Alumni-led firm, NADAAA, receives 60th Annual Progressive Architecture Award
NADAAA receives 60th Annual Progressive Architecture Award for Dortoir Familial residence located in Ramatuelle, France. The project was conceived as a central gathering space for a displaced, multicultural extended family, residence that can house between five and 22 people in a flexible dormitory setup. Principal-in-charge: Nader Tehrani (B.Arch 1986) Project Manager: Harry Lowd (M.Arch 2003) Local Consultants: continue reading…
Solar Decathlon Corporate Workshop in Erfurt
On Tuesday, March 26th, the RISD/Brown/Erfurt Solar Decathlon team invited energy and construction industry representatives to a meeting at the Fachhochschul in Germany to discuss sponsorship for the 2014 competition in Versailles, France. In the morning, the students presented their design process in German and English, and introduced the three institutions they represent. After a continue reading…
Architectural Analysis Course Opens with Axons
Architectural Analysis is a new course that expands upon the concepts of Architectural Projection, which was also taught for the first time last fall. The coordinator is Chris Bardt and the instructors are Hansy Better, Peter Dorsey, Carl Lostritto, and Pari Riahi. Students explore one of a series of canonical 20th century buildings for the continue reading…
Architecture and the Brain
What is reality? How is our mind formed from a 3 lb. organ? What constitutes our sense of self? How do learning and memory happen? The human brain is the new frontier in science and medicine. Our capacity to probe its functions has reached a point where we can now emulate brain processes to design continue reading…
Computing Drawing: Animating Thick Surfaces, Studio Update
This studio explores the role of computation as medium for thinking and making. This means avoiding the treatment of the computer as a tool to help solve already defined problems. It means going deeper than using software. It means operating outside the bounds of the digital. Perhaps most importantly, it means conflating the action of continue reading…
Bauhaus & the City
In Bauhaus & the City (Advanced Studio) we’re working on the legacy of the Bauhaus as it relates to urban issues. To be perfectly candid, I didn’t know if there was anything there, but we’ve already found documented connections between Kandinsky and the planners of Moscow after the revolution, Bayer’s shift from typography to topography continue reading…
Rahoul Singh (RISD Architecture Alumni)
Rahoul Singh earned his degree in both architecture and in the fine arts at RISD, where his field of concentration was the History, Theory and Criticism of Art and Architecture. He is a visiting faculty in the departments of architecture and urban planning at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi and divides continue reading…
Architecture Faculty on Exhibit at RISD Museum
Running from Friday, Fevruary 22 through Sunday, March 17, the RISD Faculty Biennial is “An inspiring visual buffet” (Providence Phoenix). This longstanding tradition showcases studio work by RISD’s outstanding full- and part-time faculty in painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, graphic design, industrial design, architecture, and more. The Architecture department’s Chris Bardt, Kyna Leski, Jack Ryan, Rachel Stopka of continue reading…
Lisa Moffitt (M.Arch 2005) Interview
This alumni interview was conducted in February 2013 by Camila A. Morales (M.Arch 2013). Lisa Moffitt graduated from the Masters of Architecture program in 2005, in this interview she shares her experiences at risd as well as her current work post-graduation. C:What has changed since you were at risd? L: This is a hard question continue reading…
Avant-Garde Doesn’t Give Up – final project
For the final project of this studio, students were encouraged to elaborate on the experiments of the first part of the semester by working with space directly. They had a choice to develop proposals for an architectural structure influenced by the grammar of filmmaking or to appropriate and transform an existing space for the installation continue reading…
Greg Nemes (M.Arch 2012) Interview
This alumni interview was conducted in November 2012 by Camila A. Morales (M.Arch 2013). Greg Nemes graduated from the Masters of Architecture program in June 2012, in this interview he shares his experiences at risd as well as his current work post-graduation. C What has changed while you were at RISD? G My thoughts on continue reading…
Where are the Utopian Visionaries?: Architecture of Social Exchange
In this radical book, architects, historians, and theorists survey the inventive, low cost work being done in obscure places to make architecture into a force for sustainable growth and social justice. The efforts are Utopian not charitable in aim. This new breed of architect-activists is endeavoring to diversity if not reinvent their profession by engaging continue reading…
Popup Alumni club
Chris Bardt, Graduate Director and Kyna Leski, Dept. Head are here in Hong Kong to serve as external examiners at the Architecture School at the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), where Patrick Hwang, (Arch ’98) is faculty. There is a vibrant presence of RISD alums from the Architecture Dept. and ID here in Hong continue reading…
Modeling form and Phenomena
In the last post on this topic it was noted that, “the Architectural Projection course continues to oscillate between media.” The same is still true two weeks later as students have adapted their methods of measure to include the translation of physical information into the space of a digital model. The most recent prompt asks continue reading…
Urban Design Principles
We began by sending our students to Boston to “get lost”. Each group was sent to a different one of Boston’s many distinctive neighborhoods to explore. These were Back Bay, Beacon Hill, the North End, South Boston Waterfront, the South End and the West End. They were directed to emerge at a particular transit stop continue reading…
Notes from the 3rd Floor Studios:
November 9. Sorry, I’ve fallen behind with the updates of the Design Principles studio. We finished the second project a couple weeks ago. It still marvels me that we start with lines–or knots, whatever–and a few weeks later we’re discussing questions of space, scale, relation with the ground, structure and enclosure. Why do we do continue reading…
Architecture Department on risd.edu
Hand Meets Machine Mar 01, 2013
For the 70 first-year graduate and undergraduate students required to take the fall 2012 course Architectural Projection, the first assignment couldn’t have been more straightforward. Draw a still life from a fixed point of view, using any medium – charcoal, pencil, paint. What came next, explains Professor Christopher Bardt BArch 83, was a far less obvious assignment, but one that gets at the essence of architectural practice: moving visual information between the page and the object in a systematic, measurable way.
Reconnecting Providence
Jan 31, 2013
In July 2011, Rhode Island Governor Lincoln Chafee signed a bill that set the stage for a major transformation of the cityscape in downtown Providence. The I-195 Commission Bill cleared the way for naming a group to oversee the redevelopment of nearly 40 acres of land freed up by the relocation of the I-195 highway. The project marks a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to restore what was once a vital, cohesive area between downtown and the city’s Jewelry District. But there’s just one problem, says Professor Emeritus Friedrich St. Florian: Of the seven members serving on the I-195 Commission, not one is an architect...
Reimagining the Industrial Waterfront
Dec 03, 2012
Graduate students enrolled in Scales of Operation in the Waterfront have big ideas for the Brooklyn Navy Yard. In the fall studio taught by Senior Critic Enrique Martinez MID 98, students are envisioning fantastical ways to reinvent the 300-acre site that was once America’s leading naval shipyard.Though the site has been transformed into a modern industrial park, a large portion is abandoned. Once the naval yard’s military operations ceased in 1966, many of the facilities that had been used to construct US battleships quietly fell into ruin. “It’s a ghost place in some areas,” Martinez explains. “The piers are in decay...