Shirt Design introduces students to a multitude a ways to develop a shirt collection. 

Students will be encouraged to develop a greater understanding of materials and construction techniques, which can be applied in a wide range of creative projects spanning from product design to fine arts. 

The class will focus on the fundamentals of draping and drafting techniques, providing students with sewing skills by hand and with the machine. 

Students are encouraged to bring personal interests and ideas to this vigorous, technical and creative class that will be concludes with a presentation of the final shirt project. 

Elective

Concept to Clothing is a 3-credit elective undergraduate studio course open to undergraduate and graduate students (with the approval of faculty member Meg DeCubellis) who seek to learn the fundamental and technical principles of garment development, construction and design. This is a critical making studio which will focus on basic garment making for prototypes as well as supporting individual projects to be worn on the body. Students are expected to show evidence of physical making throughout this course while developing a deeper relationship to making clothing. Students will also tour local factories to witness the making of varying quantities of garments. A professional studio practice will filter through skill building in the areas of construction, draping, pattern making, garment development, fitting, industrial machine skills, and hand sewing techniques. The development process will include conceptualization, creating specifications, fabricating iterative prototypes, conducting supplier and material research to support each student’s thesis of study. Students are expected to have a project in mind which can be something that they have started to develop in their major. Because class discussion and participation is at the heart of this course, you are required to be in class for all demos and meetings which will determine a large portion of the final grade. Prior sewing experience is required.

Estimated Material Costs: $150.00 - $300.00

THE FACULTY MEMBER AND THE DEPARTMENT MAY ADJUST THE INFORMATION LISTED IN THIS SYLLABUS AND COURSE OUTLINE THROUGHOUT THE SEMESTER. THE AIM ALWAYS BEING TO BETTER SERVE STUDENTS BASED ON STUDIO PROGRESS, PERFORMANCE AND UNFORESEEN CONDITIONS.

Elective

This studio-elective course will follow a series of twelve lectures given at the South Kensington Museum as published in P.L. Simmonds, Animal Products. This seminal work served as a compilation of the trade exhibition collections from the 1851 Crystal Palace exposition that eventually served as the seed for the collections of the South Kensington Museum and finally the Branch Museum of the Department at Bethnal Green. These collections laid the foundation for much of the Victoria and Albert Museum collections (V&A) that in turn influenced the creation of RISD and the RISD Museum in 1877. This course will examine design and fashion, naturalist journals, and literature as a means to develop the students design vocabulary and materials palate. Students will compare the tastes and techniques of the Victorian era to contemporary design practices, with case studies of designers utilizing the natural world as a resource and source for design. Weekly lectures will introduce students to artists and designers of the 19th century and compare them to contemporary artists and designers. These introductory lectures will be paired each week with a specific material examination and hand-on exploration via materials demonstrations and a sample notebook. We will engage in readings, group discussions, critique of student Naturalist Journals, materials demonstrations, and examine historic and contemporary Museum objects within each theme material. Field trips to the RISD Museum will be augmented by visits to the Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab, RISD Materials library, The Providence Athenaeum, The Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology at Brown University, The New Bedford Whaling Museum, and The Museum of Natural History, Roger Williams Park.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $20.00

Elective

This introductory course lays the foundation for the design process through draping, pattern drafting and construction. Students make basic patterns and proceed with variations to develop pattern making skills and design concepts. Weekly textile seminars introduce students to fibers and yarns, fabric types, properties and uses.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00

Majors are pre-registered for this course by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Apparel Design Students. 

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

This class evolves around an exploration of identity, social identity and fashion, and how clothing might assume responses not only for the wearer but for the audience too. Although some say that appearances are vain, they are also a way for us to divulge and communicate much to the world. Many of our encounters remain in the domain of the visual and there is rarely time or space to facilitate getting to know a person. Looking and seeing therefore, can oftentimes generate assumptions based solely on appearances. These assumptions can be derived from an individual perspective, but more often than not, are formed and dictated by culture and stereotypes.The class will explore individual and social identities through wearables and how ‘They’ relates back to each of us/you. Identity, alter ego and ego will also be investigated as a means to examine the interactions that emerge via visibility and invisibility. Some of the questions that will be explored through research, discussions and collaborative activities.

• Who am I?

• Who would I like to be?

• How might clothing create a mask for a persona?

• How might I construct ideas of myself?

• How might clothing become a means to facilitate an altered experience and/or presence?

The course Sophomore Design: Identity/Identities incorporates 4 stages within the development of the course work and is taught by 2 different faculty that guide and support the progression of work from and within their unique expertise. Each Stage of the course builds of one another consecutively covering the areas or research, concept development, design principles, exploration in 2D and 3D developments and performance.

The course works to open students to experimental and alternative ways of making and presenting a garment, existing outside of industrial standards of mass produced fashion. It aims to unpack and disrupt no- tions of power in the fashion discipline, by allowing students to form an Alter-Ego that empowers them with the communication of their vision and the celebration of their identities.

Alter-Ego

“An alter ego (Latin for “other I”, “doppelgänger”) means an alternate self, which is believed to be distinct from a person’s normal or true

original personality. Finding one’s alter ego will require finding one’s other self, one with a different personality. The altered states of the ego may themselves be referred to as alterations. A distinct meaning of alter ego is found in the literary analysis used when referring to fictional literature and other narrative forms, describing a key character in a story who is perceived to be intentionally representative of the work’s author (or creator), by oblique similarities, in terms

“Beyoncé further explained that Sasha Fierce came about in an effort to separate her timid personality from her stage-slaying persona, giving her the courage to be free and seductive while performing. “Sasha Fierce is the fun, more sensual, more aggressive, more outspoken side and more glamorous side that comes out when I’m working and when I’m on the stage,” - Beyonce on Oprah 2008.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

Majors are pre-registered by the department. This course is a requirement for Sophomore Apparel Design Students. 

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

This course is an introduction to the creative and technical possibilities of the knitting machine. Through the development of knit swatches, the course will cover the following essentials of sweater knit design including graphing, calculating gauge and tension, shaping of a knit body, exploration of a diverse range of knit stitches, professional finishing of a knit garment, and how to select the best yarn to execute your final garment. Students will also develop unique trims and finishes to enhance their designs.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

In Design/Draw II, Junior students focus on designing for knitwear, experimenting three-dimensionally as they explore the unique properties of knit fabrics. Color, texture, yard, and stitch variations are examined as students also design using the diverse properties of machine knitwear. Students build on self-expression and visual communication to place their creative voices firmly at the center of their design.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $200.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

Students concentrate on designing with 'cut and sew' knit fabric. Through draping with knit fabrics on the form, students learn to utilize the inherent properties of knits. Instruction in 'cut and sew' construction is combined with pattern making techniques, enabling students to execute their concepts as finished garments.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $250.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

During three integrated studios, students learn professional collections from concept to presentation. Portfolio assignments are aimed at strengthening students' established styles and experimentation in new areas. Studios build on their draping, drafting and construction skills through individual instruction as they complete a collection for final presentation to the visiting critics. During studio, students explore varied means of presentation and capturing of their process.

Estimated Cost of Materials: $1,000.00

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

This class builds over two semesters, and works in concert with Senior Collection Development. As students begin to develop their thesis Collection, they will uncover what motivates them, what they aspire to in the context of their work and creative practice, as well as what they stand for in the world. The class fosters research, invests in the emotional experience of clothing: how it makes the wearer feel, where it comes from, who it serves. Communication is at the heart of the process, and moves between the visual, written, and the spoken word. Writing prompts are used to bridge thinking and making and students learn to articulate their creative process while developing a distinctive design language and identity. As students explore approaches to fashion/clothing as an embodied discipline, they investigate the sense orientated potential for their designs. Classes are navigated through group work, tutorial-based sessions, cross-disciplinary prompts and critiques.

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

Major Requirement | BFA Apparel Design

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 Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to dignity in their cities. In the market of the built environment, where does architecture start? You may think it is the napkin sketch or AutoCAD but think instead of something more mundane: the government official's zoning map or the development firm's financial projection. In the architectural profession, we often lament our lack of agency in the creation of space. The architect must wait for the client, the request for proposal, or the competition. We are then at the mercy of local, state, and federal policy-responding to regulations, sightlines, zoning, and more. But how can we see the mechanisms of governance and finance as inherent parts of design? The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to and dignity in their cities. Through assignments, readings, and discussions we will explore what is at stake in the urban environment and endeavor to discover new forms of design intervention that respond with nuance to those stakes.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to dignity in their cities. In the market of the built environment, where does architecture start? You may think it is the napkin sketch or AutoCAD but think instead of something more mundane: the government official's zoning map or the development firm's financial projection. In the architectural profession, we often lament our lack of agency in the creation of space. The architect must wait for the client, the request for proposal, or the competition. We are then at the mercy of local, state, and federal policy-responding to regulations, sightlines, zoning, and more. But how can we see the mechanisms of governance and finance as inherent parts of design? The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to and dignity in their cities. Through assignments, readings, and discussions we will explore what is at stake in the urban environment and endeavor to discover new forms of design intervention that respond with nuance to those stakes.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to dignity in their cities. In the market of the built environment, where does architecture start? You may think it is the napkin sketch or AutoCAD but think instead of something more mundane: the government official's zoning map or the development firm's financial projection. In the architectural profession, we often lament our lack of agency in the creation of space. The architect must wait for the client, the request for proposal, or the competition. We are then at the mercy of local, state, and federal policy-responding to regulations, sightlines, zoning, and more. But how can we see the mechanisms of governance and finance as inherent parts of design? The Core 3 Cities studio uses the lens of housing and housing policy to dissect the ways in which these architectural choices impact residents' access to and dignity in their cities. Through assignments, readings, and discussions we will explore what is at stake in the urban environment and endeavor to discover new forms of design intervention that respond with nuance to those stakes.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

Can Okinawa be a design laboratory for planetary futures?  How do we grow resilient and creative on a warming planet?

The Japanese mainland is moving toward a subtropical climate, and most regions of the world have experienced excessive heat in recent years. This course investigates the material ecologies of Okinawa, a subtropical island whose cultural and architectural identity has been shaped by climate, history, and politics. Okinawa’s arts and buildings evolved under the pressures of heat, humidity, typhoons, and salt air—conditions that are no longer exceptional, but increasingly the reality of our global present. With summers growing longer and hotter each year, what lessons might be drawn from Okinawa’s centuries of adaptation to help us design for a future of rising temperatures worldwide?

Okinawa, once an independent kingdom, is Japan’s southernmost prefecture, where a distinctive and cosmopolitan culture developed from its geopolitical position and subtropical environment. This culture flourished during the Ryukyu Kingdom (1429–1879), which spanned from the Muromachi period to the early Meiji era. In the 14th and 15th centuries, trade with China and Southeast Asia introduced techniques such as dyeing. These imported practices were uniquely adapted to the Ryukyu climate and sensibilities, giving rise to the rich material cultures of Okinawa.

From coral limestone fortifications to red clay roof tiles, from lacquerware and bingata textiles to the concrete structures of the postwar era, Okinawa offers a layered material landscape that embodies resilience, adaptation, and reinvention. Although one of the smallest prefectures in Japan, it ranks third nationwide in the number of designated traditional crafts. Students will examine how traditional crafts and building practices emerged from the island’s ecology, how architecture transformed under modern pressures, and how contemporary makers and designers are reimagining material practices for ecological survival.

Students will create a collective atlas of material textures and patterns, drawn directly from observation during site visits to craft studios, historic sites, and both traditional and contemporary architectural works. These drawings, compiled into a book, will represent not only the tactile qualities of Okinawa’s materials but also their embedded histories of climate, politics, and cultural exchange. More than documenting materials and textures, we will search for clues in an island culture that has long adapted to heat, humidity, salt air, and strong weather patterns—conditions now spreading across the globe. By situating Okinawa within the planetary condition of excessive heat, this course expands design thinking, treating materiality as a cultural and ecological system that can offer strategies and inspiration for resilience in a warming world. 

Registration is not available in Workday. Students must complete an application through RISD Global Summer Studies. A minimum GPA of 2.5 is required for all RISD students. Failure to remain in good academic standing can lead to removal from the course, either before or during the course. Additional information including deadlines and travel costs can be found on the Global Summer Studies website.

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.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

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.

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

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.

Major Requirement | BArch: Architecture