RISD Landscape

Please join RISD LDAR, INTAR (@risdintar )and ARCH (@risdarch )departments for this year’s interdisciplinary Sustainability Lab thesis show! The show, entitled ‘Fiber Matters: Making with the Remainder,’ explores the studio’s year-long investigation into waste fiber and ‘the remainder.’ Drawing from agricultural and industrial remnants - such as discarded sheep wool, recycled paper pulp, and offcuts from hemp and flax production - the exhibition interrogates dominant systems of value, purity, and progress. It imagines alternative futures of making, where what is left behind forms the basis of what comes next. This premise doesn’t just question what gets made, but how to teach a pedagogy of how to (re)make. The exhibition will include material installations, process artifacts, and student-led research, alongside philosophical provocations and global case studies that embody ‘remainder-thinking.’ Together, these works reframe the unfinished, the imperfect, and the marginal as sites of ecological insight and design ethics. Show opening 5/22/2026 from 6-9 PM in Sol Koffler Gallery (169 Weybosset St). #RISD #sustainabledesign #sustainability #materialculture #exhibitionopening

Current bearings, final landings. Five days of reviews across all studios in the department, first year to third including a cross-disciplinary close to the week with RISD ARCH (@risdarch ) and INTAR (@risdintar ). All are welcome. #RISD #landscapearchitecture #designreview #MLA #pvd

Please join us for Future Forests: Co-Creating Urban Ecologies, a three-part public program taking place April 23–25 at RISD and Pearl Street Garden Collective. This series brings together a lecture, film screening, and microforest site walk to explore how collaborative design, ecological knowledge, and community stewardship can shape more resilient urban landscapes. The program’s opening lecture will be given by RISD alumni Devon Miller and Cristiane Caro, whose work engages landscape, ecology, and public practice throughout California and Rhode Island. Schedule of Events Thursday, April 23 (6–7pm) Lecture: Future Forests: Co-Creating Urban Ecologies Devon Miller RLA ASLA & Cristiane Caro Weybosset Studios / LDAR Gallery 159 Weybosset Street https://risd.zoom.us/j/98418622011 Meeting ID: 984 1862 2011 Friday, April 24 (6–8pm) Film Screening: Making A Mini Forest Weybosset Studios / LDAR Gallery 159 Weybosset Street Saturday, April 25 (3–6pm) Forest Walk: Pearl Street Garden Microforest 219 Pearl Street These events consider the urban forest as both a designed and emergent system - one that is shaped over time through interdisciplinary practice and public participation. #landscapearchitecture #risd #rhodeisland #sustainabledesign #urbanecology #urbanforest #lecture #pvd #providence

This week, first-year students in the Site Ecology & Design studio traveled to New York City to see urban parks and tour design offices. The visits gave the class the opportunity to experience firsthand a spectrum of postindustrial urban waterfront landscapes transformed for public use, and to think through questions of program and spatial experience, how site scale shapes design thinking, approaches to the water’s edge, and strategies for connecting street to shore. Projects visited included MVVA’s (@mvva.inc ) Brooklyn Bridge Park, Hunters Point South Waterfront Park (SWA @swagroup , Thomas Balsley Associates, WEISS/MANFREDI @weissmanfredi , and ARUP @arupgroup ), the recently redesigned Robert Wagner Park (AECOM @aecom_design and Thomas Phifer and Partners @thomasphiferandpartners ), artist George Trakas’s Nature Walk at Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, and the Marsha P. Johnson State Park redesign by Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners (@starrwhitehouse ). Staff at Scape @scape_studio ) graciously hosted the class at their office. At Brooklyn Bridge Park, MVVA partner Matthew Urbanski guided students and faculty through the park’s master plan, funding history, and realization. Studio instructors: Adam Anderson (@adameanderson ) and Emily Vogler 1. Matthew Urbanski at Brooklyn Bridge Park discussing the master plan, funding, site history, and how the park came to be. 2. Continuing the conversation with Matthew at Pier 3’s Discovery Garden and labyrinth. 3. Newtown Creek wrap-up and reflections. #risd #landscapearchitecture #risd1877 #sitevisit #waterfrontdesign

On Monday, April 20th, the exhibition Thick As Air will be opening at the BEB Gallery (Bayard Ewing Building, 231 South Main Street). The exhibition features work by Associate Professor Suzanne Mathew @suzannemathew , from the last decade of her research looking at how shade defines the shape and feeling of space outside, including research that has been funded by the Somerson Sustainability Innovation Fund. There will be an opening reception at 6PM on April 20th; please join us! A big shout out and thanks to the graduate research assistants who have contributed over the past few years: Lauren Russo @fio.elia , Manal Imran Dar @manaldraws , and Alex Goodenough @goodsenuf !

Plants: Botany & Ecology is a foundational course in the first semester of the MLA program. Organized around field trips to RI landscapes with unique ecological conditions, Plants combines science, close observation, and experiential learning to develop landscape literacy. Students visited a barrier beach and dune system; the Beaver River meadow and dam system; and a post-wildfire forest regeneration site. In the studio, they also engaged in a “Forest Forensics” exercise, identifying ecosystem characteristics through the analysis of soil samples and forest floor materials. Faculty: Hope Leeson and Ann Kearsley @annkearsleydesign

“Bog, Swamp, River, and Marsh” is a field seminar, focused on the ecology, science, and relationships humans have with wetlands. Field trips involve full immersion in the soil, water, and plants that make up the wetland habitats we visit in Rhode Island. Faculty: Hope Leeson

Students engage in group crits during a site framework design charrette for our first year Site Ecology Design studio with faculty @emilyvogler and @adameanderson @design.under.sky

Continuing our look at LDAR 2204: Constructed Landscapes. Grove Hall, Boston sits at the shared boundary of Roxbury and Dorchester. Less defined by any single planning vision than most Boston neighborhoods, it was the focus of last fall’s second year core MLA urban design studio. LDAR 2204: Constructed Landscapes demanded that students first understand Grove Hall as a place on its own terms, through fieldwork and direct engagement with the area and its people, before turning to design to explore what it could become. Students were asked to design with both landscape and architecture in Grove Hall, giving them the full range of settings where social infrastructure and a vibrant public life can take root, whether inside buildings, in open space, or somewhere in between. Their work addressed the full range of spatial opportunities present in the neighborhood including parking lots, vacant buildings, street corners, plazas, and the sidewalks and roadways that currently serve cars far better than people. The corrugated cardboard models shown here are working design instruments that were also presented at the final review. While paired with plans and sections, students primarily designed through these models, building them up and cutting them down repeatedly over the course of the studio’s final five-week phase. Working at 1/8” scale, spatial, environmental, experiential, and material questions could be posed together in service of the studio’s social priorities. What follows are glimpses of four of ten proposals that take Grove Hall seriously as a place, grounding its future in a community as important and vital as any other named in the city. Katie Lesh (@katielesh ), Lauren Russo, Ziyang Liu (@zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzyyyy ), RunqingChen (@quincyyyyy__ ) Co-instructors Jacob Mitchell (@hillandgullyride ) & Elaine Stokes (@elaine.stokes ) #risd #landscapearchitecture #urbandesign #grovehall #risd1877 #modelmaking #dorchester #roxbury

How do you design for a place that seems like it’s always been a threshold — one that is between neighborhoods, between planning priorities, and between definitions? Grove Hall, Boston sits at the shared boundary of Roxbury and Dorchester. Less defined by any single planning vision than most Boston neighborhoods, it was the focus of last fall’s second year core MLA urban design studio. LDAR 2204: Constructed Landscapes demanded that students first understand Grove Hall as a place on its own terms, through fieldwork and direct engagement with the area and its people, before turning to design to explore what it could become. Students were asked to design with both landscape and architecture in Grove Hall, giving them the full range of settings where social infrastructure and a vibrant public life can take root, whether inside buildings, in open space, or somewhere in between. Their work addressed the full range of spatial opportunities present in the neighborhood including parking lots, vacant buildings, street corners, plazas, and the sidewalks and roadways that currently serve cars far better than people. The corrugated cardboard models shown here are working design instruments that were also presented at the final review. While paired with plans and sections, students primarily designed through these models, building them up and cutting them down repeatedly over the course of the studio’s final five-week phase. Working at 1/8” scale, spatial, environmental, experiential, and material questions could be posed together in service of the studio’s social priorities. What follows are glimpses of three of ten proposals that take Grove Hall seriously as a place, grounding its future in a community as important and vital as any other named in the city. Students: @dongchenwu1230 @lily.anna.berman @eomersllis Co-instructors Jacob Mitchell (@hillandgullyride )and Elaine Stokes (@elaine.stokes ) #risd #lansdscape #MLA #landscapearchitecture #risd1877 #urbandesign #modelmaking #design

Please join us for an evening lecture with Laurie Olin, landscape architect and founding partner of OLIN Partnership in Philadelphia. Free and open to the public. 6-7:30 at the BEB auditorium @ 231 south Main Street, Providence

Shape the future of our coasts. The MLA + MMA dual degree combines landscape architecture with marine policy, economics and law. Tackle climate change and coastal challenges with both creative vision and policy expertise. Join us for our info session this Monday 12/15 at 10am EST to learn more.