RISD Architecture

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

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 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 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.

Advanced Studio: Domestic Futures
Spring 2025
Instructor: Ritchie Yao

In this advanced studio, Domestic Futures: Community in Transition, students examined new models of housing within the evolving context of Detroit. Sited along Vernor Highway in Mexicantown—a neighborhood shaped by deep cultural history and ongoing economic transformation—the project sits near Michigan Central Station, where Ford Motor Company’s redevelopment has catalyzed new investment and accelerated change in the surrounding area. The studio asked how architecture can respond to shifting conditions of growth, displacement, and affordability, particularly as long-standing communities face increasing pressure.

Through typological studies and design proposals, students reimagined housing as a flexible, collective framework, exploring how familiar domestic forms can adapt to support both existing communities and emerging patterns of living. The studio positions the plan as a social tool—testing new relationships between units, shared spaces, and the broader urban fabric.

Slide Credits
1-5: Kaimei Zhu ()
6: Site Visit — Canopy with Phil Kafka () / ()
7-10: Frank Hu ( / )
11: Site Visit — Lafayette Park with Neil McEachern
12-14: Rachel Du ()
15: Site Visit — Little Village with Anthony Curis ( / )
16-17: Site Visit — Detroit Courtyard House with Bryan Boyer ( / )
18: Site Visit — Transitional Housing Facility ()

Spring Lecture Series
Machado Lecture by Chris CM Lee
April 2, 6:30PM
BEB 106

Chris CM Lee is the co-founder and principal of Serie Architects London, Mumbai, and Singapore, and Design Critic in Architecture at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design. The work of Serie is underpinned by the exploration of the problem of type and the city, with particular emphasis on the renewed relevance of typological reasoning. His research and teaching focus on the typologies of urbanization, in response to climate adaptation and a globalized discourse on architecture and urbanism. Chris CM Lee is the author of Common Frameworks: Rethinking the Developmental City in China, Working in Series, and co-authored Typological Formations: Renewable Building Types and the City.

RISD Architecture Spring Lecture Series
Thursdays 6:30PM at the BEB

Undergraduate Student Spotlight
Noah Zielinski (B.Arch 27’)


I’m interested in the idea of design as special effects, it can shift your reality depending on how you position it. As a filmmaker I build narratives and stories into all my projects. Whether it‘s spaces, objects, or images, I immerse myself in the technicals, the mechanics, and the context to construct things from the inside out.

Slide 2-5: from Advanced Studio: Learning Systems, Fall 2025, instructed by Manuel Cordero Alvarado
Slide 6-8: from Advanced Studio: Domestic Futures, Spring 2025, instructed by Ritchie Yao
Slide 9-10: from Icon Mashup, Fall 2025, with Emily Cai , instructed by Ritchie Yao