Envision Resilience Challenge: Lewiston-Auburn, Maine

Surella Segu (ARCH) / Elizabeth Hermann (LDAR) / Jonathan Bell (INTAR)

The 2026 Three Architectures ‘Superstudio’ is the first of what has been proposed as an annual advanced elective studio to be shared by the three Architecture departments:

Architecture (ARCH), Landscape Architecture (LDAR) and Interior Architecture (INTAR).

The focus is on urban issues and rethinking the city in light of climate impacts and social and environmental justice issues - including issues of food sovereignty, equitable access to resources, affordability in housing, walkability, sustainable practices, urban heat island effects, and flooding. The purpose of this interdisciplinary studio is to address these issues through a multidisciplinary lens and a framework of collaboration - all skills that are needed to engage in an impactful practice. 2026 also offers an opportunity to partner with the New England-based organization Envision Resilience whose signature Challenge is an annual place-based, multi-university design studio that takes place in communities at the forefront of climate challenges throughout the Northeast. The Lewiston-Auburn, Maine twin city area is the subject of the 2026 Challenge and invites students to engage technical, ecological and social systems simultaneously, and to consider integrated design strategies that respond to the lived realities of this urban area and it’s rich mixture of 19 th -century French Canadian immigrants and more recent arrivals from Somalia and other African nations, while envisioning more resilient futures for all. A number of questions guide this investigation:

• What does climate resilience look like for an inland, post-industrial city?
• How might the Androscoggin River, its canals and surrounding farmlands become connectors rather than barriers—ecologically, socially and spatially?
• How can adaptation strategies also advance housing stability, food security, environmental justice and economic opportunity?
• How can a city support agricultural uses in the context of a changing climate, increasing development pressure and growing demand for locally produced food?
• How can design help make futures that are not only safer, but more hopeful, tangible and shared?

The course is open to upper-level undergrads and graduate students.

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

All Landscape Architecture graduate students at RISD are required to submit a Thesis Book that is the culmination of the work undertaken in the Advanced Design Research Studio (Thesis). The Thesis Book class is designed to support the written and graphic component of the Thesis Book. The course will provide resources to support the framing and reflection of the thesis work through writing. In addition, the graphic layout of the book will be used as a tool to help structure the inquiry into student's thesis topics.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

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

Autumn Site works is a grounded, creative space for a more attentive and reciprocal relationship between people and local biodiversity. Our weekly classroom will be an outdoor test plot at RISD’s Tillinghast Farm, where we will listen to visiting speakers, tend to plants and soil with our hands, and draw our close attention to the many life forms, forces, and surprises in the landscape. Each student will have the creative freedom to design an experimental land-based practice, installation, or event within the plot. Our work will be respectful of diverse ethics, from climate resilience to symbiosis and beauty. However, our learning direction will be focused on topics like the labor of caring for a landscape rich with relationships, local material sourcing for habitat creation, and community stewardship building.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Elective

Spring Site works is a grounded, creative space for a more attentive and reciprocal relationship between people and local biodiversity. Our weekly classroom will be an outdoor test plot at RISD’s Tillinghast Farm, where we will listen to visiting speakers, tend to plants and soil with our hands, and draw our close attention to the many life forms, forces, and surprises in the landscape. Each student will have the creative freedom to design an experimental land-based practice, installation, or event within the plot. Our work will be respectful of diverse ethics, from climate resilience to symbiosis and beauty. However, our learning direction will be focused on topics like the labor of caring for a landscape rich with relationships, local material sourcing for habitat creation, and community stewardship building.

Elective

It is estimated that since the early 1600’s, North American land in the United States has lost half of the wetland habitat that provided essential areas for wildlife, held water on the land, hydrated soils, and supported vast areas of wetland vegetation. Wetlands provide essential fish and wildlife habitat, supporting rare plants, animals, and birds. Wetlands also store carbon, filter pollutants from water, and retain floodwaters. However, the legacy of viewing marshes and swamps as wasteland, continues to result in the degradation and destruction of many freshwater wetlands by human activity. In this field-oriented seminar students will spend class time within these important habitats, learning to understand them for their varied forms, their biodiversity, and their ability to store carbon and water with the potential of ameliorating on-going climate changes. Through field emersion, students will learn to see the landscape for the evidence it holds of what wetland habitat once was. They will identify the plant species that depend on wetlands for their survival, and will become intimately familiar with the water and soil that support these plant species. Extensive reading will support field observations and conversation in the field. The policies that brought about wetland destruction as well as protection, will be topics covered, along with wetland banking and restoration. Final projects for this class will offer students an opportunity to explore how their studio work can inform salient aspects of these watery worlds.  

Estimated Cost of Materials: $75.00

Elective

This seminar explores the parallels between designing and constructing the ground. It's focus is on landform - analyzing it as part of a larger natural system; understanding its inherent opportunities and limitations; altering it for human use & occupation; and building it with varying construction methodologies. The means for this exploration will primarily be through three-dimensional representations with two dimensional contour plans; however, diagrams, sketches, sections, and narratives will be necessary throughout the semester.

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

Thesis Open Research provides a scaffold for graduate landscape architecture students to pursue thesis-related research during the Wintersession period between the Fall Landscape Research, Theory, and Design (RTD) or Sustainability Lab Studio courses and the Spring Thesis Studios. The course offers time, structure, and guidance for research conducted in anticipation of the formal design phase of the thesis.

Elective