Thesis Project
Thesis Studio
RISD Architecture
Spring 2024

Prerequisite:
Thesis Seminar
Fall 2023

This thesis studio follows on from the ARCH-2196 Thesis Sem: Creative Process course. Work completed in the Fall seminar and Wintersession Discursive Workshop will serve as a foundation for the Spring thesis, which is focused on project development and execution. It is a space for final-year students to produce a comprehensive body of independent work that ties their research with acts of design — tested and synthesized through various means of making, representation, and exhibition.

[Currently advising 9 theses]

CRS_SP24_WASTEWORKS

waste/works
Advanced Studio
RISD Architecture
Spring 2024

FORTHCOMING:

WASTE WORKS. This studio investigates the metabolic material economies of construction and demolition (C&D) waste, and dreams of sustainable building labor futures amid the climate crisis. As the built environment’s relationships with materiality are reoriented from resource (capitalist extraction of ‘cheap nature’) to resourcefulness (creative material management), we will leverage its waste streams and byproducts toward more circular institutions, more social ‘supply chains,’ and more environmentally energetic architectures.


NOTE: We will be engaging with the RISD Nature Lab throughout the semester for construction ‘cooking’ and material experiments. Taking resourcefulness as an ethos, the studio expects students to get creative with material sourcing and explore low-footprint approaches to model-making. Prepare to get your hands dirty!


This design studio is an extension of the D.E.P.O.T. / Gross Domestic Practices exhibition held at RISD Architecture in Fall 2023.

CRS_Winter23_ISP

Architectonic Weaving
RISD Independent Study Project (ISP)
Wintersession 2023

Advisor to MFA Textiles student Ella Son on a month-long independent study project over the Winter. Ella will be working on a textile 'mapping' potentially culminating in a public installation piece of some kind.

CRS_2023_VENICE

Stones of Venice: A Critical Geology
RISD Global Summer Studio
June-July 2023

This 3-week, 3-credit summer studio critically investigates the "stones" of Venice: brick, Carrara marble, Istrian stone and trachite form the geological crust of the city that experiences regular inundation, material erosion, physical traffic, and salt action. By attending to the space immediately above (and below) Venice’s watermark, this studio flips the perspective on the built environment through a close reading of its ground cover. Students will develop works that represent, document, and reimagine Venice's ground. Looking beyond the touristic gaze, we will be directly engaging the city’s materialites, layers, and proximities to water.

The studio’s final student exhibition and concluding conversation was held at Palazzo Bembo, Venice

Co-taught with Haley MacKeil, printmaker / papermaker and RISD EFS critic.

Collaborator: European Cultural Academy

CRS_FA22-SP23_THESIS

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Thesis Seminar & Project Studio
RISD Architecture
Fall 2022 / Spring 23

This course supports thesis students in their research and exploration phase prior to the Spring Thesis Studio. It provides space for the deepening and sharpening of independent, critical thought on urgent questions in architecture.

The course material exists at the intersection of the material (objects, architecture, cities, environments, natural features) and the seemingly immaterial (media, politics, knowledge networks, legal boundaries, economics, infrastructure). While broad in framework, this intersection helps us examine forms and sites through their ‘soft’ relations and values — and to ask what has to change in this picture if we were to imagine a more just, less extractive future.

[Advised 9 theses]