It’s that time of the year again — time to choose your Spring Studio course. With final decisions due just around the corner next Tuesday, we at RISD-ID.org wanted to a run down and summary of each course to help you make your decision.
In addition, faculty will be available for conversation and consultation from 9:30 am to 11:00 am on Tuesday, February 21st on the 6th floor. If you are unable to make it to the faculty Q+A, don’t freak — contact the instructor by email or email Maureen with any questions.
And now, without further ado, your six credit studio options offered at the Rhode Island School of Design this Spring…
Yeadon’s work in the Faculty Biennial
ID-24ST-01 Peter Yeadon | Reactive Matter
The topic of the studio is actually the primary focus of Peter Yeadon‘s research, delving into how new materials with novel properties can product innovative solutions to a variety of problems from water conservation to energy generation and everywhere in between. In this studio, Yeadon says students will create three projects that progress from predictable materials, through smart materials, to nanostructured materials and devices.
“Together, we will begin out study by constructing a Rube Goldberg machine of solids and fluids, to consider various forms of potential energy (e.g. gravity, elasticity, kinetic) that any material can store and release. For the second project, each student will design and make an object of their own invention that exploits the properties of smart materials that change shape and/or change color.” Sound pretty awesome.
Valentini’s famous work, featured as RI’s best
ID-24ST-05 Andrea Valentini | Soft Goods: Objects and Wearables Through Material Manipulation
Andrea Valentini, an alumnus of RISD INTAR ’95, will be coming back to the campus to teach what she knows best — softgoods. Valentini is well known for her line of purses and bags, but has dabbled in almost every field of design. The course will attempt to “re-define soft goods” in the sense of breaking the connotation of a soft good as being “a highly consumable product intended to have a life span of 3 years or less. The manufacturing industries that produce these so-called “soft goods” refer to these fabricated products as non-durable, semi-durable or perishable items.” In this studio, students will design three different consumer prototypes, utilizing unconventional materials. If excellence is achieved on all levels of execution the product or collection will be presented for consideration in the shop of The Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
Robert Dodd’s cast-iron bookends, made in this course
ID-24ST-06 Michael Beresford | Cast Iron
The cast iron class is back again, and still taught by the one and only Michael Beresford. Students in this class will learn about the methods and processes of iron-casting, including metal flow, shrinkage, draft, etc. Students will be required to do three projects, through which they will acquire better wood working skills and, of course, solid and coherent form development. This studio will be extremely hands-on, with students designing and constructing patterns for objects to be cast at Cumberland Foundry.
Photo from Anson Cheung, who took the NASA Studio last year
ID-24ST-07 Michael Lye | NASA: Design for Extreme Environments: L2 Design Reference Architecture
Do you spend late nights up wondering what it would be like to be in space? Eat space ice cream all day? What about how extreme environments that create extraordinary challenges to human physiological and psychological existence where common expectations for safety, comfort and performance need to be radically redefined? If you answered yes to the third question, this studio is perfect for you. Michael Lye teaches the NASA studio, which will challenge students to design a facility as small and lightweight as possible, but still able to support a crew of 4 for up to 2 months, support EVA operations, support robotic operations, allow observation of the lunar far side, and enable a broad suite of other science goals. With a goal to imagine design solutions that minimize mass and volume, yet still allows the crew to perform their tasks, this studio will work as a team to design potential solutions that will meet NASA’s goals in innovative and creative ways and ultimately to mockup – in full-scale – a potential solution to serve as a design reference for NASA’s further studies.
Robert Wells’ wallets, crafted in Waste for Life
ID-24ST-08 Patricia Gruits | Design for Social Entrepreneurship: Waste for Life
Last but surely not least, Waste for Life, taught by Patricia Gruits will teach students how to create products made out of garbage or “practice social entrepreneurship,” as it is formally known. The studios is part of an ongoing collaboration between the non-profit, Waste for Life, and Brown University. Throughout the semester, visiting speakers will come to the studio and discuss relevant topics ranging from product design, appropriate technology, material science and business plans.
If you haven’t yet, you should probably check your email and discover the slew of filed you have just received from Maureen. You are asked to list your five (5) studio choices in order of preference on the lottery form.
Posted by Carly Ayres | Date Posted: 16 February, 2012