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

The course is, effectively, a studio congruent with a seminar, and its ambition is to provide rigorous methodological framing and provocative content scaffolding for the design research activities within the studio. While the studio component will focus on the advancing of the design research questions framed in the fall seminar, the seminar component will consider the best formats and vehicles for the dissemination of the design research. The deliverables for this course will be twofold: a thoroughly researched, documented, and delineated design project; and a textual 'exit document' in which students articulate their research methods, techniques, formats, and outcomes.

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

Major Requirement | BArch, MArch (3yr), MArch (2yr): Architecture

The course is designed as a drawing exploration of the relationships between various drawing media and as an introduction to strategies in developing a flexible dialogue between concept and process. Starting with large collaborative group drawings and responding to a series of visual and media prompts, this course challenges students to reconsider their drawings each week through various studio constraints, whether with different media, temporal, or physical limitations. Students will be guided through a generative production of drawings, which they can apply to their own studio practice in the later weeks.á Rather than starting with an idea, students will practice finding imagery and creating drawings that build on previous drawings. The course demands energy to engage with physically large drawings, a dedicated and consistent work ethic, and an openness to change and invent. Students are expected to work from both observation and imagination, draw in the studio both independently and collaboratively, attend class lectures, and participate in group discussions. Participants should be ready to experiment and be prepared for their work to go through several surprising transformations.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Elective

This final core studio stresses large-scale and planning issues, complex sites, and urban conditions. The city is a living organism which evolves in a particular locale with a particular form due to a combination of environmental and cultural factors. These factors, the forces they represent and the material results of their interaction form, in their interrelated state, what can be called urban systems. The many forces at play within cities-social, cultural, economic, ideological, ecological, infra structural, morphological and visual-combine in various ways to created both an identifiable urban realm and the many sub zones within this. Yet, none of these factors is static and unchanging; and, as a result, urban systems, urban dynamics, and urban identity are likewise in a continuous state of flux. This studio will explore these systems and the complex issues at play in our urban areas and the potential for positive change. Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department.

Major Requirement | MLA-I, MLA-II Landscape Architecture

This course is the second half of an intensive, two-semester introduction to studio practice. Objectives introduced in the preceding semester are refined and furthered through assignments, reports, and scheduled critique. Students are required to develop the sketchbook as an essential creative tool.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $300.00

Major Requirement | BFA Glass

Glass IIB is the second half of a two-semester intermediate studio course in which students will continue their ongoing investigation of material processes. Emphasis is on developing personal concepts, imagery, and visual research skills through investigations of regularly assigned topics. Students develop a substantial idea sketchbook, participate in scheduled class activities, and group critique.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

Major Requirement | BFA Glass

This studio course is based on the premise that the narrative shaping of information is fundamental to human communication. As active participants in cultural production, graphic designers naturally collaborate within varied areas of expertise, assuming a documentary role in how society views itself. Narrative methods enable us to speak to (and through) any content with a sense of the story it has to tell - visually representing historical, curatorial, scientific, and abstract ideas and events. Students will explore design as a process of storytelling that includes linear and non-linear relationships, with an emphasis on developing formal strategies for multiple approaches to shaping a narrative experience from given as well as self-generated content. Particular emphasis is on sequence, framing, cause and effect, the relationships between elements, and the synthesis of parts into wholes. With text and image, and across media, we employ narrative methods to make sense of complex content meant to be shared and understood.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Graphic Design (2yr)

Building on the final advanced studio in the undergraduate program, the seminar engages the graduating senior with research and design studies that expand the focus of the final studio. This will involve reading, group discussions, topical studies, concept development and the crafting of an artist's statement - all in service of understanding the design intervention and its relationship to the context of its host structure. The course will culminate in a group project: the design and installation of the Senior Show as a demonstration of a design intervention within an existing structure.

Major Requirement | BFA Interior Studies

Building on basic techniques taught first semester, students proceed to more complex cuts for bodices, sleeves, skirts and pants through techniques of draping, drafting and construction. One finished garment is required.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $125.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Apparel Design Students. 

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

Students focus on tailoring techniques and the design of tailored apparel. Drafting and classic tailoring techniques are taught and students explore shape and structure through experimentation on the form and creative pattern making. During this process, students use these technical skills to design and execute a jacket and companion piece.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $400.00
 

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

A continuation of PHOTO-5302, providing an open and dynamic environment where sophomore can create photographs and engage in constructive feedback on their progress.

Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Photography Students.

Major Requirement | BFA Photography

Students in the MFA program pursue individual work under advisement of resident faculty, visiting artists and critics. This tutorial experience has been organized to nurture student work toward a set of goals and outcomes through routine conversations with faculty and their cohort. The priority is to assist students with recognizing new objectives in their practice.  Faculty work with students to develop new or hone existing skills to set priorities and meet  goals and deadlines. At the MFA level students will experience a deeper sense of individualized mentorship.  While advising students on the material aspects of their work, faculty will simultaneously  guide students toward new conceptual, theoretical and or philosophical frameworks for their work.

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

Major Requirement | MFA Sculpture

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

This required studio continues the explorations you began in Graduate Studio One. Again, you are challenged through a series of projects to purposefully locate your personal position within contemporary industrial design practice. The projects will introduce you to a variety of issues, application methodologies and audiences associated with the industrial design process that will equip you with a critical understanding of the field that can direct a practical means of applying your ideas. At the end of the semester, your deliverable is an exhibition piece resulting from a final self-directed project. This concluding project is a personal, insightful and original synthesis of your semester's activities and clearly communicates your maturity in problem solving design approaches. Graduate Studio Two is offered as part of the Graduate Industrial Design core curriculum in conjunction the required Graduate Shop Orientation and Graduate Communications courses.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Industrial Design Students.

Major Requirement | MID Industrial Design

This required studio continues the explorations you began in Graduate Studio One. Again, you are challenged through a series of projects to purposefully locate your personal position within contemporary industrial design practice. The projects will introduce you to a variety of issues, application methodologies and audiences associated with the industrial design process that will equip you with a critical understanding of the field that can direct a practical means of applying your ideas. At the end of the semester, your deliverable is an exhibition piece resulting from a final self-directed project. This concluding project is a personal, insightful and original synthesis of your semester's activities and clearly communicates your maturity in problem solving design approaches. Graduate Studio Two is offered as part of the Graduate Industrial Design core curriculum in conjunction the required Graduate Shop Orientation and Graduate Communications courses.

Enrollment is limited to Graduate Industrial Design Students.

Major Requirement | MID Industrial Design

Junior Sculpture Studio II is a laboratory situated where art-making and the physical world overlap, perform, critique, collapse, and deploy one another. During this course, you will intentionally push forward your development as an artist. You will utilize the skills and media that you learned in previous courses, while adding new skills and tools to your existing collection. As a result, your projects will demonstrate more conceptual heft. Together, we will support the continued growth of this formal, material, and conceptual capacity by addressing the challenges implicit in making ambitious projects. We take up this work in an effort to deepen our relationship to what informs who we are as artists and to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of a sustainable studio and professional practice. This course is structured with the enactment of care in mind, so our studio practices and artist-selves can thrive.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

Junior Sculpture Studio II is a laboratory situated where art-making and the physical world overlap, perform, critique, collapse, and deploy one another. During this course, you will intentionally push forward your development as an artist. You will utilize the skills and media that you learned in previous courses, while adding new skills and tools to your existing collection. As a result, your projects will demonstrate more conceptual heft. Together, we will support the continued growth of this formal, material, and conceptual capacity by addressing the challenges implicit in making ambitious projects. We take up this work in an effort to deepen our relationship to what informs who we are as artists and to figure out meaningful strategies for the development and maintenance of a sustainable studio and professional practice. This course is structured with the enactment of care in mind, so our studio practices and artist-selves can thrive.

Major Requirement | BFA Sculpture

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

WINTERSESSION 2026: Performance, Participation, Installation, and Transmedia Storytelling

Performance art includes various forms and histories, often taking a multidisciplinary approach. This course teaches students to turn ideas into performative acts and multi-sensory art installations. Students will explore narrative in performance and the ethics of participatory art while creating their own interactive works. Core principles emphasized include autonomy, non-maleficence, justice, and truth-telling. This course also examines the artist’s role in shaping audience experience in museums and galleries, focusing on participatory engagement and community-centered practices.

This studio elective - open to all RISD graduate students regardless of departmental affiliation-will address rotating topics and modes of making, thinking and discourse every semester. The structure and content of this course is designed to shift, enabling different topical investigations and a variety of expert faculty teaching special content in fall and spring of each year. This enables the flexibility for studio consideration of an ever-changing range of both topics and studio engagement. This course may be repeated for elective credit with permission of a student's graduate program director (GPD).

Estimated Cost of Materials: $0.00 - $150.00

Elective