Archinect - News

RISD students team up with AARP to demonstrate the potential of ADUs to lawmakers

2024-02-15T15:25:00-05:00

Students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) recently collaborated with the state’s local AARP on a design-research project that was meant to demonstrate the potential of Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) to lawmakers currently looking at alternatives to boost housing production and care for an aging population.

The project was spearheaded by RISD faculty member Elizabeth Debs as part of the Interior Architecture department’s annual design charette challenge this past November. She says: “We look for opportunities to use design as a way to explore pressing community needs with collaborators who are experts in their fields. By working with [the] AARP, students quickly learned important strategies for aging in place as well as universal design approaches they will use throughout their careers.”

Photo by Jaime Marland, image courtesy Rhode Island School of Design.

Teams were limited to a 900-square-foot footprint for their designs, which also included considerations for primary st...

REX opens The Lindemann Performing Arts Center at Brown University

2023-10-20T20:00:00-04:00

Brown University has shared photos to go along with the inauguration of its new REX/Joshua Ramus-designed Lindemann Performing Arts Center tomorrow in Providence, Rhode Island.

The building supports both performance and instruction on campus with an emphasis on creating new forms of collaboration inside a 101,000-square-foot container of flexibly configurable spaces. It combines with the twelve-year-old Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts next door to create the new Ronald O. Perelman Arts District, which is accessible from Brown’s main The Walk pedestrian corridor and provides the city with an added cultural venue as the university’s footprint within it expands.

Photo: Iwan Baan.

An extruding fluted aluminum rain screen facade gives the shoe box-like structure its complexity. The design includes a main hall that can be reconfigured five ways to accommodate between 70 and 530 people, depending on ne...

Rhode Island School of Design’s architecture faculty gives ‘unequivocal support’ to striking workers

2023-04-13T09:56:00-04:00

The architecture faculty of the Rhode Island School of Design has expressed its “unequivocal support” for striking workers on the campus. The strike, now approaching two weeks in duration, is being carried out by 60 movers, custodians, and ground service staff, represented by the Teamsters union.

“We express our unequivocal support for the custodians, groundskeepers, and movers currently on strike for a fair, decent wage at RISD,” a statement by the architecture department reads. “As educators and practitioners, we are acutely aware that the maintenance of our physical spaces is vital to the everyday functioning of our institution and is also the physical manifestation of our collective value systems. We firmly believe that RISD must fairly compensate and support the people whose tireless labor makes our work fundamentally possible. Their labor must be valued, recognized, and celebrated.”

“When employers use standards of minimum rather than standards of care, today’s living wage ...

Meet community engagement champions CIVIC: Your Next Employer?

2022-08-15T09:00:00-04:00

Following last week’s visit to Los Angeles-based OPEN OFFICE, we are moving our Meet Your Next Employer series east to Providence, Rhode Island, where we find CIVIC.

Founded by architect Manuel Cordero, and based in Providence’s Innovation District, CIVIC’s work is defined by an inclusive vision of the built environment, and in particular, the public realm. Their portfolio has thus developed to include a collaboration with Arup on a masterplan for public spaces across Providence, as well as ongoing educational and community projects.

The firm now seeks to expand by advertising for a multidisciplinary designer role on Archinect Jobs. For candidates interested in applying for the position, or anybody interested in learning more about life as an architect, we spoke with CIVIC founder Manuel Cordero for a behind-the-scenes look at the studio.

CIVIC's workspace is in CIC Innovation Campus in Providence. Image via CIVIC

How did CIVIC get started?

I am a licensed architect, but have alway...

Preservation and micro-apartment living come together to save America's first shopping mall

2020-03-02T12:56:00-05:00

The rise of online shopping has drastically reduced the need for shopping malls across America. However, in Providence, Rhode Island, the Westminster Arcade, America's first shopping mall, has found a way to turn this supposed "retail apocalypse" into an opportunity to build more housing.

Westminster Arcade from Views of Providence (1900) printed by L.H. Nelson Company.

A Country Living article reports that the formerly abandoned mall has been transformed into a new commercial and residential hub for micro-apartment living. Rather than demolishing the building, developers wanted to preserve the structure not only for its historical value, but for its housing potential. Northeast Collaborative Architects along with developer Evan Granoff helped lead a renovation project that aims to transform the aging Greek Revival style mall into The Arcade Providence, a micro-loft apartment complex that includes 48 rentable units along its two upper floors. The former mall was built in 1828 and is...

Pedestrian bridge in Providence anticipates bustling activity with sweeping wooden form

2019-12-18T08:00:00-05:00

The Providence River Pedestrian Bridge was designed by Detroit-based architecture firm inFORM Studio and structures designer BuroHappold for the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT).

Photo: Kroo Photography

Flowing through the heart of the city, the new bridge connects two new waterfront parks and expands Providence's Innovation & Design District. “Current and proposed projects around the new Innovation & Design district stand to add more than 1,600 new residential units and 750,000 square feet of commercial and research space to the area,” said Craid Schwitter, partner at BuroHappold expressed in a statement.

Photo: Kroo Photography

The increase in development surrounding the project will accommodate 4,500 residents and 2,100 new employees, which includes housing that will serve the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), Brown University, Johnson & Wales University, and other local institutions.

National Trust for Historic Preservation forwards the preservation of African American cultural sites

2019-07-08T20:00:00-04:00

The National Trust for Historic Preservation has unveiled $1.6 million in grant funding dedicated to preserving historical sites that demonstrate significance with relation to Black history and African American cultural heritage from around the country.

The funding, part of a larger, multi-year $25 million effort, is being awarded to 22 organizations with the goal of "uplifting the largely overlooked contributions of African Americans by protecting and restoring African American historic sites and uncovering hidden stories of African Americans connected to historic sites across the nation," according to a press release.

The list includes, for example, the Museum of African American History in Boston, an organization that is housed within a building designed by British architect Richard Upjohn in 1835. The building exists today as the oldest extant Black church in the United States and, when originally built, made up the first public educational facility for free Black children in B...

Get Lectured: RISD, Spring '17

2017-03-21T13:34:00-04:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter & Spring 2017

Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session for Spring 2017. Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming lectures you don't want to miss. Mark those calendars!

Want to share your school's lecture series? Send us your school's lecture series poster and details to connect@archinect.com.

Check out the Spring '17 lecture series at the Rhode Island School of Design, Department of Architecture.

Feb 23, 6:30 PM
Brett Schneider / Guy Nordenson and Associates & RISD Architecture

Feb 27, 6:30 PM
Jeanette Kuo / Karamuk*Kuo

Mar 2, 6:30 PM at RISD Auditorium
Petra Blaisse / Inside Outside, Hosted with INTAR, Textiles, RISD Museum

Mar 13, 6:30 PM
Allan Wexler / Allan Wexler Studio, Hosted with ID

Mar 16, 6:30 PM
Jarrett Walker / Jarrett Walker + Associates

April 3, 6:30 PM
Kunle Adeyemi / NLÉ

April 24, ...

Re-use, Re-Design & Re-think: RISD’s Interior Architecture department

2016-12-28T17:11:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by Department of Interior Architecture RISD

At the intersection of architecture, conservation and design, RISD’s Interior Architecture department takes an innovative approach to the reuse and transformation of existing buildings. Advanced design studios focused on adaptive reuse are central to both the undergraduate and graduate programs. And unlike the fields of interior design and decoration, interior architecture looks less at the application of surface materials than at understanding the design of buildings from the inside out.

In the studio, students use digital and manual means to research and recommend design alterations and renovations that give existing buildings new life. Studios focus on a wide range of approaches, from domestic to retail design to theater/production design to issues of preservation and conservation.

“Students in our department are engaged in a rich and expansive discipline focusing on the reuse and transformation of existing ...

A new NIMBY-ism in America's foremost mansion district

2016-12-05T16:46:00-05:00

This windswept outcropping, peering over the Atlantic, was a Gilded Age haven where the wealthy built mansions known by their names, not addresses: The Elms, Marble House and, most famous of all, The Breakers... Newport has cared deeply about appearances ever since. So when large steel beams rose high in the air between the city’s most storied thoroughfares, framing a mansion that will have an unusual, many-sided shape and a flat roof, neighborhood residents and observers were aghast.

More on the architecture of the mega-rich:

Get Lectured: RISD, Spring '16

2016-03-02T14:06:00-05:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter/Spring 2016

Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session. Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming lectures you don't want to miss.

Want to share your school's lecture series? Send us your school's lecture series poster and details to connect@archinect.com.

Next up is the Spring '16 Architecture + Landscape Architecture lecture series from the Rhode Island School of Design, Department of Architecture.

Listed below are upcoming events.

Mar 14
Emily Abruzzo & Gerald Bodziak / Abruzzo Bodziak Architects
6.30 p.m., BEB 106
Reception preceding

Mar 24
Emanuel Admassu & Jen Wood / AD-WO
Gallery talk 6 p.m., BEB Gallery

Apr 5
Shane Coen / Coen + Partners
Landscape Architecture Haffenreffer Lecture
6:30 p.m., BEB 106

Apr 15
R. Buckminster Fuller: THE HISTORY (and Mystery) OF THE UNIVERSE
written and performed by Doug Jaco...

"Too old to be hip but too young to be venerated" – say good-bye to the brutalist Fogarty building in downtown Providence

2016-01-15T19:29:00-05:00

The hotel plan by the Procaccianti Group Inc. [...] is being welcomed by construction-trades unions, city officials and surrounding business owners. But Ned Connors, an architect and historian of the Weybosset urban renewal project, says he will miss the Fogarty building. It’s not ugly, he said, it’s just … different. At about 50 years old, he said the Fogarty building is in the most dangerous time in a structure's life: when it’s too old to be hip but too young to be venerated.

Sadly the architectural design of the proposed extended stay high-rise hotel that has been OKed by Providence City Council last December to replace the Fogarty building could not be any more generic and bland.

What do you think, Archinectors? Do we have Providence locals here among our readers that can share their memories of the Fogarty's glory days?

Get Lectured: RISD, Spring '15

2015-03-10T13:28:00-04:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter-Spring 2015

Archinect's Get Lectured is back in session! Get Lectured is an ongoing series where we feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current term. Check back frequently to keep track of any upcoming lectures you don't want to miss.

The next poster comes from the Rhode Island School of Design Department of Architecture and Department of Landscape Architecture.

Want to share your school's lecture series? Send us your school's lecture series poster and details to connect@archinect.com.

Listed below are upcoming events only. All events take place in the Bayard Ewing Building, unless noted otherwise. Lectures take place in BEB 106 at 6:30 p.m.

LECTURES

Mar 16
Mark West / CAST

Apr 6
Iñaki Abalos + Renata Sentkiewicz / Abalos+Sentkiewicz arquitectos

Apr 9
Richard Roark / OLIN

Apr 24
Bernard Tschumi / Bernard Tschumi Architects

Apr 28
Thomas Woltz / Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects

Apr 30
Lisa Iwamoto / Iwamot...

Building Design from the Inside Out: RISD’s Interior Architecture department

2014-11-25T13:06:00-05:00

This post is brought to you by the RISD Interior Architecture Department

Image: Heekyung Kim, Space for Water, MDes 2014

“Students in our department are engaged in a rich and expansive discipline focus...

Get Lectured: RISD, Spring '14

2014-03-20T13:46:00-04:00

Archinect's Architecture School Lecture Guide for Winter/Spring 2014

Archinect's Get Lectured is up and running again for the Winter/Spring '14 term! As a refresher from our Fall 2013 guide, every week we'll feature a school's lecture series—and their snazzy posters—for the current season. If you're not doing so already, be sure to keep track of any upcoming lectures you don't want to miss.

Today's poster features the Spring '14 lecture series at the Rhode Island School of Design, School of Architecture.

Want to share your school's lecture series? Send us your school's lecture series poster and details to connect@archinect.com.

Listed below are upcoming lectures only. Events will take place from 6:30-8 pm at the Bayard Ewing Building, Room 106.

April 7
Vikram Pakrash

April 21
SHoP Architects

May 5
Ana Alemán + Axel Paredes / paredes+alemán arquitectos

For more event details, click here.

Providence, RI Takes Grand Prize at Mayors Challenge

2013-03-20T19:59:00-04:00

Providence, Rhode Island was recently selected as America's most innovative city at the nationwide Mayors Challenge, taking home the $5M-Grand Prize for its idea "Providence Talks." The Mayors Challenge, hosted by Bloomberg Philanthropies, is a competition to inspire American cities to generate innovative ideas that solve major challenges and improve city life - and that ultimately can be shared with cities across the nation.