On was an interdisciplinary graduate periodical established by RISD graduate students in 2006. It featured essays and student work that related to a general issue theme. On was intended as a quarterly publication, but it is unclear if further issues beyond the first were ever published.
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Creating a safe haven : a study on coastal resilience in a time of climate change & sea-level rise in the Philippines
Maria Carla Victoria M. Sebastian
In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan struck the southern part of the Philippines with a five to six meter storm surge; in just three days it took more than 7,360 lives in one city alone, displaced four million citizens, and affected around 16 million Filipinos nationwide. Coastal resiliency in relation to climate change is a particularly urgent issue for city planners and government leaders in an archipelago of 7,641 islands, where 80% of the population dwells in coastal areas. This thesis aims to challenge the existing paradigm of coastal provincial architecture in the Philippines by proposing a more integrated evacuation center that adapts to sea level rise and climate calamities. The focus of the study will be a church in a small coastal town, as churches have historically provided physical sanctuary as much as symbolic salvation to Filipinos, the third biggest Catholic nation in the world. Through a methodical incorporation of resilience in architecture and communal gathering programming, the proposed intervention will showcase an innovative approach in landmark preservation by means of adaptation - how a social and cultural landmark can co-function as a resilient and human-scale evacuation area, replicable across the coastlines of the Philippines.
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Unite the divided : the transition between death and life
Qing Shi
The modern era has marginalized death by professionalizing the care of the dying in hospitals and the dead in funeral homes. Today a growing number of families reject de-personalized, alienating funeral experiences and instead, seek rituals that are more related to pre-modern practices. Past practices developed when death was still omnipresent, and people performed their own authentic expression of the individual self and interpersonal relations. Bringing spatial, physical experiences of rituals back by personalizing a previously institutionalized occasion, the freedom of being able to choose the way we live has been extended to self expression in death and mourning.
By adapting the disused churchyard of St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral in Providence, I survey the transition between life and death. Unlike traditional rituals, this space provides a personalized journey allowing the bereaved, even the deceased, to present their interpretation of the actual moment of physical transition. Euthanasia, Living Funeral, the Vigil … these rituals practiced in the space close the gap between the social and biological death by transforming this once-sequestered stage of life into a social, spiritual, and self-growth journey.
The thesis explores how landscapes and architecture can embed spaces for the final farewell. Inspired by the city Eusapia in Calvino’s Invisible Cities, the intended design strategy is to keep the upper surface of the landscape untouched as much as possible, but create a spatial condition of the churchyard downwards. This strategy is aimed to create a juxtaposition of the two sides of the world separated by death. The below condition is created by a tunneling technique that creates an earthy quality in the spaces, emphasizing the reality of being underground, beneath a churchyard.
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Totem: An embodiment of human character and personality in footwear design
Sushant Shivaram
This thesis is an attempt at drawing parallels between human character traits and footwear design as an evocative means to communicate character. The idea here is to translate qualitative elements of personality traits and communicate expressions through the embodiment of meaning within form in the context of footwear design. I am making an attempt at equating the meaning in form and footwear gestures that serve an emotional or functional purpose in footwear to break down the sculpture into a combination of different attributes so as to create a character taxonomy. This character taxonomy serves the purpose of assisting me in the creation of the generative system by defining its parameters in numerical values in Grasshopper. The Generative System - Totem uses these values to create sculptural surfaces that are derived from consumer character inputs and are thus, personal to every individual. Through this book, I am taking you through my journey of investigation to better tell personal human stories through footwear - a product that is an extension of one’s personality and footwear design as a form of expression.
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The Socially Transformative Aesthetics of Street Culture: From Walter Benjamin’s One-Way Street to The Arcades Project
Jules Simon
This paper discusses the dialectical relationship of what I call an ethical aesthetics of the city, exemplified in the relationship of the Haussmannization techniques of architectural administration and spatial domination in their forms of the functionalist imperative of modern capitalist urban planning and spontaneous, improvisational-yet-collective, innovative modes of street life. I draw significantly on Walter Benjamin’s phenomenological ethics of urban aesthetics, comparing two developments in his reflections on the “everyday lived experience of the city,” specifically, lived experiences of city streets, namely, the work that he published in One-Way Street, and his unfinished work in The Arcades Project..[1]
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The Common Thread with Lorén M. Spears and Hope Leeson
Lorén Spears, Hope Leeson, and Edna W. Lawrence Nature Lab
The first live session features Tomaquag Museum Executive Director + Narragansett Tribal Member Lorén M. Spears and Botanist + RISD Faculty member, Hope Leeson.
This conversation will focus on REGENERATION and GROWTH in the present day. How can we regenerate through farming, food, fiber and history. How do you grow a future generation of people to take part in living sustainably?
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An exploration of multisensory practices and its value in K-12 Art Education
Melissa St Pierre
In the past few decades, it has been established that the dominant model of art education focuses on a reductive and rigid approach to building knowledge, enforcing conformity of the mind and often dulling curiosity. Making sense of these limitations, the current study delves in an exploration of multisensory practices, an approach that might result in considering options for redesigning the system to support positive change. To do so, my methodology includes a literature review and a case study I conducted with high school students in the 10th grade. The review pertaining to the science and theory behind human senses, photography in the context of multisensory ideas, and multisensory learning and teaching practices in art education. With the case study I was both the teacher and researcher and is presented in a qualitative manner. Concretely, this thesis supports the implementation of multisensory practices in art education and translates significant gains because of the observed positive outcomes that include, but are not limited to, better memorization, an increased sense of empathy, embodiment of complex subjects, augmented creativity and problem-solving skills.
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Adapting home : residential development and domestic comfort in Vermont
Mikéla Sumner
Vermont is experiencing a loss of “ruralness” as social insulation replaces physical comfort as the driver of residential design. Furthermore, the pre-packaged comfort often associated with social insulation requires an upfront cost. The variety of Vermont’s housing stock is limited, as most homes are single-family and 36% of Vermonters are currently cost-burdened, meaning they spend over 30% of their income on housing. Ultimately, there is a shortage of housing that can affordably meet diverse comfort needs. Without the ability to adapt the home over time, in the tradition of the local Vermont home, the house is only compatible with specific familial compositions and incomes. By providing the means to adapt a dwelling at will, residents are able to customize the home to fit their individual physical and social comfort needs, based on income and family demographics. In turn, this infuses the housing stock with a variety of affordable homes in the tradition of the local Vermont home.
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Reviving the hollowing rural village: research on the coastal mountainous region of Kaihua, China
Rui Tao
My research focuses on one county in China and the regional and local structure to understand the existing flows between urban and rural areas, including both ecological, industrial and social exchanges. Kaihua county, located in north-west Zhejiang Province, is currently the poorest county economically in this region and has more migrant workers and a more severe hollowing degree.
This thesis aims to revive the hollowing rural village and improve the village’s value as a hybrid public realm - a space encouraging reciprocal flows exchanged from both “rural ground” and urban “new comers,” strengthening the ecological and social ties among water systems and native species, producers, consumers and tourists. The design is trying to generate a model for reordering the experience of the rural territory.
