Using a local site in Providence, this studio will focus on the fundamentals of documenting an existing structure. These techniques will include, at a minimum, measuring, surveying, photographing, analyzing of materials and construction details, researching databases for relevant, related information and understanding the existing structural and mechanical systems. This information will be organized to create a full architectural documentation set. Documentation will also be explored in model form, building on the skills acquired in Studio Ia. Upon completion of documentation, the students will learn to analyze the existing structure both as an entity and within the adjacent urban context. The studio will also focus on the presentation of such analysis and the possible uses of it in design transformation.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Using a local site in Providence, this studio will focus on the fundamentals of documenting an existing structure. These techniques will include, at a minimum, measuring, surveying, photographing, analyzing of materials and construction details, researching databases for relevant, related information and understanding the existing structural and mechanical systems. This information will be organized to create a full architectural documentation set. Documentation will also be explored in model form, building on the skills acquired in Studio Ia. Upon completion of documentation, the students will learn to analyze the existing structure both as an entity and within the adjacent urban context. The studio will also focus on the presentation of such analysis and the possible uses of it in design transformation.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Using a local site in Providence, this studio will focus on the fundamentals of documenting an existing structure. These techniques will include, at a minimum, measuring, surveying, photographing, analyzing of materials and construction details, researching databases for relevant, related information and understanding the existing structural and mechanical systems. This information will be organized to create a full architectural documentation set. Documentation will also be explored in model form, building on the skills acquired in Studio Ia. Upon completion of documentation, the students will learn to analyze the existing structure both as an entity and within the adjacent urban context. The studio will also focus on the presentation of such analysis and the possible uses of it in design transformation.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Using an existing site, this studio will introduce the concept of transformation and intervention through a program of new use. The students will propose a design intervention to transform the site for a new program. These interventions will be based on the accommodation of the design program but will also be a response to the analysis completed in Studio Existing Construct. It will require an understanding of the structural system and the issues of egress. The culmination of this studio will result in a design that is conceptually sound and complete in its description as a full architectural proposal in drawings and models. The student will prepare a design proposition including analysis of the existing structure and its inherent existence within the new work.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Using an existing site, this studio will introduce the concept of transformation and intervention through a program of new use. The students will propose a design intervention to transform the site for a new program. These interventions will be based on the accommodation of the design program but will also be a response to the analysis completed in Studio Existing Construct. It will require an understanding of the structural system and the issues of egress. The culmination of this studio will result in a design that is conceptually sound and complete in its description as a full architectural proposal in drawings and models. The student will prepare a design proposition including analysis of the existing structure and its inherent existence within the new work.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Using an existing site, this studio will introduce the concept of transformation and intervention through a program of new use. The students will propose a design intervention to transform the site for a new program. These interventions will be based on the accommodation of the design program but will also be a response to the analysis completed in Studio Existing Construct. It will require an understanding of the structural system and the issues of egress. The culmination of this studio will result in a design that is conceptually sound and complete in its description as a full architectural proposal in drawings and models. The student will prepare a design proposition including analysis of the existing structure and its inherent existence within the new work.

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

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

The objective of this class is to employ digital techniques in spatial design. Students successfully completing this course should be able to develop sophisticated digital layouts with image processing software, create 2D architectural drawings and 3D models, and develop a 3D visualization of a design. In this course, we will also discuss the integration of 2D and 3D data, digital materials, as well as the basics of digital lighting and camera work.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

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

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

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

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

This course provides an introduction to the fundamental principles of color and light as they apply to spatial and visual perceptions in the built environment. It is an opportunity to study color theory in conjunction with light, lighting systems and the effect of light on color and form.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies, MDes Interior Studies

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

Building Information Modeling (BIM) is defined as a digital representation of physical and functional characteristics of a facility. Revit is one of the most comprehensive and widely used BIM programs in the world. The software closes the gap between 3D geometry and building component data. This course will introduce students to Revit utilizing a hands-on approach. The class will introduce the essential concepts of the software through weekly class lectures/ tutorials. Weekly assignments will allow students to use their knowledge to complete real-life design tasks. Hands-on exercises will also focus on software interface, creation of parametric families and creation of construction document sets. Participants must have laptop with Windows, w/ Parallels recommended for Mac users. Free student download of Revit available.

Elective

This course explores the principles of construction and design detailing. The student will detail the construction of a previously designed studio project. Finish materials, window treatments, light fixtures, and furniture will be selected. Construction methods and materials will be examined as well as the performance and appearance retention of finishes. Individual presentations will be made on a variety of traditional and nontraditional materials.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Human factors is a field of knowledge concerned with the interaction between humans, technology and the environment. A tripartite set of relations defined along the principles of a system: A more or less organized whole composed of interrelated, interdependent elements. The field concerned in promoting performance and efficiency: Performance as a measuring criteria to analyze how one or a group of elements in the tripartite affects the others at multiple scales; Efficiency as a set of tools to determine whether the three elements in the system achieve the goal on contributing towards human well-being.

During the course of the semester, we will generate questions and speculate on what constitutes the discipline’s core of study and what is its purpose to the field of Interior studies. Our focus will be to situate human movement in space at the center of our study. We will intersect principles of pure human motion to assess how the interaction between humans, technology and the environment achieve human comfort. At the core of our study will be a dissection of the forming of internal movement and the shape form created by body movement in space.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Drawing in the Architecture and Design disciplines is historically understood as serving two purposes: to simultaneously precede the construction and manufacturing of a building or artifact or; constitute the analytical tool to measure or render the dimensions of a space or a shape. In the former, drawing is a generative tool; while in the latter is a survey instrument. In both cases, information whether real or virtual, is provided through visual representation conventions, more or less subjective, quantified and laid out according to the rules of applicable geometries. 

Nevertheless, beyond serving generative and analytical purposes, simultaneously or independently, drawing can be also the only visual reference of an idea, in the form of a memory representation of a model or a rule: an image of a city or building that no longer exists; a space or fragment that was never built; an inventorial of typological styles or; the visual representation of series of adaptive transformations. This broad spectrum is of great relevance within the disciplines of Interior Architecture and Adaptive Reuse. In our discipline both generative and analysis phases overlap. Our field of operations is based on the transformation of an existing environment. As such, drawing can constitute an efficient process of understanding real and contribute to its adaptability. Therefore, we propose a method that hybridizes analysis and generation, starting from a projective reality never realized.  This approach will be developed from the collection of examples of series of visionary drawings from unbuilt structures archived in publications at RISD Fleet Library collection, whose artistic value, is of important relevance for the Architecture and Design disciplines. Over the period of 12 weeks, we will engage all four means of representation and iteratively purpose a drawing method to combine deductive transformations from the archival drawing by proposing a set of inductive instructions.  Our aim will be to on one hand to focus the class on the need to acquire a personal technique in the representation of visual information and on the other hand to be capable of developing drawing methodologies to face the complexity of an intervention driven by the constrains of an existing structure or artifact.

Throughout the semester the class will develop a process in 7 exercises that include the reconstruction in axonometric projection; the subsequent formal manipulation of tridimensional translation in axonometric projection; introduction to parametric modeling to construct a model for rapid prototyping; and the CNC milling of a panel exploring the technique of bas-relieve. The class will take advantage of the Rhinoceros 3D modeling platform simultaneously, for the construction of orthographic projections, rendering visualization, 3D modeling manipulation, Grasshopper, Paneling tools plug-in for Rhino; Rapid Prototyping, and CNC milling fabrication, while developing knowledge of film editing software.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Drawing in the Architecture and Design disciplines is historically understood as serving two purposes: to simultaneously precede the construction and manufacturing of a building or artifact or; constitute the analytical tool to measure or render the dimensions of a space or a shape. In the former, drawing is a generative tool; while in the latter is a survey instrument. In both cases, information whether real or virtual, is provided through visual representation conventions, more or less subjective, quantified and laid out according to the rules of applicable geometries. 

Nevertheless, beyond serving generative and analytical purposes, simultaneously or independently, drawing can be also the only visual reference of an idea, in the form of a memory representation of a model or a rule: an image of a city or building that no longer exists; a space or fragment that was never built; an inventorial of typological styles or; the visual representation of series of adaptive transformations. This broad spectrum is of great relevance within the disciplines of Interior Architecture and Adaptive Reuse. In our discipline both generative and analysis phases overlap. Our field of operations is based on the transformation of an existing environment. As such, drawing can constitute an efficient process of understanding real and contribute to its adaptability. Therefore, we propose a method that hybridizes analysis and generation, starting from a projective reality never realized.  This approach will be developed from the collection of examples of series of visionary drawings from unbuilt structures archived in publications at RISD Fleet Library collection, whose artistic value, is of important relevance for the Architecture and Design disciplines. Over the period of 12 weeks, we will engage all four means of representation and iteratively purpose a drawing method to combine deductive transformations from the archival drawing by proposing a set of inductive instructions.  Our aim will be to on one hand to focus the class on the need to acquire a personal technique in the representation of visual information and on the other hand to be capable of developing drawing methodologies to face the complexity of an intervention driven by the constrains of an existing structure or artifact.

Throughout the semester the class will develop a process in 7 exercises that include the reconstruction in axonometric projection; the subsequent formal manipulation of tridimensional translation in axonometric projection; introduction to parametric modeling to construct a model for rapid prototyping; and the CNC milling of a panel exploring the technique of bas-relieve. The class will take advantage of the Rhinoceros 3D modeling platform simultaneously, for the construction of orthographic projections, rendering visualization, 3D modeling manipulation, Grasshopper, Paneling tools plug-in for Rhino; Rapid Prototyping, and CNC milling fabrication, while developing knowledge of film editing software.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

This course will examine the development of adaptive reuse practice in the context of its social, political, technological, and economic circumstances, as it pertains to the design culture of the period. Special emphasis will be given to interior renovations, additions, transformations and other interventions of adaptive reuse. Attention will also be given to design theory, and the evolving doctrines relating to heritage. This course will be conducted in seminar form with graduate level discourse and discussion. Requirements include midterm, final exam and research presentation.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Adaptive Reuse

This seminar is intended as a reinforcement of and preparation for the self-choice Design Thesis taking place the following Spring. The seminar will assist the student in becoming more aware of factors which determine a successful outcome for a design intervention within an existing building. As the first part of the three-part thesis sequence, the course serves as the building block for INTAR-2397 and the student's approved Design Thesis Feasibility Report.

Open to Graduate Interior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies Adaptive Reuse