This new making studio recenters architecture, landscape, object-making, and design practice within the materials with which we work. Rather than designing in absentia, only to pursue a desired “materiality” later, the course proposes that materials themselves lead the making process, form, and even design itself.

The semester is organized into weekly modules, each consisting of a talk and a workshop focused on a particular regenerative assembly or making practice. Working across earth, fiber—both protein and cellulosic—and strategies for disassembly and reassembly, students will first engage the basic science, cultural context, extraction, regeneration, and case studies of each material system before moving into hands-on experimentation.

A portion of each class will be reserved for in-studio object making, and students will work at full scale throughout the semester. Earthen masons, master thatchers, and studio faculty will lead workshops and coordinate material procurement. Because this is a funded studio elective, students will also be joined by an international cohort, including collaborators from Europe such as BC Architects/Studies/Materials, Amàco, and others, for an advanced biogenic intensive featuring workshops, a colloquium, and the launch of the final project: a group-based 1:1 construction to be exhibited in a museum. The course is intentionally multidisciplinary, bringing together students affiliated with both design and fine arts majors.

Elective

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

This course will focus awareness on the intertwined connections between the drawing BODY, ACTION and MARK. In this course, we will move our bodies in directed and experiential ways, sensitizing our bodies and minds to the possibilities of drawing as an embodied action. Embodied drawing practice focuses on drawing as a physical act, inviting awareness of the sensation and intelligence of the drawing body as a catalyst for practice. Through experimentation with embodied movement, action and making, students will experience their own drawing process as meaningful engagement with action. Studio experimentation and research will investigate the formal possibilities of ACTION as movement in time and space, then move to a critical consideration of ACTION in context and as methodology that can both contain and generate meaning. Course methodologies may include: process-focused practice; mindful investigation of movement; individual and collaborative studio experimentation and performance of drawing. Areas of study may include: motion visualization; algorithmic and choreographic approaches to action-based generative composition; body and technology; artistic action as meaningful methodology in social and cultural context.

This course will comprise of in-class studio exercises, slide/video presentations, critiques, short readings and discussions. Through these diverse modes of learning, students will have the opportunity to engage with foregrounding concepts and direct experiences of an embodied approach to drawing practice, focusing on the experience and potential outcomes of drawing as action in context. Students will also engage in independent research to be shared with the class, broadening the array of work we critically engage with. Independent studio research will be ongoing throughout the course, and will culminate in self-directed Midterm and Final Projects.

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

The advanced course studies multimedia drawing It explores the possibilities with the material and content of two dimensional expression. The class encourages greater connections with the design studios by testing and reevaluating design work through the lens of phenomenology and seriality. Scale and composition are emphasized in the detailed and constructed drawings that are required in class. Individual investigations are developed throughout this advanced course to encourage a way of making marks that connect with the various modes of exploration in their studio work.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $225.00

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

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

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 spring the Design for Extreme Environments Studio will consider how to design spacecraft and habitats suitable for extreme environments and long-duration missions, such as those to the Moon or Mars. Students will work in teams, with input from experts at NASA and elsewhere, to provide creative ideation and innovative concepts while helping create the future of space travel.

Designing for the physical, emotional and psychological needs of astronauts may seem like an esoteric challenge but putting people into unfamiliar or highly dangerous surroundings requires an extreme level of attention to design. It is not enough to design technologies, systems, or equipment that function according to basic technical specifications without incorporating the human needs of the users, the people that will interact with them.

Extreme environments create extraordinary challenges to human physiological and psychological existence where common expectations for safety, comfort and performance need to be radically redefined. It is in situations like these that common assumptions no longer hold true and every aspect of a design must be considered in a new context. This questioning of assumptions and awareness of context are crucial for innovation in a wide array of domains.

This studio uses extreme environments as a pedagogical approach to focus design on human needs and interactions, while emphasizing creativity and innovation in tightly constrained situations. The skills, methodologies and knowledge acquired in this studio are applicable in a broad range of domains of which aerospace is just one small subset.

NASA’s Artemis campaign will launch the second Artemis mission this year, possibly during this spring semester. The Artemis II mission will send humans further from Earth than ever before but will not land on the Moon. Future missions, starting with Artemis III will explore the Moon for scientific discovery, technology advancement, and to learn how to live and work on another world as we prepare for human missions to Mars.

This studio is funded by a grant from the RI Space Grant Consortium, Michael Lye PI, so there are no lab fees and minimal out of pocket expenses. The grant will cover these costs.

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