Ritchie Yao is an assistant professor in RISD’s Architecture department and a co-founder and partner at Dash Marshall, a Brooklyn/Detroit-based architecture and strategic design studio founded in 2009. Dash Marshall (Dash) believes that architecture without a story is just shelter. The studio works across scales—from designing the perfect place to read a book to developing urban proposals that help cities ensure new technologies, such as autonomous vehicles—and generates positive outcomes for everyday people.
Dash was recognized as a Next Progressive by Architect Magazine in 2020 and listed among AN Interior’s top 50 firms for 2020 and 2021. The studio has been featured in numerous publications, including Elle Decor, Architectural Digest Pro, Dwell, Curbed, Dezeen and The Architect’s Newspaper.
Before co-founding Dash, Ritchie gained valuable experience working for OMA and David Adjaye. At Rem Koolhaas’ Office of Metropolitan Architecture, he worked on a 25-story housing tower in NYC and Cornell University’s Milstein Hall. At David Adjaye Associates, he was a core member of the team working on the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Previously, Ritchie was a design critic in architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, where he taught core studios. He received an MArch I AP degree from Harvard Graduate School of Design and a BSE in Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo.
This course, the first in a two semester sequence, explores design principles specific to architecture. Two interrelated aspects of design are pursued:
the elements of composition and their formal, spatial, and tectonic manipulation
meanings conveyed by formal choices and transformations.
Estimated Cost of Materials: $50.00 - $200.00
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Sophomore Architecture Students.
Times: F | 1:10 PM - 6:10 PMInstructor(s): Ritchie YaoLocation(s): Bayard Ewing Building, Room 324Enrolled / Capacity: 12Status: Open
SECTION DESCRIPTION
This course connects the methods, traditions, and conventions of architectural drawing with contemporary technology and representational cultures. This course recognizes that for architects to operate productively, politically, socially, and ethically given the ubiquity of the digital image, both an advanced command of computational techniques and drawing techniques are immediately and primarily necessary. The digital image is the standard by which aesthetic content is transmitted, published and processed. Its pervasive role in contemporary architectural culture-and humanity-is mediated and confronted in this course. Relatedly, material drawing traditions are essential, valuable and provocative. The techniques covered in this studio-taught course include the manual and automated manipulation of digital images and material drawings at dramatically varied scales and dimensions. A structure of creative prompts continually positions the drawing and the image in parallel, with an emphasis on developing students' sensibilities, and capacity for both improvisational and scripted constructions. Students will create from memory, from life, from imagination, and from reference. As a result, students develop an architectural language that can engage multiple media and subjects.
Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. Enrollment is limited to Graduate Architecture Students.
