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

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

Building upon the research, explorations and discourses that began during the fall, students are prepared to be resourceful, feeling thinkers who use fashion/clothing as a platform for diverse cultural dialogue. They refine and execute a series of works that demonstrate their philosophy, vision, and establishes their authentic design language and identity. As they develop the capacity to express their mission and concepts in their fullest form/s, they are better equipped to communicate their ideas to their intended audience, and potential collaborators. The two semesters culminate in a portfolio, lookbook, film short and written essay. Students also have the opportunity to collaborate with International Flavors and Fragrances on the scent of their collection. 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

Building upon the research, explorations and discourses that began during the fall, students are prepared to be resourceful, feeling thinkers who use fashion/clothing as a platform for diverse cultural dialogue. They refine and execute a series of works that demonstrate their philosophy, vision, and establishes their authentic design language and identity. As they develop the capacity to express their mission and concepts in their fullest form/s, they are better equipped to communicate their ideas to their intended audience, and potential collaborators. The two semesters culminate in a portfolio, lookbook, film short and written essay. Students also have the opportunity to collaborate with International Flavors and Fragrances on the scent of their collection. 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 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 second core studio addresses the agency of the building to simultaneously construct new spatial, social, and material orders in the context of the contemporary city. The second core studio situates architecture as the strategic interplay of spatial and constructive concepts towards specific aesthetic, social, and performative ends. The studio seeks to create a productive friction between abstract orders (form, pattern, organization), technical systems (structure, envelope), and the contingencies of real-world conditions (site, climate, politics). The studio asks students to link disciplinary methods to extra-disciplinary issues, with concentrated forays into the realms of structure, material, and critical preservation. Students iteratively develop architectural concepts, ethical positions, and experimental working methods through a series of focused architectural design projects with increasing degrees of complexity, culminating in the design of a mid-scale public building in an urban context.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The second core studio addresses the agency of the building to simultaneously construct new spatial, social, and material orders in the context of the contemporary city. The second core studio situates architecture as the strategic interplay of spatial and constructive concepts towards specific aesthetic, social, and performative ends. The studio seeks to create a productive friction between abstract orders (form, pattern, organization), technical systems (structure, envelope), and the contingencies of real-world conditions (site, climate, politics). The studio asks students to link disciplinary methods to extra-disciplinary issues, with concentrated forays into the realms of structure, material, and critical preservation. Students iteratively develop architectural concepts, ethical positions, and experimental working methods through a series of focused architectural design projects with increasing degrees of complexity, culminating in the design of a mid-scale public building in an urban context.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The second core studio addresses the agency of the building to simultaneously construct new spatial, social, and material orders in the context of the contemporary city. The second core studio situates architecture as the strategic interplay of spatial and constructive concepts towards specific aesthetic, social, and performative ends. The studio seeks to create a productive friction between abstract orders (form, pattern, organization), technical systems (structure, envelope), and the contingencies of real-world conditions (site, climate, politics). The studio asks students to link disciplinary methods to extra-disciplinary issues, with concentrated forays into the realms of structure, material, and critical preservation. Students iteratively develop architectural concepts, ethical positions, and experimental working methods through a series of focused architectural design projects with increasing degrees of complexity, culminating in the design of a mid-scale public building in an urban context.

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

Major Requirement | MArch: Architecture (3yr)

The second core studio addresses the agency of the building to simultaneously construct new spatial, social, and material orders in the context of the contemporary city. The second core studio situates architecture as the strategic interplay of spatial and constructive concepts towards specific aesthetic, social, and performative ends. The studio seeks to create a productive friction between abstract orders (form, pattern, organization), technical systems (structure, envelope), and the contingencies of real-world conditions (site, climate, politics). The studio asks students to link disciplinary methods to extra-disciplinary issues, with concentrated forays into the realms of structure, material, and critical preservation. Students iteratively develop architectural concepts, ethical positions, and experimental working methods through a series of focused architectural design projects with increasing degrees of complexity, culminating in the design of a mid-scale public building in an urban context.

Students 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)

As over half the world's population has come to live in cities, urbanization has moved to the center of the environmental debate. This course will provide an interdisciplinary engagement between Sociology and Architecture to reflect on the past, present and future of ecological urbanism. Co-taught by professors from Architecture and Liberal Arts, the seminar will interrogate the ways in which green urban design has been conceptualized to date. It will explore cutting edge contemporary debates around the future of the green urban project and ask students to think forward into the future.

Elective

The studio is a collaboration with Fabric Arts Festival - Fall River and Walk&Talk Azores, focused on the impact design-build has within the public realm. This course emphasizes and develops skills and techniques for students to engage with a community and work collaboratively toward the development of an installation. Co-taught by a visiting artist (Nuno Pimenta) and a RISD Architecture faculty member (Anastasia Laurenzi), students will learn about public art practices, creative place-making strategies and how to develop creative projects in collaboration with community stakeholders.

Students will:

- Learn methods and techniques to support and structure community-organization-designer relationships

- Gain at-scale fabrication and design-build skills 

- Learn models and methods of design collaboration

Estimated Cost of Materials: $100.00 - $200.00

Elective

An introduction to the principles of architectural design beginning with a close examination of materials, forces and the human body. The examination will progressively widen in scope to include issues of form, space, structure, program and site. This condensed architectural studio is intended for freshmen and students outside the Division of Architecture and Design.

Elective

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 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)