The Shape of RISD
An evolutionary study on the shape and interactions of RISD:
The cooperation of design, fine arts, and liberal arts.
Latest Entries
Writing Visualization
As part of my personal reflection I have been attempting several different approaches to visualizing my writing and moving it from the “practical” to the dialectic and poetic. For the past four years I have lived between the creative and pragmatic and believe that creating this synergy with my writing will allow me to appreciate and articulate my thinking in a new and exciting way.
So far this experiment has been somewhat futile in capturing the completeness of thought that my writing possesses but I have started to create more freely and experiment with these ideas, hopefully leading to an effective and eloquent output soon. Below are some of my early explorations and their corresponding essys:
The Deconstruction of Language, 2007
HBS Application Essay, 2009
More images after the jump…
On Interviewing Senior Faculty
By examining the process of forming new academic models in an institution with the history and tradition of RISD it is essential to approach the challenge like any other design problem. Just as if you were designing a brand identity or product for an organization or individual, it is essential to not just familiarize oneself with the history and practices of the organization but also of the people and the philosophies of the individuals who make the place what it is.
Goals and Objectives for Academic Agility at RISD
Definition of Domain
The Academic Permeability Working Group is identifying and considering how to remove impediments to interactive, collaborative, and self-directed teaching, learning, and research to address the increasingly complex demands of 21st-century artists, designers, and other creative professionals.
Working Process
Working primarily as a group, rather than individually, to define terms, distinguish personal experience from endemic problems and shared aspirations, consider past calls for greater inter-disciplinarity at RISD, craft goals and objectives, and identify areas for improvement and innovation, the Academic Permeability Working Group sought to model the desired culture of collaboration in its own methodology.
Goal
Support agility in relation to a philosophy of discipline-based, in-depth art and design education.
Objectives
- Make interaction among disciplines fundamental to the curriculum.
- Broaden research methodologies, practices, and opportunities.
- Align administrative structures with the goal.
Rationale
Current administrative structures and academic requirements limit educational opportunities and potential.
Agility
“Agility is the new Permeability”
Eames & India in 2010
In 1958 Charles & Ray Eames visited India for three months at the invitation of the Indian Government (with sponsorship by the Ford Foundation) to explore the problems of design and to make recommendations for a training program. What they created was the following document that became the founding manifesto of India’s National Institute of Design. It is amazing how their words still hold relevance fifty years later for a school on the other side of the planet, RISD. The comparisons and similarities are uncanny.
Permeability Core Question
“How can RISD best create and inspire an environment that fosters creative agents in a changing world?”
Academic Permeability Research
The following is a collection of objectives and observations to aid RISD in maximizing its potential in delivering a balanced academic experience for all students.
What are we seeking to address by making the academic programs more permeable/flexible?
- Provide more skill sets for our students to better adapt to a changing world.
- Prepare students experientially to engage worlds that differ from their own.
- Heighten awareness of the richness that all diversities can bring.
- Break down the over-identification with a medium or mode of making.
- Create more spaces for productive cross-fertilization from multiple disciplines.
- Create more opportunity for students to forge their own paths and take ownership of their education.
- Create more scheduling and enrollment option for courses, degree programs.
- Facilitate the access of non-traditional students (working adults) to RISD’s programs.
- Create more flexibility for working adults to earn certificates and degrees.
- Provide room to incorporate more distance learning and innovative courses into curricula.
- Break down the silo mentality and foster more open, collaborative teaching and learning.
- Make expensive resources more efficient by phasing out duplication and allowing for more access across departments.
- Provide faculty with more exciting options and diverse environments for teaching and learning.
- Encourage more creative thinking by faculty about what art and design education can be.
The “Line Community”
There are few connections more fleeting, informal, and inescapably pervasive in our modern society than the one that forms around participation in waiting in a line. Comedians joke about it, theme parks add in-line entertainment, Londoners call it a queue, but it is something we all must face if we intend to exist in this world and work with or within organizations. (what do organizations have to do with this?)
This afternoon, I had an opportunity to experience a high-performing (i.e. emotionally charged) line at the Amtrak ticketing counter of New York’s Pennsylvania Station. If you are familiar with Penn. Station, then you are aware that it is not the most inspiring train station in the world. However, it is a major hub and a point of entry into New York for thousands of people every day and constantly seems to be humming with humanity. The physical line in question was nothing special, made up of portable posts and a tacky velvet rope under a painfully dingy drop ceiling, tucked away in the corner of the station’s main hall. It is however, important to note that this was the Acela express line (as opposed to the Regional line), so the individuals involved tended to be power suit clad, middle-aged to elderly, and altogether more important looking than your typical run-of-the-mill train audience (this will come into play later).
The Artisan and the Automaton
The FedEx Office employee at work.
Much like its name, FedEx Office, the store formerly known as Kinkos and FedEx-Kinkos, seems to be in a perennial state of reorganization and flux. Much of the very dated and often refurbished location on Meeting Street in Providence, Rhode Island is unused and no longer houses any viable service. For a business that prides itself on its organization and punctuality, (“The World on Time”) FedEx Office feels neither global or of this time. Nearly half of the location’s floor space is occupied by computer workstations behind a glass partition that appears like a mausoleum from a bygone era, when computers were not an everyday commodity. Boxes stacked in several stations serve as storage for the location’s new identity as a printing and shipping outlet – a combination that always seemed a bit awkward.