This course focuses on material and process investigations that lead to a higher degree of technical proficiency providing students with an expanded foundation on which to carry out their ideas. The content of the course emphasizes how exploration and application operate in both pragmatic and unorthodox ways and reinforces ideas of how critical making and material investigation can lead to innovation. The technical aspects of production and outsourcing will also be examined.

Estimated Materials Cost: $150.00

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

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This course concentrates on the exploration of personal design aesthetics and the development of furniture projects that exhibit a high degree of technical proficiency.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Furniture Design Students.

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This course concentrates on projects that begin the thesis body of work. Advanced design and technical processes are continued as part of this process.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This graduate seminar is organized in parallel with the Graduate Furniture Design Thesis studio for the purpose of guiding the written thesis document. The goal is to provide students with a focused opportunity to map their thesis projects and to create the document that supports their studio practice and body of work known as the thesis.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Furniture Design

This studio course introduces materials commonly used in furniture making and the foundation skills necessary to integrate them into furniture. Emphasis is on techniques, structures and materials properties. These are integrated with theoretical exercises that focus on design.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

This studio course introduces materials commonly used in furniture making and the foundation skills necessary to integrate them into furniture. Emphasis is on techniques, structures and materials properties. These are integrated with theoretical exercises that focus on design.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

CAD Fundamentals I is the first of two required courses in the Furniture Design department’s digital modeling curriculum. With its capacity for rapidly developing and realizing design concepts, 3D CAD modeling has become an indispensable part of contemporary 3D design processes. The goal of this course is for students to develop competency with CAD modeling and a heightened sensitivity to the creative potential that these tools present to designers. Work in the class will center around learning to use two widely adopted, powerful applications: Rhinoceros and Keyshot. A variety of projects will introduce students to essential techniques and knowledge in the realm of CAD modeling, including an understanding of the software’s underlying technologies. Students will develop skills required to model complex forms and to translate these digital models into lifelike renderings, specification drawings, physical models, and additional iterative design variations. This course, along with its sequel, is intended to provide students with a variety of processes and skills that will significantly contribute to their productivity and creativity as designers and makers.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

CAD Fundamentals I is the first of two required courses in the Furniture Design department’s digital modeling curriculum. With its capacity for rapidly developing and realizing design concepts, 3D CAD modeling has become an indispensable part of contemporary 3D design processes. The goal of this course is for students to develop competency with CAD modeling and a heightened sensitivity to the creative potential that these tools present to designers. Work in the class will center around learning to use two widely adopted, powerful applications: Rhinoceros and Keyshot. A variety of projects will introduce students to essential techniques and knowledge in the realm of CAD modeling, including an understanding of the software’s underlying technologies. Students will develop skills required to model complex forms and to translate these digital models into lifelike renderings, specification drawings, physical models, and additional iterative design variations. This course, along with its sequel, is intended to provide students with a variety of processes and skills that will significantly contribute to their productivity and creativity as designers and makers.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

The junior studio expands and interprets the skills and concepts introduced in the sophomore studios. The primary focus of the semester is an experimentally based investigation of bending and forming techniques - molded plywood, bent lamination, steam bending, and vacuum-formed plastic. While focused on the use of wood and plastic materials, an experimental approach is expected in the studio. Students are encouraged to conceptually explore skills and materials to develop a personal design approach and studio practice. The semester culminates in a final design, in which students utilize learned techniques to create one-offs, objects intended for batch production or prototypes designed for production.

Prerequisite: FD-2502

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

In this junior studio students are presented with the idea of using metal to develop furniture forms. While the primary metal used to investigate form is mild steel, properties and techniques are also presented that apply to stainless steel, aluminum, copper, brass and bronze. Students become proficient in TIG welding, and are introduced to arc welding, spot welding, gas welding, brazing and soldering. Basic structural properties of steel are investigated through a series of short projects designed to inform students of the appropriate forms and applications. Basic and more advanced fabrication techniques, metal surface treatments, as well as metal finishing are also topics of class demonstrations.

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

Both collectively and individually; and through informal and centralized systems of training and
patronage; artists, designers, and craftspeople throughout history have dedicated themselves
(whether by passion or coercion) to contributing to their culture with their work. From the
artisans of ancient Egypt, to the Shakers of Revolutionary colonial America, to the weavers of
the Navajo nation, these networks of people, materials, and technologies that drive the creation,
distribution, and use of furniture and other useful objects are a microcosm of larger cultural
concerns. For artists and designers, these “cultures of production” are especially compelling
encapsulations of the values, priorities, stories, and conditions of groups of people. By
investigating the ways that meaning is embedded and accumulated in material culture, insights
about this culture are revealed - whether nobility or commoners, from ancient times or
contemporary life. This course has a deliberate focus on “cultures of production” that have been
historically underrepresented in American design education and aims to promote the students’
ability to think critically about the status quo and to seek just and inclusive approaches. Through
design and craft, students will be introduced to methods, techniques, forms, typologies and
materials that challenge, expand, and deconstruct prevailing disciplinary paradigms.
The content of the course will vary each semester, with each iteration of the course focused on
a particular “culture of production”. Students will explore how and why this group of people
make and use certain things and their significance both within and beyond these communities.
This will involve considering the associated methods, typologies, economies, traditions,
materials, motivations, and individuals that form this culture, as well as the power dynamics that
affect their positionality and status. Designing and making objects with genuine materials at full
scale will be emphasized as particularly vital means for artists and designers to learn about the
greater contexts - personal, political, historical, technological, geographical, and otherwise -
surrounding the topic of the course.

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

This course will provide an opportunity for students to design and make cabinets of various types with doors and drawers. Students will learn the subtleties of casework and fitting doors, drawers and hardware. While a wide range of design approaches from very simple to complex will be encouraged, this course will be an especially good opportunity for those students who wish to explore advanced woodworking.

Prerequisite: FD-2502

Elective

This is a required studio for seniors that develops advanced theory and practice in furniture design. Projects include experimental seating design and an introduction to upholstery techniques. Seniors develop a Degree Project Proposal along with a project that explores and tests the proposal.

Prerequisite: FD-2521

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

This is a required studio for seniors that develops advanced theory and practice in furniture design. Projects include experimental seating design and an introduction to upholstery techniques. Seniors develop a Degree Project Proposal along with a project that explores and tests the proposal.

Prerequisite: FD-2521

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

In this course we examine individual studio practices in depth through collecting, drawing, and writing. We approach writing as a mutable medium, one that can be built up, torn apart, cobbled together, patch-worked, polished, shined, exploded, and altogether constructed in a way that is not dissimilar to the way an object emerges in the studio. We examine the ways that writing as a part of making can spark ideas for visual work, enrich subliminal visual narratives, connect ideas that may seem disparate, collect a wide variety of sources in a small space, act as a place for reflection, and ultimately be an active and integral part of making. In the process, we will unearth themes that permeate students' artistic work in a way that forges future paths for creative exploration while protecting some of the mysteries that are particular to an embodied practice. Students will begin to develop a personal vocabulary that parallels the richly developed language of their visual work, laying the foundation for their Senior Degree Project. The primary aim of this class is for students to develop a better understanding of their own practice and its context through writing and archiving influences and inspirations, laying the conceptual foundation and establishing a specific theme for the spring semester Senior Degree Project Report.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

In this course we examine individual studio practices in depth through collecting, drawing, and writing. We approach writing as a mutable medium, one that can be built up, torn apart, cobbled together, patch-worked, polished, shined, exploded, and altogether constructed in a way that is not dissimilar to the way an object emerges in the studio. We examine the ways that writing as a part of making can spark ideas for visual work, enrich subliminal visual narratives, connect ideas that may seem disparate, collect a wide variety of sources in a small space, act as a place for reflection, and ultimately be an active and integral part of making. In the process, we will unearth themes that permeate students' artistic work in a way that forges future paths for creative exploration while protecting some of the mysteries that are particular to an embodied practice. Students will begin to develop a personal vocabulary that parallels the richly developed language of their visual work, laying the foundation for their Senior Degree Project. The primary aim of this class is for students to develop a better understanding of their own practice and its context through writing and archiving influences and inspirations, laying the conceptual foundation and establishing a specific theme for the spring semester Senior Degree Project Report.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Furniture Design

This course provides an opportunity for students to explore a subject, medium, or learning format not typically included in the department’s offerings. The specific topic varies by term and is determined by the instructor. Students may work individually, in pairs, or in small groups on faculty-supervised projects. As these courses fall outside the department’s core curriculum, content and format may vary. Grading is pass/fail and permission of instructor is required.

Studio: Drawing is pursued in two directions: as a powerful way to investigate the world, and as an essential activity intrinsic to all artists and designers. As a primary mode of inquiry, drawing is a central means of forming questions and creating knowledge across disciplines. Through wide-ranging drawing approaches, students are prompted to work responsively and self-critically to embrace the unpredictable intersection of process, idea and media. To pursue these larger ideas, the studio becomes a laboratory of varied and challenging activities. Instructors introduce drawing as a dynamic two-dimensional record of sensory search, conceptual thought, or physical action. Students investigate materiality, imagined situations, idea generation, and the translation of the observable world. Formal and intellectual risks are encouraged during a sustained engagement with the possibilities of material, mark-making, perception, abstraction, performance, space and time. As students trust the drawing process, they become more informed about its uncharted potentials, and accept struggle as necessary and positive; they gain confidence in their own sensibilities.

Enrollment is limited to first-year students.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch, MArch (3yr)

Studio: Drawing is pursued in two directions: as a powerful way to investigate the world, and as an essential activity intrinsic to all artists and designers. As a primary mode of inquiry, drawing is a central means of forming questions and creating knowledge across disciplines. Through wide-ranging drawing approaches, students are prompted to work responsively and self-critically to embrace the unpredictable intersection of process, idea and media. To pursue these larger ideas, the studio becomes a laboratory of varied and challenging activities. Instructors introduce drawing as a dynamic two-dimensional record of sensory search, conceptual thought, or physical action. Students investigate materiality, imagined situations, idea generation, and the translation of the observable world. Formal and intellectual risks are encouraged during a sustained engagement with the possibilities of material, mark-making, perception, abstraction, performance, space and time. As students trust the drawing process, they become more informed about its uncharted potentials, and accept struggle as necessary and positive; they gain confidence in their own sensibilities.

Enrollment is limited to first-year students.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch, MArch (3yr)

Studio: Drawing is pursued in two directions: as a powerful way to investigate the world, and as an essential activity intrinsic to all artists and designers. As a primary mode of inquiry, drawing is a central means of forming questions and creating knowledge across disciplines. Through wide-ranging drawing approaches, students are prompted to work responsively and self-critically to embrace the unpredictable intersection of process, idea and media. To pursue these larger ideas, the studio becomes a laboratory of varied and challenging activities. Instructors introduce drawing as a dynamic two-dimensional record of sensory search, conceptual thought, or physical action. Students investigate materiality, imagined situations, idea generation, and the translation of the observable world. Formal and intellectual risks are encouraged during a sustained engagement with the possibilities of material, mark-making, perception, abstraction, performance, space and time. As students trust the drawing process, they become more informed about its uncharted potentials, and accept struggle as necessary and positive; they gain confidence in their own sensibilities.

Enrollment is limited to first-year students.

Major Requirement | BFA, BArch, MArch (3yr)