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

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

Queer + Feminist Futures explores critical questions about power, knowledge, body, identity, community, and social change through collective immersion into the intertwined sites of feminist/queer theory and feminist/queer world-making practices. Drawing on the inter/anti-disciplinary methods of gender and sexuality studies, we will ask what feminist and queer futures look like and what histories and legacies (personal, political, ecological) we must reckon with in order to co-create those futures. Our approach will take up the critical tools of reflective writing and creative expression to explore key queer/feminist texts and examine archival and popular sources from art, music, film, social media, and more. By interrogating the past/future binary, Queer + Feminist Futures proposes a non-binary method of thought and action that reflects the nuance and vitality queer/feminist life. 
 

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.

Please contact the department for permission to register.

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

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

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

From the Women in Black movement and the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo to reproductive injustices in Gaza, and from indigenous gender movements in Ecuador to post-genocide gender politics in Rwanda, the course will address a wide range of topics and regional contexts through a critical, intersectional, and multidisciplinary approach. Contrary to narratives and frameworks of analysis that approach women of color, queer and trans communities, indigenous and dispossessed peoples, as antithetical to international relations or as passive subjects of militarization, forced migration, environmental disasters, or capitalist extractivism, we will center these communities as key actors and knowledge producers. Concomitantly,  we will unpack the paradoxes of, on one hand, growing global recognition of gender mainstreaming and gender equality in international human rights law and, on the other hand, the parallel rise of anti-gender politics and ideologies. Lastly, the course will explore the potentialities of emerging transnational gender solidarities and feminist futurities in challenging heteropatriarchal sovereignty, necropolitical border regimes, and rising authoritarianism.

Elective

Have you ever wondered how social situations guide how we think about and act toward others, what determines who we love and who we hate, how we form attitudes about our own and others behavior, what determines whether we will help or hurt others, or how we construct knowledge about the self? If so, social psychology addresses these questions and many more. Social psychology is the science of how others influence the way people think, feel, and act. The aim of this course is to familiarize you with current and classic research and theory in social psychology, help you to develop critical thinking skills about social-psychological phenomena, and stimulate you to think about the implications of social-psychological research for everyday living. For this course, students will complete readings from a textbook and articles. There be will be four quizzes and a final project applying one concept within social psychology to everyday life.

Elective

Why did ancient Peruvians use knots to write numbers? How did Persians traditionally make ice without electricity? In this studio, we will examine these and other questions by recreating traditional technologies and examining different forms of knowledge from around the globe, in order to open the door for other viewpoints in our design practice.

We will begin the semester by exploring different cultural understandings of concepts like time and safety. After recreating some of these traditional technologies, we will then respectfully build new objects based on these ancient approaches.

In the second half of the semester, we will examine the specific cultures and subcultures that we each belong to and design new objects and technologies that spring from these different ways of being.

This studio will involve lots of hands-on exploration and thinking through making – please come with a curious and open mind and be ready to have some serious fun!
 

Major Requirement | BFA Industrial Design

What do these words mean and what is their relationship to each other in the architectural design disciplines? Each word is packed with complex and evolving meanings that reflect the state of human knowledge about the environments in which we live and in which we intervene. Each word reflects our understanding of systems, physical, cultural and social, biotic and abiotic, as well as our aspirations to conserve, restore, or reshape those systems. Each word is ubiquitous in the contemporary quest to construct a sustainable, resilient future. But do we really understand what they mean? Are they critically interdependent or can they be considered separately? This studio will examine these questions with the twin objectives of establishing an evolving and dynamic understanding of the terms and generating working methods that respond to the complexities of scale encountered in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

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

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

What do these words mean and what is their relationship to each other in the architectural design disciplines? Each word is packed with complex and evolving meanings that reflect the state of human knowledge about the environments in which we live and in which we intervene. Each word reflects our understanding of systems, physical, cultural and social, biotic and abiotic, as well as our aspirations to conserve, restore, or reshape those systems. Each word is ubiquitous in the contemporary quest to construct a sustainable, resilient future. But do we really understand what they mean? Are they critically interdependent or can they be considered separately? This studio will examine these questions with the twin objectives of establishing an evolving and dynamic understanding of the terms and generating working methods that respond to the complexities of scale encountered in the landscape.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

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

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