RISD Architecture

RISD Architecture Official page of RISD Architecture Department

As part of an art college, the Architecture department is unique among its peers, which are typically set in universities or technical colleges. Our values as artists and designers set us apart: Artistic sensibility, material reasoning, spatial cognition, critical visual thinking, symbiotic meaning/making and imagination prosper here. By studying architecture, you will learn to think critically; to design through inquiry, reflection and invention; to directly experience construction; to understand the technical demands of building; to think through drawing, making, and writing and speaking – and to be socially, sustainably and ethically responsible. While history, theory and technical metrics are important and integral parts of the broad education our program provides, they are not the mold for your development. Instead, we recognize and emphasize the creative process as the generating source of ideas and the means of finding out what you are passionate about and exposing you to the essential nutrients for becoming an autonomous, created and known self, poised to make a difference in the world.

We are delighted to welcome John Todd to RISD Architecture as an Assistant Professor-in-Residence. John David Todd is a ...
10/08/2026

We are delighted to welcome John Todd to RISD Architecture as an Assistant Professor-in-Residence.

John David Todd is a registered architect and principal of WOJR. His work in practice and teaching focuses on the relationship between concept and artifact and on how decisions of space, material, construction, and detail give form to ways of living.

At WOJR, John has played a central role in shaping the Cambridge-based practice’s design direction and body of work. Working across a diverse range of scales, types, programs, and places, WOJR is fundamentally committed to uncovering the unique potential in each project and giving that potential precise architectural form. The practice seeks to create work that is distinctive and otherwise impossible to imagine, bringing out a sense of delight and wonder while reflecting a deep understanding of place, daily rituals, and the lives lived within.

The office has received multiple Progressive Architecture Awards and Architectural Record’s Record House Award, and its work has been exhibited internationally, including at the Venice Architecture Biennale and the Chicago Architecture Biennial. WOJR’s work has appeared in publications including Domus, GA Houses, Architectural Record, Architect Magazine, and Wallpaper*, among others. Its first monograph, Room for Artifacts, was published by Park Books in 2016, with a second volume on the House of Horns forthcoming from Park Books.

Alongside practice, John has maintained a close engagement with architectural education through studios, seminars, workshops, lectures, and invited reviews. He has taught graduate and undergraduate studios at Northeastern University and led an international workshop at the University of Ljubljana. He has lectured internationally and served as an invited critic at architecture schools including Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, RISD, and the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

John received a Master in Architecture with Commendation from the Harvard Graduate School of Design and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, cm laude, from the University of Washington in Seattle.

We are delighted to welcome Celia Chaussable to RISD Architecture as an Assistant Professor-in-Residence. Celia Chaussab...
10/08/2026

We are delighted to welcome Celia Chaussable to RISD Architecture as an Assistant Professor-in-Residence.

Celia Chaussabel is an architect and co-founder of NOT NOT, an architecture office exploring overlooked dimensions of architecture as sites for political and creative inquiry. NOT NOT projects often begin with constraints such as construction debris, material temporality, maintenance, and zoning loopholes to investigate cultural aesthetics and potential. 

Her practice is focused on how narratives and aesthetics shape cultural perceptions of construction waste, speculating on what it would mean for the architectural profession to consider the sourcing, maintenance, and re-circulation of materials as critical design work. She designs architecture, furniture, exhibitions, video games, animations, and graphic novels around the life cycles of materials and how they are intertwined with the values and identities of the people that come in contact with them.

She has previously practiced at LTL Architects, Rotor, and Iwamotoscott, and has taught at MIT, Tecnologico de Monterrey, and University at Buffalo as the Banham Teaching Fellow. She holds a Master of Science in Architectural Studies from MIT and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.

Recent grants and awards:

Architectural League of New York and NYSCA, Independent Projects Grant, 2025
Van Alen Institute, Vanguard, member 2025-ongoing
Arthur Rotch Thesis Prize, MIT, 2019
RIBA President’s Medal Nomination, 2019
Deflorez Fund for Humor, MIT, 2025

Social Media:

Handle: Celia Chaussabel
Secondary handle: Not Not
Website: www.celiachaussabel.com

Ver-nac-u-lar Spring 2025Students:Nancy (Ruonan) Wang Nancy · 王若楠 Tom (Tong) Hu Tom Hu Instructor:Charlotte Lipschit...
07/10/2026

Ver-nac-u-lar
Spring 2025

Students:
Nancy (Ruonan) Wang Nancy · 王若楠
Tom (Tong) Hu Tom Hu

Instructor:
Charlotte Lipschitz

Project:
Providence Blues

The project deeply examines the vernacular—a term that ties language and the built environment together as reflections of an ethos, an amorphous notion of culture, the zeitgeist, and convenience. It parses the vernacular across multiple contexts to redefine its potential as a projective tool for the design of place-specific housing comprising thirty-six dwelling units.
Responding to post-pandemic growth and ongoing upzoning, the project overlays new density onto the existing urban fabric through three strategies drawn from Wickenden Street: entry sequences, street-front activity, and shared in-between spaces (“missing teeth”) that foster a lively community.

Almost Architecture, Almost [other]Recipient of the 2025 Graduate Thesis AwardPateton Gonzales (MArch ’25) Advisor: Jac...
05/27/2026

Almost Architecture, Almost [other]
Recipient of the 2025 Graduate Thesis Award
Pateton Gonzales (MArch ’25)

Advisor: Jacqueline Shaw

This thesis examines the water crisis surrounding Gallup, New Mexico, and the Navajo Nation through the lens of “approximation” — an architectural method that rethinks existing systems without fully erasing or replacing them. Grounded in the ritual of water collection, the thesis studies the social, spatial, and infrastructural relationships tied to Gallup’s water filling stations, proposing a series of small-scale architectural interventions that blur the boundaries between infrastructure, ritual, and public space. Through drawings, artifacts, and speculative station models, the project reframes water infrastructure as both a technical and cultural system, asking how architecture can respond to conditions of scarcity while remaining deeply connected to community practices and lived experience.

RiSD Architecture final review week is here!Mon 5/18: Architectural DesignTue 5/19: Graduate Core IIMon 5/18 - Wed 5/20:...
05/12/2026

RiSD Architecture final review week is here!

Mon 5/18: Architectural Design
Tue 5/19: Graduate Core II
Mon 5/18 - Wed 5/20: Advanced Studios

MArch studio Core III: CitiesAfter ExtractionFall 2025Instructors: Stephanie Choi (coordinator) + Armando Hashimoto “A...
04/09/2026

MArch studio Core III: Cities
After Extraction
Fall 2025
Instructors: Stephanie Choi (coordinator) + Armando Hashimoto

“After Extraction” is a three-year project of the graduate Core III: Cities studio. Using the lens of extraction to investigate three materials, fossil fuels, rare minerals, and water, the course traces the attendant infrastructures of resource removal in the American West. Broadly defined as west of the Mississippi River, the choice of the West situates extraction within a troubled history of manifest destiny and settler colonialism.
In fall of 2025 the studio traveled to the Midland/Odessa region in West Texas, which pumps roughly 25% of United States’ oil production from the Permian Basin. Focused on the petrochemical industry, the studio studied gas extraction’s effects at both the urban and territorial scales, and the economies of labor created in its wake. The second iteration of the studio will examine rare earth minerals critical to the green transition, with a pivot to New Mexico and its previous history with uranium mining and missile testing. The third year will take on water, concentrated on the Colorado River, a critical lifeline to seven states in the west, including California.

Slide credits:
1: Permian Basin Petroleum Museum collection
2: Odessa Meteor Crater
3: Steve Burleson of Burleson Petroleum
4: Monahans Sandhills Statepark
5: J. Conrad Dunagan Library archives, UT Permian Basin
6: Permian Basin Petroleum Museum, Midlandia feature
[all above photos by Stephanie Choi]

7-8: Enid Barragán-Ortiz + Molly Sullivan, Deployable Testing Ground
9-11: Thomas Laskey+ Alex Zheng, Phronesis: sustainable nuclear power station
12: Will Lathrop + Gordon Ng, Water Infrastructure
13-14: Jerod Bayly + Jacob Hangen, Water Remediation Cycle
15-17: Hao Liu + Van Liu + Jin Wang, Phytoremediation
18: Menma Okereke + Lizzie Tjahja + Fanxy Wang , Waste Treatment Facility
19: Helen Chwe + Matt Mulberry + Zorka Zsembery , College of Ecological Regeneration
20: Alex Fort + Hugo Liu , Building Inside Berm

RISD Architecture Graduate BiennialApr 3-19, 2026Sol Koffler GalleryOpening reception: Apr 9, 7-9PMTo RE:PRESENT is to s...
04/03/2026

RISD Architecture Graduate Biennial
Apr 3-19, 2026
Sol Koffler Gallery

Opening reception: Apr 9, 7-9PM

To RE:PRESENT is to shift perspectives, to present the familiar within the unfamiliar. At a time when architecture is pressured to produce new forms and narratives, RISD Graduate Architecture doubles down on its own conventional tools — drawing, modeling, imaging — utilizing what we are familiar with outside our typical boundaries. The show’s decontextualization moves away from the arduous task of constant reinvention, but rather presents the viewer with new questions. We hope that you come in asking, “How is this architecture?” and leave with a different notion of what architecture can be.

Faculty Search: Architectural DesignAssistant Professor-in-ResidenceDeadline to apply: April 30, 2026Link in bioThe Depa...
04/01/2026

Faculty Search: Architectural Design
Assistant Professor-in-Residence

Deadline to apply: April 30, 2026
Link in bio

The Department of Architecture, in the Division of Architecture and Design, at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), invites applications for one full-time faculty member (term appointment) at the rank of Assistant Professor-in-Residence, to commence fall 2026. The position is for a 2-year term appointment (AY 26/27 and AY 27/28).

RISD recognizes principles of social equity, inclusion, and diversity as fundamental to its mission as an art and design school. These principles require sustained attention to a multiplicity of differences and call for an expansion of the forms of knowledge that shape our curricula and pedagogy. RISD is committed to the collective work of institutional transformation and values applicants whose teaching, pedagogical, and professional experiences have prepared them to foster and sustain equitable learning environments. We especially welcome faculty whose pedagogy engages diverse perspectives, expands the forms of knowledge, and fosters a culture of belonging where all students, staff, and faculty can thrive.

The department seeks qualified individuals to offer graduate and undergraduate-level instruction in architectural design. This is a design position, and successful candidates will teach design studios at core and advanced levels. The department is particularly interested in applicants with knowledge and applied experience in drawing and representation, and building assembly and construction systems, as well as applicants with an active professional practice.

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231 South Main
Providence, RI
02903

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Tuesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Wednesday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Thursday 8:30am - 4:30pm
Friday 8:30am - 4:30pm

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+14014546281

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