The advanced course studies multimedia drawing It explores the possibilities with the material and content of two dimensional expression. The class encourages greater connections with the design studios by testing and reevaluating design work through the lens of phenomenology and seriality. Scale and composition are emphasized in the detailed and constructed drawings that are required in class. Individual investigations are developed throughout this advanced course to encourage a way of making marks that connect with the various modes of exploration in their studio work.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $225.00

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This seminar builds on the class Material Logic to investigate and test landscape materials and construction methods with an emphasis on prototyping and digital fabrication. Students will learn to take an idea from concept to prototype to 1:1 construction. Through research, lectures, and site walks, this course will build student's understanding of current landscape construction methods and ask them to develop new materials and assemblies to respond to specific site and design considerations. Through exercises, students will advance their CAD and Rhino skills, as well as learn how to prototype ideas through the use of 3D printers and CNC machine.

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

Major Requirement | MLA-I Landscape Architecture

This seminar will bridge the foundations of landscape theory, research, and design methods in order to frame a process for students to examine contemporary issues in landscape architecture and define research questions that would contribute to creating new knowledge in the field. The course will include guest lectures from practitioners creating a body of research in the field. This seminar initiates the thesis process by asking students to formulate their own proposals for research through design.

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

Students will work within a guided research topic to develop a design investigation with defined objectives, methods, and outcomes. As a 9-credit studio, this course will also require that students design and execute a material, representational, or theoretical experiment tied to a design detail within their investigations. In this thesis studio, students will have periodic formal reviews with an advisory panel, and will use feedback from the panel to produce a book that gives a written and graphic presentation of the research context, process, and findings as well as a final assessment of the outcomes.

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

Since it's creation over 100 years ago, landscape architecture has expanded beyond horticultural preoccupations to a discipline that engages natural, political and cultural systems to build ecological and social resilience. This professional practice seminar explores contemporary practices of landscape architecture through the exploration of six current trends in practice: operating, researching, engaging, constructing, programming, and sustaining. These topics are explored and discussed through student research initiatives, in-class lectures, readings, case study presentations from a wide range of practitioners, office visits, and site visits. The goal of the course is to expose students to the variety of ways to practice landscape architecture today. Students are encouraged to ask questions, bring their own experiences to class, and be open to new ideas and perspectives.

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

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

In this course, we will study the historical, cultural and aesthetic foundations of the still life genre. Perceived as one of the lowest genres of art since ancient Greece, the still life has continually served as a negative space in which the dominant social and cultural values can be materialized, fetishized and preserved. Today, dismissed almost as an antiquated vestige of the classical tradition, the still life has in fact acquired a multiplicity of form and has become a site in which contemporary values can be identified, molded and reinterpreted. To arrive at our current moment, we will examine four major historical movements within the genre and their wider contexts:

1. 2. 3. Dutch Golden Age still life paintings in relation to Dutch trade and colonialism Modernist still life paintings in relation to the fracturing social order and advent of mass democracy Pop art still life paintings in relation to the rampant consumerism of post-war United States

4. Contemporary still life paintings in relation to social and political discourse Some artists that we will pay particular attention to: Adriaen Coorte, Rachel Ruysch, Edouard Manet, Vincent van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, Giorgio Morandi, Andy Warhol, Wayne Thiebaud, Jennifer Packer, Kerry James Marshall, Njideka Akunyili Crosby and Vija Celmins.

This course will be delivered in a combination of the seminar and studio formats. The coursework will include in-class exercises, alongside slide lectures, readings, and class discussions. Additionally, the students will make one still life painting for each of the four themes.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $80.00 - $200.00

Elective

The dream is a never-ending source of inspiration for artists, challenging reality with raw emotion and imagination. Often unclear and uncanny, a dream invites limitless investigation and interpretation. Monotype printmaking, a process that has supported artists' practice throughout history, possesses a similar nature to that of the dream: singular, backwards, fast, and unstable.

This course will explore how to use the language of dreams to serve a body of work. We will explore the significance of the dream and dreamer in the work of The Getty Tondal, Odilon Redon, Hilma af Klint, Demetrio Urruchúa, Bea Parsons, and Jung's Red Book, and many more. Using the monotype process, students will utilize dream imagery to refine their critical thinking skills. Throughout the course, students will complete weekly studio assignments that highlight the monotype techniques demonstrated in class, including additive, subtractive, ghost, trace, and stencil, and end with a final assignment exhibiting their accumulated development. Additionally, two research-based presentations, a daily dream journal, and individual and group critiques will support the evolution of students' conceptual and technical skills.

By the end of the course, students will be able to build imagery and translate narratives through monotypes. They will have developed an understanding of symbolic dream imagery, feel confident in presenting and participating in group discussions, and possess an extensive personal visual language. With no prerequisites, this introductory monotype course is presented by the painting department and is open to undergraduate and graduate students from any department.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $265.00

This course is intended for non-majors as a Non-Major Studio Elective (NMSE) and does not fulfill the Painting major elective requirements for degree completion.

Elective

This graduate level wintersession studio course is comprised of one external faculty member who is a well-established professional artist working in the field of painting. This course is designed to support second-year painting students in continuing to grow towards their culminating Spring Thesis work. Students will develop their individual works alongside rigorous guidance and feedback from the Professor. They can expect to both expand and focus their inquiries and methods. Activities will include long-form studio visits, group discussions, reading assignments, collaborative assignments and group critique. There will also be at least one field trip to New York City.

This class is largely structured around intensive 1:1 long-form studio visits with whole group meetings to engage in discussions around studio work, assigned readings, collaborative activities, and a final group critique. Students should expect to spend a significant amount of time working in their studios outside of class periods. Sign up sheets for Studio Visits 1-2 hours long will be emailed each week, please check your emails regularly.

This course is open only to second-year Graduate Painting Students.

Elective

Painting from Observation is a team taught for 6 credits. The class meets on both Schedule A and Schedule B in Wintersession.

Drawing, collage, printmaking and painting will introduce students to contemporary painting as practiced by the RISD Painting Department. This course is a comprehensive introduction to painting. It is designed to develop confidence and experience with paint and painting. We will examine historical and contemporary trends and paint from life models and photo sources. Fundamental techniques for basic ground preparation, oil painting mediums and direct as well as in direct processes will be taught. Representational painting will be the primary focus but experiences in abstract painting will also be encouraged. We will learn abstract principles that organize composition, depict spatial illusion and describe form while developing a shared language for critiques. No prior painting experience is required.

This course is not available for registration in Workday. To register, please contact the Registrar's Office at registrar@risd.edu. If seats are available, students will be added according to their registration appointment time. Registration will close once the course reaches capacity.

This course is intended for non-majors as a Non-Major Studio Elective (NMSE) and does not fulfill the Painting major elective requirements for degree completion.

Elective

This studio course considers how painting and drawing can engage landscape in a time of ecological instability and environmental change. Students will develop work that responds to land, atmosphere, weather, memory, and changing ideas of place. Through studio projects, critique, and discussion of historical and contemporary artists, the course will examine how contemporary image-making can register both the beauty and volatility of the natural world.

This is a hands-on course, designed for advanced painting students who are fascinated by color, surface, transformation and alchemy, DIY processes, craftmanship, invention, and the stuff of paint. It is for those who are eager to dive deep into all sorts of materials, methods and techniques. The objective of the class is to arm students with the tools and resources to figure out how to make what they imagine and to expand their practice through material exploration and information sharing. With an emphasis on experimentation, play, research and development; advanced students explore, problem solve and implement specific grounds, paints, supports, mediums and tools into their own practices. The level of specialization and expertise students may eventually desire for their work could require seeking the advice of paint manufacturers, conservators, fabricators, other artists or even experts in other fields. How to identify and acquire knowledge outside of one's comfort zone, approaching and finding a common terminology with peers and specialists is also a part of this course. Relevant art historical and contemporary methodologies, techniques and materials will be presented. Environmental Health and Safety guidelines that apply to painting practice and painting studio safety will be an integral part of this course.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $150.00

Elective

This first-year graduate seminar approaches painting as a technical skill, a historical practice and an intellectual project. Weekly sessions begin with group discussions of key readings about recent painting. Readings are organized in three sections. The first looks backward, to the problem of medium that preoccupied modernist painting and, residually, contemporary practices until the 1980s. The second section looks at the academy, the institution and the art market, and their effect on how painting is produced, disseminated, discussed and received. The third, the most speculative, looks laterally at a range of contemporary practices and their cultural frameworks from the 1990s to the present. Frequent studio visits will occur and drive some of the reading and discussion.

Please contact the instructor for permission to register. Preference is given to Graduate Painting Students.

Elective

This studio-based course will provide the foundation necessary to understand basic color theory and practice in painting, art and design. A historical and cultural perspective will be introduced to inform ongoing color studies executed in the studio. Students will acquire the vocabulary to articulate color phenomena and the means to exploit the expressive potential of color in their work. Color studies will be principally created with gouache, and a variety of other materials and means will also be explored. Lectures, demonstrations, and museum visits will supplement studio work. (An in class presentation is required).

Elective