Graduate Sculpture Critique II/IV builds upon topics discussed in the previous semesters during graduate critique I/III. It continues its form as a discussion-based, collaborative critique seminar that makes space for multiple voices and ways of being in community; foregrounding and supporting the burgeoning artistic practices represented in and across the grad cohorts. This course builds upon the intellectual and artistic intimacy among cohort mates and between cohorts established in the first semester of each year. The risk-taking, question-asking, and reimagining of predetermined boundaries in the second semesters yields new critique and research methodologies that in the case of first year grads supports the lead up to their summer studio intensive or residencies. In the case of second year grads, this semester of intensive critiques supports their capstone thesis presentation and the group critiques and final thesis committee meetings that characterize the end of their work at RISD. As a practice in need of continual commitment, students are asked with great intention to continue to expand the discussion around intersectionality, interstitially, and interdisciplinarity and how the space between things comes to bear on the method of critique.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

This course offers an introduction to the history and practice of artists as collaborators, critics, and creators in art museums from the 1960s to the present. Exploring questions concerning the purpose, possibilities, and problems of art museums, students will be invited to consider how artists have responded to museum collections, histories, and spaces. We will discuss different strategies artists have used to offer alternate ways of experiencing, examining or critiquing historic and contemporary art and design and other issues. Students will use a wide variety of interpretive lenses to analyze the interventions of a diverse range of artists, including Andy Warhol, Fred Wilson, Andrea Fraser, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Lee Mingwei, Simone Leigh, and artists of RISD’s own Dorner Prize, among others. Students will also be invited to consider training in studio art as preparation for different ways of working with museum collections—from conservation and curation to education and exhibition design. Through case studies, readings, guest lectures, and field trips, students will explore key issues, debates, and concerns of artists as collaborators and museums as sites of critical and creative production. Coursework includes writing, research, and creative projects inspired by students' own artwork and contemporary and historic objects from the collection of the RISD Museum.

Elective

This course supports the practical, conceptual, theoretical and historical development of the M.F.A. thesis (exhibition and written document). Students are required to work independently and in individual consultation with their thesis committee to develop and finalize the thesis exhibition and written document for presentation at the end of the year. The exhibition and written thesis should articulate one's personal studio art / design practice in an historically and theoretically informed context. Formal group critiques are required at the midterm and end of the semester. A major final critique with visiting critics is held in the context of the final MFA Exhibition. The accompanying written thesis is expected to be of publishable quality and is also placed within the public sphere through electronic publication and filing with the RISD Library. Final submissions for this course include the presentation of a final exhibition, submission of the final written thesis, and timely completion of work for preliminary deadlines throughout the semester (draft theses, exhibition plans and press materials). Please see Digital + Media Thesis Timeline for a clear sequence of required deadlines. Please refer to the DM Thesis Guidelines and Policies for clarification of the goals and expectations of the RISD DM MFA.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $300.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Digital + Media Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Digital + Media

Any attempt to understand an artistic medium through the lens of technology alone is futile and counterproductive, imposing limits on the conceptual understanding of the work. Good art is always both deeply rooted in and at the same time transcends its medium.

-Christiane Paul

This class explores digital design and fabrication in the context of contemporary art. We will primarily focus on exploring the varied potential of sculptural techniques using 3D Scanning and 3D Printing. Through the use of CAD software, digital tools and some traditional making practices, students will enhance their comprehension of how to incorporate digital fabrication into their own art practice.

This course, although technical in nature, is not technical in spirit. Our goal is not the mastery of any one software application or fabrication technology, but instead an understanding of how to effectively leverage digital processes and tools in one’s studio.

The semester will be divided into a series of assignments, each exploring various approaches to digital design and fabrication, and will culminate in a final project blending digital fabrication with an existing project and/or research interest.

You will leave this course with the ability to model complex geometries, to collect and process 3D scan data, and to output using additive fabrication equipment. We will utilize the resources of RISD at large, but will focus on highly accessible digital fabrication tools available within the Sculpture department.

Elective

Throughout history, the progression of human expression through art and design has been tightly coupled to the development of tools. Tools not only represent and allow us to express our ideas, but are also reflective of cultural approaches to production. Fluency in the language of tools - their use, as well as their rich cultural, geographic, and political symbolism - allows artists and designers to work more expressively, more productively, and with greater conceptual depth.

In this hands-on studio course, students will combine theory and practice to develop work which explores the expansive, expressive nature of tools. In the first half of the course, study will be directed to the understanding and creative use of existing tools, moving beyond their typically prescribed use. In the second half, students will develop a novel tool of their own, which they will then use to create an experimental work of art or design. Through lectures, readings, discussions, and guest speakers, students will deepen their understanding of the history and theory of artists’ tools and tools-as-art, such as James Krenov’s handplanes, Cory Arcangel’s Pizza Party, and Jack Whitten’s “Developer”.

This course holds that toolmaking is a constantly evolving, innately human activity, and does not need to be complex to be successful. A broad range of ability from introductory to thesis-level will be supported - no prior making experience necessary. Tools of symbolic manipulation (language, computation) will be treated equally to those of physical manipulation (brush, chisel). Students of all disciplines are welcome and cross-disciplinary experimentation is encouraged.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

“Reading the room” is both a social skill and necessity in producing contextual work in public and private environments. In this course we will explore the intersection between art, design and architecture through the lens of spatial interventions—public art, wayfinding, and placemaking. We will learn how to understand a site, its stakeholders and constraints, and how to respond to a brief, open call, or request for proposal. Students will develop a framework for creating narrative, site-specific proposals that move beyond disciplinary silos. As a studio course we will demonstrate through lectures and workshops how both low and high fidelity techniques, from napkin sketches to renderings and physical scale models, can be incorporated into a creative practice. By combining these techniques with their existing toolkit of verbal and visual communication skills, students will learn to translate initial ideas into compelling professional proposals. Working on their own, and in groups, students will develop proposals that respond to sites in Providence. The course functions as a laboratory for spatial storytelling. Alongside skill building we will analyze what makes an effective proposal, study real-world Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and meet with fabricators, designers, artists and decision makers to understand how speculative concepts become built work. By the end of the semester students will leave with a refined proposal, a clearer understanding of the proposal process and tools to visualize their ideas and pursue opportunities beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $45.00

Elective

This course is a continuation of the work begun in fall semester's Graduate Thesis I (GRAPH 327G). The 6-credit studio component is complemented with a 3-credit thesis writing seminar, together guiding the synthesis of independent visual and verbal investigations into a coherent thesis body of work. The MFA degree requires completion of a graduate thesis. The thesis, as a major undertaking for advanced study and personal development, also assists the student to direct a program of study for an experience that best serves that individual's interests and needs. The thesis is an inquiry into the process, expression and function of the visual in graphic design. Visual search is the primary means by which to develop and substantiate original work which provides proof of concept for the thesis argument, critique, or point of view. The graduate student is encouraged to go beyond established models and to project his/her unique character in the thesis rather than to evidence vocational training, which is implicit. The productions can involve any medium suitable to need and content. Ultimately the thesis is submitted as a written document supported by a body of visual work that is a meaningful synthesis of the visual and verbal, and a lasting contribution to the field of graphic design. Two copies of the document remain, one for the Library and one for the department. Completion is required before graduation as stipulated by the College.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design

Interiority and Power addresses dominant power structures and narratives within the field of Interior Architecture, challenging students to build counter-narratives through engagement with historical, theoretical, and practical texts, case studies, and intellectual debates.

Practices of ‘situating’, ‘unlearning’ and ‘futuring’ ask students to identify systems of colonization, define their role as tools of cultural dominance in architectural design, and seek an alternative through forms of anti-colonial, representative, collective, and reparative practice. The course addresses the architectural canon, Western aesthetics, the concept of positional dominance, policy and planning histories, race and decoloniality, ecological and environment, and the politics surrounding adaptive reuse and architectural terminologies.

The course will also examine historiography, and how history is written, moving topically rather than emphasizing linear history. Through collaborative research, readings, debates, and the construction of a collective lexicon, students learn to challenge and decenter localities of power and aesthetics, allowing them to reframe values for design futures. This historical and theoretical framing positions students to engage with their studio and material practices as critical and historically-situated thinkers.Students learn the vital importance of a critical approach and implementation of this course’s learning outcomes into other course subjects and learning/designing in general.

The course is structured as a seminar, with a portion of each class day devoted to lecture and discussion, as well as periodic structured debates asking students to research and reflect on assigned module topics.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Architecture

This course with its focus on curriculum development and pedagogical practices for students in elementary school has been designed as a the companion to TLAD-612G where the focus is students in secondary school. In this way, 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 provides students with insights and experiences in studio-based teaching and learning through the lens of an elementary setting. Students will be introduced to curricular and pedagogical practices that are grounded in meaning making and artistic inquiry, as well as authentic forms of assessment. There is a special emphasis within this course on approaching each of these frameworks (curriculum, instruction, and assessment) through an understanding of the developmental needs - cognitive, social, and personal - of young children. Within this course, students will engage in curriculum design and lesson planning through the development of a series of units that are grounded in enduring ideas in art and design education. Additionally, students will have the opportunity to engage in micro teaching experiences in partnership with a local elementary school classroom. They will have the opportunity to teach a carefully designed art/design lesson to a group of elementary-aged children and have the chance to thoughtfully reflect on their own teaching practices and encounters in the classroom.

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

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

We have been conditioned to experience our space mainly through vision. We can then translate these phenomena into ideas; as artists, we have the unique ability to convey these ideas as a cohesive narrative through different means of representation. One particular representation is the primitive process of sketching. Traditionally, a sketchbook is a bound journal composed of iterative mark-making, quick assemblage of collaging, and concentrated note-taking. A sketchbook is personalized and often captures the artist’s momentary instinct. In this course, we explore the possibilities of what a sketchbook is and what it can accomplish through a narrative lens beyond its two-dimensionality. The goal of this course is to achieve different expressions through sketching in both 2-D and 3-D, resulting in a unique, bounded compendium of making and idea-capturing. Over the course, students will be asked to sketch in both 2-D and 3-D, physical and incorporeal, as well as real and imaginary.

By using Italo Calvino’s “Invisible Cities” as a reference, and going to different parts of the city around us, students across multiple disciplines will capture moments through different mediums to craft their own narrative. “Invisible Cities” largely focuses on a journey, making the sketchbook ideal.

Through three assignments, surrounding storyboarding, model making, and drawings, students create a set of pieces, which will then be bound into a personal sketch “book.” The course will be delivered in a studio format. A typical class session will range from outdoor and indoor sketch sessions, one-on-one meetings with the instructor, small group pin-ups, and individual work time.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $30.00

Elective

Forensic Reconstruction is an intermediate-to-advanced studio in 3D computation, paired with the history of the human rights image: photographs, maps, models, and other visual evidence. The course examines how computational imagery can reveal and distort. Rather than assume that new image-capture tools automatically produce empathy or understanding, students confront what computation can and cannot show, and who has used it to what end.

Over the semester, each student builds a forensic reconstruction of a subject of their choosing, grounded in evidence that can be measured and tested. The subject can be as intangible as collective memory, documented through interviews and cross-referenced testimony, or as concrete as the classroom itself. Students may work across disciplines, and final presentations of the reconstructions may take any form.

Technical instruction develops 3D fluency across spatial software – Blender, Rhino, QGIS – with priority given to free and widely available tools, so that students are able to take a project from raw data to finished reconstruction. Readings and screenings trace the human rights image from its first photographic use in the Congo Free State to the Arab Spring, when cell phone footage created an unprecedented volume of data. Drawing on this history, students learn to evaluate their reconstructions through journalistic, legal, and advocacy lenses, and to understand their own role within the images they produce. Students will need access to a computer capable of running 3D software.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Elective

This course introduces mold-making as both a technical skill set and a generative design tool. The course encourages experimentation, positioning mold-making as a tool for thinking, making, and transforming ideas into physical form. Through a series of projects, readings, and discussions, students will learn how casting can be used to shift meaning, perception, and use through strategies involving material choice, form, and engagement with existing objects. Using hands-on making as a form of inquiry, students will complete a series of short, practical exercises following in-class demonstrations. Designed for students with no prior mold-making experience, these exercises introduce techniques such as thermoforming, open-faced and multi-part plaster molds, and flexible molds using materials like silicone and alginate. Students will learn proper mold preparation, construction, and casting methods while also engaging with the limitations and unpredictability of each process. Course assignments include sampling textures and patterns from found objects, both natural and manufactured, and transferring them onto new objects and contexts; casting a single mold with varied materials to explore how material qualities affect visual outcomes and potential applications; and a final “remodelling” project that re-envisions an object or form through the assembly of cast and non-cast elements, 3D manipulation, or mold intervention. Throughout, the course supports the development of both technical skills and conceptual approaches, encouraging students to adapt processes in ways that respond to their individual interests and integrate mold-making into their own studio practices.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $75.00

Elective

In this course, we will study the historical, cultural and aesthetic foundations of the still life genre. Perceived as one of the lowest genres of art since ancient Greece, the still life has continually served as a negative space in which the dominant social and cultural values can be materialized, fetishized and preserved. Today, dismissed almost as an antiquated vestige of the classical tradition, the still life has in fact acquired a multiplicity of form and has become a site in which contemporary values can be identified, molded and reinterpreted. To arrive at our current moment, we will examine four major historical movements within the genre and their wider contexts:

1. 2. 3. Dutch Golden Age still life paintings in relation to Dutch trade and colonialism Modernist still life paintings in relation to the fracturing social order and advent of mass democracy Pop art still life paintings in relation to the rampant consumerism of post-war United States

4. Contemporary still life paintings in relation to social and political discourse Some artists that we will pay particular attention to: Adriaen Coorte, Rachel Ruysch, Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio Morandi, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, Jennifer Packer, Kerry James Marshall, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Vija Celmins.

This course will be delivered in a combination of the seminar and studio formats. The coursework will include in-class exercises, alongside slide lectures, readings, and class discussions. Additionally, the students will make one still life painting for each of the four themes.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $80.00 - $200.00

Elective

Any attempt to understand an artistic medium through the lens of technology alone is futile and counterproductive, imposing limits on the conceptual understanding of the work. Good art is always both deeply rooted in and at the same time transcends its medium.

- Christiane Paul

In this class, we will delve into the realm of digital design and fabrication, specifically within the context of contemporary art. We will primarily focus on exploring the varied potential of sculptural techniques using a CNC Router. Through the use of CAD/CAM software, digital tools and traditional making practices such as joinery and finishing techniques, students will enhance their comprehension of how to incorporate digital fabrication using the CNC Router into their own art practice.

While our course content revolves around acquiring highly technical skills, its core goes beyond mere technicality. Our objective is not to achieve mastery in a particular software application or fabrication technology. Instead, we aim to cultivate a flexible knowledge of how to adeptly employ digital processes and specifically, the CNC Router within one's artistic studio.

The semester will be divided into a series of assignments, each exploring various approaches to digital design and fabrication, and will culminate in a final project blending digital fabrication with an existing project and/or research interest.

You will leave this course with the ability to digitally model complex geometries in two and three dimensions, generate toolpaths in two and three dimensions, output to a CNC Router and apply a professional finish to a CNC’d work.

Elective

This practice-driven course equips design students with the foundational tools to navigate the business side of creative work and design practice. Blending entrepreneurial thinking with design management, it offers a designer’s perspective on essential MBA concepts such as value proposition, market fit, customer segmentation, and business models. The course is ideal for students looking to launch their own ventures or pursue leadership roles in the design management field.

The curriculum builds professional fluency through modules on grant writing, client management, portfolio development, and gaining exposure via design fairs and trade shows. Students will learn to communicate the value of their work—and of themselves as creative professionals—to diverse audiences, while grounding their strategies in ethics and sustainability.

Students will engage with applied frameworks like the Lean Canvas, Agile, and the Business Hypothesis Model to articulate assumptions, identify meaningful problems, and test early- stage ideas. Agile methodologies will help students manage iterative, collaborative design processes effectively. Course activities include Pecha Kucha-style business presentations that sharpen communication and pitching skills—crucial for engaging funders, clients, and collaborators. Conversations with guest professionals will offer insider perspectives on launching and sustaining a design venture.

The curriculum also builds professional fluency through modules on grant writing, client management, portfolio development, and gaining exposure via design fairs and trade shows. Students will learn to communicate the value of their work—and of themselves as creative professionals—to diverse audiences, while grounding their strategies in ethics and sustainability.

By the end of the course, students will have built a tested business or studio concept, developed key entrepreneurial and management skills, and crafted a clear, compelling vision for their creative career.

Elective

Robots (re)Imagined inaugurates the first formal collaboration between the Rhode Island School of Design, the Brown Arts Institute and Brown School of Engineering —a groundbreaking laboratory where artists, designers, computer scientists, and engineers work side by side to invent new vocabularies for robotics and art.

Robots have long mirrored our collective hopes and anxieties: they clean our homes, assemble our products, patrol our borders, and populate our dreams of the future. We are told they will replace us, liberate us, or destroy us. But what if robots could do something entirely different—something poetic, unpredictable, even transformative? What if they could teach us new ways of being together, of making and thinking across disciplines, of reimagining intelligence itself?

This course is both a studio and an experimental research lab where students will design and program robots that perform beyond utility—machines that move, sense, and communicate in ways that unsettle the boundaries between the technical and the aesthetic. Through readings, discussions, and collaborative projects, students will engage the cultural imaginaries of robotics—its histories, fictions, and futures—while building hands-on systems that test what a robot can be.

Combining the rigor of engineering with the speculative freedom of art and design, Robots (re)Imagined challenges students to make, code, and choreograph robots as expressive, responsive, and collective beings. The semester culminates in a public presentation of interdisciplinary projects that expand the social, ethical, and imaginative possibilities of robotics in the twenty-first century.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Lectures: Tues & Thurs 10:30am to 12pm / Lindemann Performing Arts Center, BAI Performance Lab

Labs: Tues (or) Thurs: 6:40 to 9:30pm / ERC 347, ACT Lab

Elective

Junior Seminar promotes and supports students taking on greater responsibility for the content and impact of their creative practice through reading, writing, and critical discourse. The course content for this seminar is organized around BIPOC thinkers/makers, to foster an awareness of individual and collective perspectives in an effort to allow students to engage in conversations and critical thinking about the tacit racist and colonial attitudes present in the discipline. Students will read from a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary sources as well as look at examples of artwork from across cultures to engage in discussions that will call into question assumptions about jewelry and art objects in order to emphasize the importance of developing a comprehensive and critical eye for cultural, social, political contexts and biases. We will journal, read, discuss, research and critique to build upon your individual interests and opinions toward developed critical positions relevant to your internal creative practice and the external contexts you support and contend with. Our shared discussions allow for testing ideas and trying out new roles, allowing you to build experience and confidence in communicating your practice.

In this seminar, we investigate and promote the role of writing in an artistic practice via reading, discussion, exercises, and written assignments. A directed effort to source texts of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ from both within and external to the jewelry field are implemented to step outside the reasoning of the studio and tread further into speculative dialogs concerning the potential future of the discipline. Please note that this seminar combines critical reading and writing with professional practices. Professional practices are embedded in all of our academic work and communications. Students will be expected to conduct all communications with professionalism, follow instructions as outlined, and complete assignments in a timely and professional manner.

Students are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Junior Jewelry + Metalsmithing Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

Ceramics: a Global Perspective will focus on two non-western ceramic traditions/movements: the Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas and Asian Ceramics. These two seemingly disparate movements have had a profound influence upon western, modern and contemporary ceramic art. Indigenous Ceramics of the Americas provides a ‘close to home/under the surface foundation’ of material and design. Asian ceramics, with its global reach of historical trade roots, provides insight into the movement and transformation of material, technology, and use value.

This combined seminar and studio class provides a historical context and hand on experience of historical developments and hierarchical structures in the ceramic arts. To enhance the students’ understanding of traditional materials and technology upon form and content, students will make ceramics (using the corresponding traditional techniques) alongside art historical study. Each clay and firing type embodies making parameters that effect form, color, content and use. Through the remaking of historical forms, students acquire a nuanced understanding of the importance of technology upon the content and use value of objects made.

The class will focus on three distinct regions and periods in ceramic history: Indigenous Practice of the Americas (Peru, New Mexico), Asian Porcelain, Production and Kiln Technology (Korea, Japan, China) and the Silk Road Trade Routes from Asia into the Middle East, Africa and up into Western Europe effecting ceramic production between 1600 – 1900. The class will culminate by illuminating the effects of colonialism and globalization of these three periods upon late 20th century, and current ceramics. In particular, we will become sensitive to the cultural appropriation of Indigenous culture and Asian aesthetics by teaching its philosophy, colonial history and initiate sensitivity to stereotypes and cultural erasure within ceramic production and its communities. The Ceramics department has visiting artists representing artists from many world cultures and students are required to attend these lectures. Independent research is required.

This course is a requirement for Sophomore Ceramics students. Non-major Sophomores may enroll pending seat availability. Email the Department Head and instructor jointly to request permission.

Major Requirement | BFA Ceramics

In “Designing Food” students will explore the product development process through an edible lens. Students will learn to design food-based products ranging from fine dining tasting experiences to sensory experiments to traditional packaged products. With an emphasis on material exploration and iterative design, students will identify opportunities surrounding undervalued ingredients and examine how design fits in a culinary landscape. We will practice iterative making with frequent group tastings and discussions to perfect form, formulation, and process. Through the semester we will host visiting industry experts including chefs, food entrepreneurs, and botanists to explore the material, ecological, economic, and interpersonal power of food product design.

The two main assignments that run-in tandem throughout the semester are The Iteration Project and The Hero Ingredient Project. The first is an individual assignment where each student will choose one dish they wish to perfect. They will prepare the dish multiple times for their class with tastings, evaluations, and close documentation. The Iteration Project culminates in a final tasting showcase and a finished Food Journal documenting the journey. The Hero Ingredient project is a group assignment where students will research and choose an edible material or ingredient with vast design potential. They will investigate and test that material with the goal of discovering its full and perhaps hidden expressions and creating a product that leverages its unique characteristics. Past projects have included fine perfume, restaurant concepts, high fidelity packaged goods, material libraries, and fine dining experiences.

Other assignments will include short in class exercises and individual research. Class will often center around group discussions on various parts of food systems, with weekly dialogs around assigned readings and videos.

Learning objectives include strengthening critical thinking and opportunity identification abilities, honing user research skills, understanding culinary benchtop formulation and processes for manufacturing, navigating group work, and strengthening communication and presentation skills. This studio is focused on sharing so bring your voice and your appetite!

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

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.

The curriculum and assignments will provide structured support for a deep dive into student-directed biodesign research. Bi-weekly demos build the technical skills that students need, including a further exploration of biomaterials, generative modeling, additive manufacturing, public speaking, and product photography. Guest lecturers and reviews will provide bi-weekly feedback and guidance in addition to the teaching team. Frequent check-ins support students in their larger research arc, including a focus on broader design frameworks of Design Justice and user interviews. The final outcome of the semester will be students’ documentation and write-up of their research process that will remain in the Regeneration Studio online archive, as well as an advanced and functional prototype.

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 topics. 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.

Note: The activities and work in this course are sponsored by Hyundai Motor Group, and should be credited as such in accordance with the participation agreement (which is a requirement).

This course is open to non-major students through an application process. Interested students should contact the instructors for more information.