings of violence and peacebuilding. Students must demonstrate comprehension of fundamental philosophy and practice perspectives of nonviolence and peace. This course employs a cooperative group study format focused on a problem-based learning approach to peacebuilding. The semester will conclude with a group presentation by the students on a selected personal or social issue and its remedy through nonviolent interventions.

Elective

During this course, we will examine natural environments, systems, processes, and organisms with the intent to design a more circular and less harmful human-planet relationship. Students will embark on a creative and rigorous exploration of the deep biomimicry and biodesign methodology put forth by the RISD Nature Lab as a pathway toward innovative materials, products, manufacturing methods, services, and experiences. These materials and methods will be placed in context to support the Hyundai Motor Group’s research on the future of mobility, creating design solutions that demonstrate our discoveries’ real-world applications and potential impacts.

Particular focus will be placed on advanced Biodesign research techniques such as microscopy imaging, 3D scanning, material & process development & testing, consultation with scientific experts, and referencing scientific research. Advanced techniques for biomimicry design will also be introduced, including complex generative and assistive 3D modelling with Grasshopper, nTopology, and Fusion 360, high-performance additive manufacturing, and other tools for translation of biological strategies and structures into the built environment.

The fall curriculum and assignments include observation from nature, and a series of short introductory assignments focused on exploring the deep biomimicry design process and biomaterials. The final month of the semester is focused on student-directed exploratory research into a biodesign theme. The final assignment will include scientific literature review, sketching and early prototyping, proof of concept experiments, and works-like or looks-like models of the students’ design at scale. Students will end the semester with a brief, but in-depth, documentation of their research focus that will either remain in the Hyundai Regeneration Studio online archive, or they may continue to explore in the Spring Advanced Studio.

A close partnership with the RISD Nature Lab and the ID Department will provide access to the expertise and equipment necessary to complete student-driven research.

This course features a series of guest lectures, field trips, and demonstrations throughout the semester to provide insight into the quickly expanding field of biodesign and regenerative design, as well as expert guest critics.

During this course, we will examine natural environments, systems, processes, and organisms with the intent to design a more circular and less harmful human-planet relationship. Students will embark on a creative and rigorous exploration of the deep biomimicry and biodesign methodology put forth by the RISD Nature Lab as a pathway toward innovative materials, products, manufacturing methods, services, and experiences. These materials and methods will be placed in context to support the Hyundai Motor Group’s research on the future of mobility, creating design solutions that demonstrate our discoveries’ real-world applications and potential impacts.

Particular focus will be placed on advanced Biodesign research techniques such as microscopy imaging, 3D scanning, material & process development & testing, consultation with scientific experts, and referencing scientific research. Advanced techniques for biomimicry design will also be introduced, including complex generative and assistive 3D modelling with Grasshopper, nTopology, and Fusion 360, high-performance additive manufacturing, and other tools for translation of biological strategies and structures into the built environment.

The fall curriculum and assignments include observation from nature, and a series of short introductory assignments focused on exploring the deep biomimicry design process and biomaterials. The final month of the semester is focused on student-directed exploratory research into a biodesign theme. The final assignment will include scientific literature review, sketching and early prototyping, proof of concept experiments, and works-like or looks-like models of the students’ design at scale. Students will end the semester with a brief, but in-depth, documentation of their research focus that will either remain in the Hyundai Regeneration Studio online archive, or they may continue to explore in the Spring Advanced Studio.

A close partnership with the RISD Nature Lab and the ID Department will provide access to the expertise and equipment necessary to complete student-driven research.

This course features a series of guest lectures, field trips, and demonstrations throughout the semester to provide insight into the quickly expanding field of biodesign and regenerative design, as well as expert guest critics.

Rivers are layered landscapes that reflect how different societies have related to the land, natural resources and to one another. Shifting values about stewardship, control, extraction, and restoration have become physically manifested in the landscape through the intentional and unintentional shaping of the river landscapes. In this interdisciplinary studio, students will be asked to consider the relationship between textiles and landscape architecture practices to address, reconcile and interpret the complex ecological and cultural histories of rivers. Weaving and other structural textile techniques will be explored as both a metaphor and a physical strategy to weave together the multiple cultural narratives of a river as well as consider how to support the diverse river ecologies and the unique experiential qualities of being at the water's edge. The Blackstone River will provide the geographical, cultural and ecological lens for the studio. Some of the overarching material, formal and performative questions we may ask in the studio are: How can fibers be used to stabilize the water's edge, direct flows and provide habitat for riparian plant and animal species? Can the woven materials become unglued from the ground plane to shape the human aesthetic experience of the water's edge? Can textiles be used to interpret or reveal the multiple stories, histories and layers of the landscape? How can basket weaving traditions inform the way we manage the landscape? How can woven materials be integrated with living plant material, mycelium, and soil? How can the density of a textile aggregate and disperse to respond to different site conditions or to shape the pattern of plant growth? How long should the materials persist? Could they be designed to degrade overtime? What is the relationship between traditional craft practices and digital fabrication or scripting? Can community groups be involved in the construction and installation of the textiles as a way of rebuilding a connection between people and place?

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department; registration is not available in Workday.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

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

NASA's Artemis 2025 Lunar mission aims to return U.S. astronauts to the moon for the first time since 1972 - when the Apollo 17 mission first landed there. This time, it will not be only men making the journey, as NASA has promised a lunar moondust walk for the first woman and the first person of color. As part of this historic endeavor, NASA is redesigning the spacesuit for the first time in 40 years to accommodate Women and meet the challenges of lunar exploration.

Spacesuits, essential for survival in the harsh environment of outer space, are meticulously engineered to shield astronauts from dangers such as radiation, micrometeoroids, extreme temperatures, and dust. An EVA Suit, or Extra-Vehicular Activity suit, is a marvel of engineering and design, essentially a miniature spaceship tailored to fit the human form, providing life support and mobility in the vacuum of space.

In this interdisciplinary course, students will delve into the intricacies of spacesuit design and technology. Leveraging CLO3D, a cutting-edge fashion design software specializing in 'true-to-life' 3D garment simulation, students will reimagine and redesign NASA's next-generation EVA Suit. Through collaborative projects, teams will conceptualize, pattern, and 3D model innovative spacesuit designs, addressing the unique needs of future lunar explorers.

Students will venture into the metaverse, exploring space in virtual reality using Oculus Quest headsets. Immersed in simulated environments such as the International Space Station, taking Space Walks, and viewing images taken by the Hubble Telescope, students will gain firsthand experience of space exploration. Gravity Sketch, a collaborative VR design tool, will facilitate the creation of the Hard Upper Torso (HUT) in a collaborative VR space, integrating soft designs crafted in CLO.

Drawing from critical design methodologies and informed by research, students will negotiate the complexities of spacesuit design, balancing functionality, mobility, and aesthetics. At the culmination of the course, students will present their finalized spacesuit designs to NASA, contributing to the ongoing evolution of spacesuit technology.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $40.00

Elective

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.