Required for students in the MDes degree program. Under the supervision of their thesis advisor, students are responsible for the preparation and completion of a fully articulated design proposal of their own choice, as described by their Design Thesis Feasibility Report, submitted at the end of the Fall semester's Design Thesis Preparation class.

Major Requirement | MDes Interior Studies

Building on the skills and knowledge developed during the first year in the Department, undergraduate students will focus their attention on a project which requires the hypothetical remodeling of an existing building of some complexity for a proposed new use.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Choice of advanced design studios offered by the Department of Interior Architecture. Details & studio descriptions are made available to pre-registered students.

Estimated Cost of Materials: Varies depending on required studio course supplies or related travel. Anticipated costs will be provided in advance, and announced during the lottery studio presentations held in the department.

Major Requirement | BFA, MDes, MA Interior Studies

Are you eager to transform waste into innovation? Join The Scrap Lab, a dynamic interdisciplinary studio that addresses resource depletion and waste generation by reactivating leftovers, offcuts, and solid waste into new, meaningful objects and materials. In this studio, you'll engage with obsolete and discarded items, reinterpreting them to discover new meanings and expressions. The term ‘discarded’ will involve an interrogation of preconceived notions to see and value the potentials embedded in the discard and allow them to unfold into alternative futures.

Phase One, Exploration and Reimagining, involves field visits to thrift stores, landfills, and factories to reanalyze "waste" as a realm of possibilities, delving into the Ten R's of Circularity—Refuse, Reduce, Rethink, Reuse, Repair, Refurbish, Remanufacture, Repurpose, Recycle, and Recover—through lectures and investigations. Phase Two, Design Research and Experimentation, focuses on harvesting objects by beginning to translate selected discarded items and engaging in design research, making, and testing to build a spectrum of possibilities without the pressure of final products. Phase Three, Prototyping and Presentation, entails project development by prototyping and testing a fully developed project aimed at potential solutions, culminating in a showcase where you participate in a final exhibition and create zines to highlight the embedded potential of your transformed materials.

Elective

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

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

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

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

Elective

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert scientists, artists, craftspeople, and designers to refine their material literacy and develop multiple hands-on explorations that go beyond our disciplinary conventions to generate innovative fabrication techniques and applications for the built environment. This process includes becoming familiar with a material's inherent characteristics and behaviors, its composition and connection to vernacular and craft, and finally, developing novel research methods for design that rely on physical experimentation. 

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

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

Elective

This 6-credit Thesis Studio centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to the New England region, this hands-on research studio asks students to question current attitudes towards exploitative land uses and material cultures and push the boundaries of material use and techniques in professional architecture and landscape architecture design practices. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite seminar INTAR/LDAR 503G - Sustainability Lab: Material Tectonics + Fabrication.

The Sustainability Lab Thesis studio builds on the work developed in the Fall semester and the progress students have made in articulating a material inquiry for their thesis direction and a theoretical and methodological framework for their research. In this course, each student will continue the development of their design research project in discussion with their primary faculty advisor and secondary and tertiary advisor.

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

Elective

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite studio INTAR/LDAR 502G - Sustainability Lab: Thesis Studio.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert designers, fabricators, and engineers to refine the assemblies of their material inquiries. The course will cover advanced fabrication methods for scaled and 1:1 fabrication and interdisciplinary collaboration during the construction phases of design. Students will develop their Sustainability Lab Thesis Studio material inquiry through a concise technical and visual design package and a full-scale material assembly.

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

Elective

This 3-credit elective centers around the Sustainability Lab, an initiative between LDAR and INTAR departments to explore creative material approaches to sustainability. Looking specifically at materials common to New England, this skill-building seminar will explore one selected material each year and expose students to different techniques and methods of researching and working with the region's intrinsic materials. Students enrolled in this course are required to register for the co-requisite studio INTAR/LDAR 502G - Sustainability Lab: Thesis Studio.

In tandem with the co-requisite studio, students will collaborate with expert designers, fabricators, and engineers to refine the assemblies of their material inquiries. The course will cover advanced fabrication methods for scaled and 1:1 fabrication and interdisciplinary collaboration during the construction phases of design. Students will develop their Sustainability Lab Thesis Studio material inquiry through a concise technical and visual design package and a full-scale material assembly.

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

Elective

Building on the work completed this fall, this seminar will support the advancement of the design thesis. Through hands-on making, students will refine their design research investigations by establishing clear objectives, methods, and outcomes. The course will include skill-building workshops in the woodshop, group discussions, and one-on-one reviews to guide the progression of their thesis projects.

Elective

The Pearl LAB wintersession course, 'Only with Agitation, Comes Growth', will focus on the pearl as a subject of inquiry and material experimentation. Students will be divided into research groups to explore and exploit the material potential and properties of the pearl as well as to challenge its convention and agency as a cultured object and precious jewel. Through a significant pearl donation to the J+M department, students will be provided a selection of pearls for both experimentation and the final conception of their work. Guest experts and artists in the field will provide lectures to facilitate and contextualize the complex environmental, social, and cultural history (and future sustainability) of the pearl as a cultivated and renewable gemstone revered for its beauty, value, and wealth. Only with Agitation, Comes Growth aims to disrupt and innovate around such histories and shared material expectations. A selection of student work produced in the course will be featured in the J+M Department Triennial Exhibition at the Woods Gerry Gallery, Jan 31ST – Feb 18TH, 2025

In conjunction with the course, alumni of the program, who’s research and practice are centric to the course content will be invited back as a fellows-in-residence to work in the department alongside J+M faculty and majors.

Elective

Water casting is a historic approach to metalsmithing through an organic process, allowing metal to behave in its nature rather than the will of its maker. Heated until molten and glowing, metal flows like mercury into a vessel filled with heated water to softly catch its liquid form. This course will focus on exploring organic casting methods, metal forging, forming, and interpreting outputs through chance operations. Through the winter session, we will reconnect with some of the more ancient methods of metalsmithing to create innovative new work examining methods of relinquishing control in order to embrace freedom in dialogue with materiality. This winter session intensive will develop students proficiency in various casting and forging techniques through articulate self-directed projects that examine metal in its various states. Discover the possibilities of allowing chance in process, technique and material.

Winter session is delivered as an intensive program, allowing a meaningful inquiry into material practice. We will meet 3 days a week where growth will be consistently assessed through daily exercises and short seminars highlighting the history of metalsmithing and its contemporary future. This class will be evaluated through letter grades given to 4 main categories; Participation + Engagement, Exercises, Project 1 and Project 2.