Past Initiative

Resources and Places: Focus Portugal

A multi-year initiative focused on the research and study of softwoods and cork in the context of Portugal.

Resources and Places: Design in the biosphere and cultural heritage of Portugal is enabled in part through a year-long pilot collaboration between RISD, the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), and FLAD’s Study Abroad in Portugal Network (SiPN), among others, and with materials support from Corticeira Amorim.

Through this program, RISD faculty and students will engage in a series of reciprocal academic exchanges with an extensive network of academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations across Portugal.

At-A-Glance

Faculty
What
Multi-year Initiative
Where
  • Lisbon, Portugal
  • Providence, RI, USA
When
Academic Year

Jun 1, 2018 — May 23, 2020

Department
  • Architecture
  • Industrial Design
  • Interior Architecture
Azores: Walk and Work with Wood
Ponta Delgada, Azores, Portugal 2019
Cork Courses Exhibition
Providence, RI, USA 2019

Portugal Initiative

Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) is delighted to announce a multi-year initiative focused on the research and study of softwoods and cork in the context of Portugal. Resources and Places: Design in the biosphere and cultural heritage of Portugal is enabled in part through a year-long pilot collaboration between RISD, the Luso-American Development Foundation (FLAD), and FLAD’s Study Abroad in Portugal Network (SiPN), among others, and with materials support from Corticeira Amorim.

Through this program, RISD faculty and students will engage in a series of reciprocal academic exchanges with an extensive network of academic, governmental, and non-governmental organizations across Portugal.

The initiative encompasses collaborative studio- and liberal arts-based inquiries designed to engage RISD faculty and students in innovative approaches to applying material resources indigenous to Portugal across diverse industry sectors. In its initial year, RISD’s departments of Architecture, Furniture Design, Industrial Design and Interior Architecture, along with the Division of Liberal Arts, will develop a longer-term approach to these investigations through a series of studios and courses on campus, travel courses to Portugal, and by welcoming artists, scholars and designers from Portugal to Providence, a city that is home to vibrant Portuguese and Portuguese-speaking communities.

The benefits of this program include an increase in exchange among artists, designers, architects, scholars and industries in Portugal and the US; intensive materials investigations focused on innovation and new applications; and a deeper awareness of Portugal’s softwood resources and potential role as a site for the study of sustainable solutions for the built environment.

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Portugal: Bio-geo Cultural Heritages

Portugal: Mapping Portugal: Bio-geo Cultural Heritages

Students in this course will spend four weeks in Portugal and will use the methodologies of design for the built environment, the fine arts, the environmental humanities, mapping, and writing to investigate overlapping networks of biological, geological, and cultural heritage in Portugal.

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Azores: Walk and Work with Wood

Azores: Walk and Work with Wood

In this course, we will examine the crossovers between our communities, and study the intersection of ecology, traditional economy, and contemporary cultural activities.

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Portugal: Material Practices

Students in this course will use the methodologies of architecture, design, and the environmental humanities to investigate how wood- from pine to cork- functions as a node in intersecting biological, cultural, economic, political, social, and theoretical networks that route through Portugal.

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