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Intrigues And Priorities : Critical Thinking And Contemporary Art In Visual Arts Education, Connor Phillips

Masters Theses

This thesis looks at how arts education can respond to the context of the 21st century by focusing on critical thinking and contemporary art in visual arts education. I argue that art as a subject has the potential to educate youth beyond mere aesthetic, formal art skills. Its inherent flexibility to encompass all interests, cultures, and backgrounds makes it a truly inclusive subject and the multiplicity that follows provides students with opportunities for cross-associative and critical thinking. If utilized in an education context, it can be the necessary conduit for engaging students, respecting their intrigues, and offering a space to …

Lighting : An Atrium Core To Reconnect With The Sun, Quan Lei

Masters Theses

At the Rhode Island School of Design, students work so much that they treat their studio as home; the majority stay in studio past midnight, which leads to lack of sleep. How to improve students’ physical and mental health is a question demanding immediate investigation, particularly as relates to rest. According to the scientists at the Lighting Research Center (LRC) in Troy, N.Y, engagement with daylight environments increase occupant productivity and comfort, and provide the mental and visual stimulation necessary to regulate circadian rhythms, encouraging more restful sleep. Students cannot function healthily because their busy schedules remove them from the …

Creating Access And Equity In Arts Education : Strategic Partnerships For Systemic Change, Colleen C. Andrews

Masters Theses

Creating Access and Equity in Art Education: Strategic Partnerships for Systemic Change examines the diminished state of art education in United States public schools, reveals how nonprofit arts organizations supplement what is lacking in the current educational system, and offers current examples, based on interviews, to place these issues in context. A history of the National Endowment for the Arts and an examination of arts funding, both public and private, provides a backdrop for the weakened state of the arts in schools. Exploring educational policies such as No Child Left Behind and the Every Student Succeeds Act reveals how federal …

Healing Landscapes, Siyi He

Masters Theses

This thesis divided to three parts; it mainly looks at the scenario of healing landscapes in the Financial District. Phase one focused on the overall history and site condition of the Financial District, and tried to combine it with the typology of a traditional healing landscape. New typologies of healing landscape for high density and unhealthy urban areas were explored. Phase two evaluated various site conditions and documented the flow of people in the Financial District. The typology of healing practice forms was developed. Phase three tried to locate the specific location of healing practice paths and the area of …

How To Get School Children Access To Urban Farming By Activating Vacant Land And Rooftops, Yixin Ren

Masters Theses

The thesis topic is how to get school children access to urban farming by activating vacant land and rooftops.

Phase one focuses on research about the rooftop urban farming systems in New York. As a high density and high land value city, New York is one of the cities with the largest number of rooftop farms in the United States. People use urban rooftop farms as a medium to improve community engagement and improve environmental issues. For phase one, this thesis researched the operation and conditions of existing rooftop farms, and evaluated the advantages and disadvantages of them to figure …

Creative Collisions : A Risd Case Study, Hannah Liongoren

Masters Theses

Creative collisions play an important role in artistic work. These encounters broaden an artist’s perspective, exposing them to new processes, ideas, disciplines, and collaborators. The exact nature of creative collisions is difficult to pin down, as they flourish in an ever-changing mix of social interaction and creative inspiration in a setting of multidisciplinary work. A little-known example of a serendipitous collision between artists occurred between Gustav Klimt and designer Emilie Floge, whose individual medium and style influenced the others’ work, and together they dominated the Viennese Secession movement. A similar creative relationship developed between Charles and Ray Eames who met …

Imagine Of Space : Rest(Ing) Rooms For High-Stressed Risd Students, Fang Ho

Masters Theses

Th e Rhode Island School of Design as an arts-cultivating institution endeavors to provide abundant resources to mentally and physically support students. Even though the campus provides various mental health resources, the expression of depression, eating disorder and suicide from students has never diminished. RISD students work under high-stress conditions caused by their assignments, expectations from others and themselves, and the environment surrounding them.

Studios and work areas become spaces associated with stress and negative atmosphere. Th e materials, ceiling, fl oor and even the breathing air hint at this gray emotion. If a space where art students spend the …

Living Rooms We Don't Live In Anymore, Caroline Kable

Masters Theses

During my time at RISD, I have discovered terms and theories such as defensible space, socio physical phenomena, the Savannah Hypothesis, Christopher Alexanders Intimacy Gradient. All of these things have been amalgamating into a defensible argument to the intuitive feelings I’ve had my whole life, and have been attempting to imbue into my work. If anything, my thesis body of work is one next step in a lifelong pursuit of discovering what is it to live- how to define and manipulate the intangible bounds of human life and experience; of the millions of tiny moments and decisions that make up …

Materializing Conflict And Resilience, Neta Ron

Masters Theses

As I was growing up, making objects felt like a superpower. It was, and still is enchanting to take an idea and transform it to an existing, tangible thing. I grew up in a family that encouraged self-sufficiency and creativity. Art has always been a great part of my life and it is an anchor that I rely on when I feel that I need to strengthen myself emotionally. In the last two years, I have been focused on understanding what is the role of making in my life, and why I am attracted to making jewelry. My work allows …

Good Times, Tim Stoelting

Masters Theses

In this body of work, I set out to show an exaggerated display of the manipulation consumers face everyday Attaching stories to objects drastically increases their value. In benign settings, this might elevate a simple trinket into a family heirloom or drive a bidding war for a piece of gum chewed by a celebrity. On the adverse side, a story can play with our emotions to turn a desire into a need.

In this way, fear-based stories are a particularly powerful motivator; they can drive people to the most extreme actions. When used as a tool, fear can persuade even …

The Emotional Intelligence Of Machines, Lokesh Zope

Masters Theses

Technologies today claim to be capable of detecting human emotion. When such technologies appear on our everyday objects, how will our interactions be like? Can these objects know when we are frustrated with them? Wouldn’t that radically change the field of user experience design? However, would people be scared of such capability?

Born from this curiosity, this thesis project is a speculative and an experimental approach that explores the overlap of the fields of User Experience Design, Affective Technologies, and Artificial Intelligence. This exploration is aimed at investigating its need and illustrating a newly designed adaptive nature of domestic appliances. …

Body (Less) Fitness, Dan Gioia

Masters Theses

It’s too cold outside. You stubbed your toe. You had too much Chipotle. You didn’t have enough Chipotle. There’s no shortage of reasons to abstain from exercise on any given day.

Designing a product or system to get someone to exercise is almost anti-design. So much of design is making things seamless and easy for whomever your user may be. You want to make it easy for people to accomplish things they want to do. But designing to get someone to exercise? You’re trying to get someone to do something unpleasant. You’re asking your user to sweat, strain, exert, and …

Wellness Within Reach : Life / Work Balance Within The Risd Campus, Kyunghwa Kang

Masters Theses

Academics often overlook the importance of a balanced life and even encourage a competitive work environment. However, life balance, health and mental wellness have strong influence on academic performance, social relationships and even life satisfaction. Working environments matter, too: lack of natural light and ventilation, noise and lack of privacy often contribute to elevated levels of stress, anxiety and depression. In the case of students from the Rhode Island School of Design, most devote almost all time to work without satisfying the body’s need for rest. However, studios do not integrate spaces for relaxing, resting and refreshing and do not …

Re-Structure : An Exploration Of Relational Engagement Through Objects & Object Making, Mark Epler

Masters Theses

Home is a loaded concept. For each of us it means a vast spectrum of associations, emotions and values. However, there are also a myriad of universal commonalities of what home is in our collective imaginations and experiences despite the increasingly transitory and elusive ideas about what home means for each of us. Whatever or wherever we might call home, our experiences within the walls of what we understand to be home impact and shape us. It is the physical and sociological structure that shapes our lives and the shelter from which we depart to grow into the larger world …

Inhabit The Storm : Emergency Evacuation Route, Anastasiia Isakova

Masters Theses

Today a lot of design research is concentrated on problems of resiliency and performance in conditions of hazardous events, such as sea level rise, hurricanes, tsunamis, cyclones, earthquakes and drought. And while designers, architects and engineers try to convince people to care about these issues, offer building higher seawalls, recreating marshlands, reinforcing shorelines and various ecosystems, they never really address evacuation, which remains a big problem for vulnerable areas prone to cyclical occurrence of natural disasters.

More people die during evacuation - escaping the disaster site, rather than from the disaster itself; more people die because of the consequences of …

Thrive In Sea Level Rise, Xiang Zhao

Masters Theses

Port Morris has played an important role in the industrial realm of New York City since 1842. After the construction of the first Railroad in Port Morris, the area became an accumulation zone of factories and warehouses. These settlements, over time, though, have caused certain problems.

The waterfront area cannot be reached by the public: traffic is dense, air pollution is prevalent. The particle pollution in Port Morris is 2.6 micrograms per cubic meter, the highest in New York City. Across the three miles of shoreline, there are only three spots where people are able to access the waterfront. Besides …

Deceptive Fragility : Characteristics And Fabrication Methods Of Extra Thick Weft-Knitted Spacer Fabrics, Anastasia Onegina

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates technical and performance capabilities of extra thick flat-knitted 3D spacer fabrics. Several combinations of knitted structures and fibers are suggested for thermal and impact protection, general insulation, architecture and construction. Methods of constructing three- to seven-layer spacer fabrics up to nine inches thick are explained.

The Untold Tale, Yan Zeng

Masters Theses

Inspired by Manchurian heirlooms and family traditions, I create intricate textiles as narratives that viewers can empathize with, vehicles for expressing my own memories and cultural background. I have told many stories through my textiles in the past, but my thesis tells a very special one: it is a story that I have been afraid to make known for nearly 20 years, a dark fairy tale based on my childhood traumas and experiences; it is the story of a girl who was lost in a deep forest and struggled to find a way out. My thesis collection is composed of …

Talistones : A Handful Of Help For Homecoming Soldiers, Atulya Changanty

Masters Theses

We are creatures of habit influenced by our environments. We function on a 24-hour clock known as our circadian rhythm that is dictated by the solar cycle, seasonal shifts, and our daily schedules to determine our understanding of time to que our behaviors. The circadian rhythm can be disrupted by trauma to the brain, shift in lifestyle and habits, or inability to determine the passage of time and can lead to profound effects on mental health. Soldiers who are transitioning out of military service into civilian life, particularly those who have experienced combat, are an archetypal population who encounter damage …

Floop : Improving Eating Habits, Namrata Phirke

Masters Theses

All of us strive to eat breakfast daily, and a lot of us fail. 10% of all Americans skip breakfast daily, and the number increases sharply to 23% for the people in 18-34 age group. Something changes distinctly when people turn 18. This age group includes students who transitioned from their home to college. This shift severely affects eating habits. At home, our parents look after us and make sure that we get the optimum nutrition as we grow. But life isn’t so smooth in college. We realize the importance of our parents who used to worry about our health …

How Long Can You Hold Your Breath?, Felicia Leroy

Masters Theses

I began freediving, a sport in which one dives as deep as possible on single breath hold, as a way to approach the inaccessible space of the deep, to expand my understanding of the unobtainable.

This space (the deep) seemed to me to be representative of something that is totally unknown, its power existing in its inaccessibility, in its un-know-ability.

Through training/experiential data collection and using human physiology at depth as a framework, this thesis work book explores a single breath hold to the other side.

Work made in support of this exploration touches on darkness, depth, the edge, the …

Hill Study : Re-Energize Highly-Programmed Hill Study Space, Di Qiang

Masters Theses

Sloping sites present a variety of difficulties to the structures on which they are built: difficulty in access, difficulty in delineating the space, difficulty in reaching specific functional areas. These problems aren’t caused by the sloping site itself; the sloping site is a natural terrain. The problem lies in the contradiction between the natural sloping site and the traditional hillside architectural forms which evolved from flatland architecture. The College Building of the Rhode Island School of Design exemplifies the use of flatland architectural typology on the hillside . During the expansion of Rhode Island School of Design in 1935, RISD …

Every Change, Ruhan Feng

Masters Theses

After being away from home for six years, distance and time make me reconsider: “Who am I?”

This thesis is an honest memoir, which records my reflections about life through my struggles, confusion with cultural identities, and conflicts with my mother in a one-child family. In a two-year graduate program, I continue to explore my identities as Chinese, an international student, an expatriate, and a daughter.

The text, accompanied by illustrations, interprets personal artistic changes. Printmaking in my work is not just a tool to make multiples. The ideas of layering and repeating are also applied to my three-dimensional installations …

Proximity, Interaction, And Evolution : Taking A Deeper Look At The Systems Around Us, Rachel Back

Masters Theses

In the new age of the sharing economy, the society is more connected than ever, but humanity has never been more disconnected from the environment and the natural world. This thesis begins with studying the dynamics of physical and non-physical systems, at all scales. Additionally, this thesis explores the physical and emotional connection to place, time, and memory. Finally, the goal of this thesis is to create spaces that reintroduce nature into architecture, and allow the inhabitant to experience the mystery and awe of the living systems.

Grave : Landscape Necromancy, Jil Sanchez

Masters Theses

This thesis focuses on the phenomenon of festivity in order to better understand the spatial qualities of platforms for experiences of release. The work is grounded in the intimate connection between post-industrial landscapes and the emergence of raves and electronic music. The design approach questions western cultural norms by creating a scenario for a combined rave venue and cemetery. The investigation’s material and spatial manifestations are applied to Red Hook Grain Terminal, an ideal latent venue for raves, concerts, and other festive and contemplative functions on New York City’s fringe. The project aspires to widen the range of conversations landscape …

Light Installations For Le, Yiqi Jiang

Masters Theses

This investigation derived from a personal childhood memory of an autistic boy, living with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). His struggles to communicate and to have people understand him drives this thesis investigation in hopes of better connecting people of all abilities through accessible design. After serving a summer term working at a special needs inclusion camp, there is the exposure to the lack of awareness and communication gap between design and people living with autism. The study develops a series of strategies that strengthen communication between people with and without ASD and ultimately seeks to educate the design profession on …

Borderscape : Weaving Political Boundaries In The Amazon Through Water Performance, Lucila Silva-Santisteban

Masters Theses

This research project is about how to connect political bordering urban systems through the natural structure for a coherent occupation between the built environment, ecosystems and resources following the Landscape Architecture lens that can address different scale systems simultaneously to create a holistic approach between them. And the proposition of a new type of landscape of this threshold territory as its own kind. Specifically looking at the bordering cities in the heart of the Amazon Region in South America that fall between Colombia, Brazil and Peru.

Why the Amazon?

Not only because of the usual fascination, but because of the …

Narratives Of Public Space : A Manifesto For Future Urban Landscape In Manhattan, Jaehong Chung

Masters Theses

This thesis investigates the history of public space and how it has changed over time. Looking specifically at how social, historical, and advances in technology have influenced and changed the meaning and use of public spaces. Studies of history and its characteristics and case studies check the validity of paradigm of public spaces in Manhattan. The modern features of Manhattan have been completed over 200 hundreds years with Industrial revolutions and influx of immigrants. Due to these reasons, the main focus was to track of causalities among life style changes, social paradigms, and changes of urban landscapes.

As cities developed, …

Remediating The Garment Industry, Kellie Knight

Masters Theses

This thesis culminated from an interest in addressing the pollution by the dye processes of the textile industry on the Earth’s waterbodies. The first Phase of this thesis explored the globalization of the garment industry. The movement of production was tracked over time from the 1950’s when production occurred primarily in the United States and Europe to present day when production is worldwide. With the global spread of the industry came the global spread of its pollutants.

The second phase of the thesis investigated the functioning of the fashion industry itself to determine which process from production to distribution is …

Transforme : A Look At Sports Beyond The Gender Binary, Courtney Skabelund

Masters Theses

This work explores the next wave of athletes. Using speculative design, it questions institutionalized social constructs that many take for granted but that are a daily struggle for others. It looks to broaden the expressiveness and individuality of sport. Through careful consideration, research, and testing this thesis represents my views and ideas of how sport might evolve to represent the next revolution of athletics. Because without a gender revolution, the true ideals of sport will suffer.