This is a course about becoming a licensed architect, a business professional and an active, engaged and responsible citizen. It is intended to help prepare students for the challenges and opportunities confronted by a life in Architecture. Lectures are organized around four themes: The architect as a trained and certified Professional in traditional and alternative careers; the architect as an operative in the world of business and commerce; the origins of architectural projects; and the detailed work performed through professional Architectural Contracts. Regular panels, composed of RISD alums and other allied professionals provide an external perspective on all elements of the course, and allow students the opportunity to direct discussion in ways appropriate to their needs.

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

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

This is a course about becoming a licensed architect, a business professional and an active, engaged and responsible citizen. It is intended to help prepare students for the challenges and opportunities confronted by a life in Architecture. Lectures are organized around four themes: The architect as a trained and certified Professional in traditional and alternative careers; the architect as an operative in the world of business and commerce; the origins of architectural projects; and the detailed work performed through professional Architectural Contracts. Regular panels, composed of RISD alums and other allied professionals provide an external perspective on all elements of the course, and allow students the opportunity to direct discussion in ways appropriate to their needs.

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

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

This course reinforces the fundamentals of environmental systems- thermal, light, ventilation, acoustics-and teaches design strategies to evaluate and optimize building concepts based on these systems. The lab component will include hands-on testing (e.g. data-loggers for thermal and HDR imaging for daylighting) and an emphasis on digital simulations (e.g. Rhino plug-ins for thermal and lighting analysis). The Simulation Game is an in-class activity where students compete to make the most energy-efficient conceptual building massing using an energy modeling program in Rhino/Grasshopper. The course will culminate in a case study project in which students apply design strategies to a specific building design problem.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Preference is given to Junior Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture

This course combines the business of art and design, transforming the creative impulse to a marketable deliverable. Students are encouraged to think beyond the confines of traditional markets, working collaboratively toward the goal of employing inventive thinking in the workplace with the goal of an independently owned and operated enterprise. A fundamental objective of this class is for students to understand a basic business vocabulary, to explore how design-driven business and creative studio thinking overlap, and to understand how creative skills can be used to identify and execute business opportunities. Students will be introduced to business concepts through lectures, case studies, assignments and class discussion. Assignments will work off the classroom pedagogy and topics covered will be business models, marketing, finance, and strategy as they relate to studio activity.

Elective

The emphasis of this course is on the intricacy and sophistication of metal construction. An introduction to stone settings, gem stones, and an awareness of gemology will be included. Technical information is presented in a clear, logical manner facilitating mastery of these essential skills. The class requires effort, patience, accuracy and sensitivity to the material. Each project pairs a technical skill with a search of creative design solutions that are based on individual sources of interests. This increases the challenge of the projects, and encourages growth in students' design awareness and ability, along with furthering technical capabilities. Drawings and models precede all projects. Students are required to maintain an active sketchbook, as well as a notebook with class handouts.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

The course will examine how female painters, photographers, performance artists and film directors use their bodies and elements of their biographies to build their art upon. We will read interviews with them and analyses of their work, watch documentary films, study self-portraits in painting and photography. We will try to define the special attraction and therapeutic role autobiographic art has for women. Among the artists discussed will be: Claude Cahun, Cindy Sherman, Ana Mendieta, Faith Ringgold, Marina Abramovic, Shirin Neshat, Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven, Maya Deren, Frida Kahlo, Leonora Carrington, Agnes Varda, and Francesca Woodman. Students will do weekly readings; write weekly papers, as well as a final paper about a chosen artist. Active participation in class discussions is required.

Elective

The course delves into the world of maps through a critical lens, examining the role of maps beyond the conventional utilitarian purpose of navigation and exploring them as tools of representation of power, space, and society within the built environment. Drawing from history, theory, and contemporary scholarship the seminar explores key concepts and methodologies of critical cartography, including power and representation, semiotics and symbolism, spatial narratives, countermapping, and the role of technology. From traditional hand-drawn maps to contemporary digital mapping technologies, the course interrogates how maps mediate architectural knowledge production, design, and social interaction.

The course examines maps as sites of contestation, imagination, and social transformation. Moreover, it also explores contemporary representational tools of mapping and data visualization. The students will engage in directed research project and produce story maps as final outputs for the course.

Elective

This course reinforces the fundamentals of environmental systems- thermal, light, ventilation, acoustics-and teaches design strategies to evaluate and optimize building concepts based on these systems. The lab component will include hands-on testing (e.g. data-loggers for thermal and HDR imaging for daylighting) and an emphasis on digital simulations (e.g. Rhino plug-ins for thermal and lighting analysis). The Simulation Game is an in-class activity where students compete to make the most energy-efficient conceptual building massing using an energy modeling program in Rhino/Grasshopper. The course will culminate in a case study project in which students apply design strategies to a specific building design problem.

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for first-year MArch (3yr) Architecture Students.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

This seminar addresses key critical theory and socio-political aspects of illustration practices from a historical perspective. Reading, discussion, and meaningful integration of ideas into studio writing and activity are goals of the course. Class will meet two times per week including supported research times in various special collections and the library. Faculty determine the content of the seminar each term, balancing attention to issues defined by the expertise and interests of the graduate cohort and subjects of relevance to the field and professional practice. Theorists of special concern to contemporary illustration practice will be highlighted; statistics and technical information about communication media will illuminate how art objects have circulated in their own eras. Critical reading, writing, and presentation will be assessed.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $75.00

Major Requirement | MFA Illustration

With a focus on digital technologies, this class will explore new material processes related to digital fabrication methodologies. The goal is to form a set of skills which build a designer's creative potential through 3D modeling, 3D printing, 3D scanning, laser cutting and possibly CNC cutting. This course actively applies programing learned in prerequisite CAD class Digital 3D Modeling and Rendering to explore various manufacturing process specifically applicable to jewelry. Research, models and innovative approaches are in direct response to questions of inquiry brought forward through design problems in the class. Students are encouraged to utilize CAD and CAD/CAM to explore designs in other classes.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Jewelry + Metalsmithing

The Advanced Poetry Workshop is an intensive project-based poetry workshop for students with previous workshop experience and a portfolio of revised work on which to build. The course centers on workshop: peer critique by students with previous practice in poetry writing, and the shared goal of completing a semester-long publication/performance project. Students are expected to have a strong commitment to active participation in contemporary poetry as readers, writers, curators, performers, and audience. Teaching and learning methodologies include close reading of exemplary texts, experimentation with forms, revision, online/print publication, and performance. Texts will include poetry collections published in 2019 and 2020, as selected by students and instructor. The workshop welcomes work in any language and from any tradition of poetry. To the greatest extent possible, the work should speak for itself. But mediation, translation, contextualization also play a vital role.

Elective

With widespread emphasis on the written word in a globalized Western society, it becomes easy to forget that writing is a relatively anomalous human practice. In Art Before Time, our focus will be on the visual, tactile, and kinetic practices of the deep past, and the epistemological methods (and their limitations) that we Moderns use to decipher and interpret the ancient traces left long before there were written records to document them. We will employ and scrutinize ethnographic analogy as a method for understanding the lifeways of our distant ancestors in the Pleistocene, while using experimental archaeology to form shared experiences that engage in the most persistent artistic traditions of our species. In so doing, we explore the changing place of human activity in ecosystems across the Northern Hemisphere, the origins and varieties of symbolic thought and the fluctuating roles of art and architecture in spiritual ecologies throughout a vast span of time.

Elective

As the study of behavior and mental processes, psychology allows us to better understand how people think, feel and act. This introductory course provides a broad overview of the major content areas within the field of psychology (e.g., physiological, developmental, social and cognitive psychology) and will introduce you to the psychological theories and research used to understand human behavior. We will cover a wide variety of topics, including how people learn, process and store information, why people possess distinct personalities, how social situations and cultural norms affect our behavior, how we grow and develop throughout our lives, etc. Throughout the course we will critically evaluate the merit of classic psychological theory and research in understanding people's thoughts, feelings and actions in real world situations. This course will provide a broad knowledge base for those interested in taking upper level psychology classes.

Elective

Digital embroidery transforms hand-crafted couture into a work of fine art. Just like a tattoo where an image is created with needles and color, so embroidered fabric or paper is needle-stitched with colored threads. A basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is helpful, but we will also cover the fundamentals of creating a preparatory design file in Adobe Illustrator. This vector design file will then be artistically translated into a Pulse embroidery file that can be saved and sewn out as as a multiple or repeat pattern. The resulting personalized textile can be applied to fabrics for apparel or interior applications as well as fine art. A series of small assignments will build up a repertoire of techniques and culminate in a final project that summarizes the student's ability and artistic innovation. This course will explore top of the line Tajima Pulse software with the goal of creating personalized images that will be sewn out on a 15-needle Tajima commercial embroidery machine.

Elective

Digital embroidery transforms hand-crafted couture into a work of fine art. Just like a tattoo where an image is created with needles and color, so embroidered fabric or paper is needle-stitched with colored threads. A basic knowledge of Adobe Photoshop is helpful, but we will also cover the fundamentals of creating a preparatory design file in Adobe Illustrator. This vector design file will then be artistically translated into a Pulse embroidery file that can be saved and sewn out as as a multiple or repeat pattern. The resulting personalized textile can be applied to fabrics for apparel or interior applications as well as fine art. A series of small assignments will build up a repertoire of techniques and culminate in a final project that summarizes the student's ability and artistic innovation. This course will explore top of the line Tajima Pulse software with the goal of creating personalized images that will be sewn out on a 15-needle Tajima commercial embroidery machine.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

Elective

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

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

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

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

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

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

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

The first of three graduate core studios focus on iterative making and critical discourse to challenge disciplinary conventions and learn how to make self-authored design decisions in service of abstract spatial ideas. The agency of architecture lies in its capacity to be enactive. It is occupied, experienced and materialized; it constructs, organizes and extends relations among the many. Its forms, spatial orders, materials, and systems result from the designed consideration of physical and spatial interdependencies with the practices, habits and aspirations of its subjects. Providing a precise and specific set of tools and armatures, this first of three core studios introduces the art of architecture as a design process and language that activates, mediates and politicizes the built environment and its subjects.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $500.00

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

Major Requirement | MArch (2yr) and (3yr): Architecture

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