Stimulating innovative teaching

The Cannon Family Fund is providing faculty in Architecture with opportunities to pursue and share important research.

Thanks to the Cannon Family Fund, RISD’s Architecture department has launched the Design Research Seed Fund to support a faculty research project each year and provide students with new opportunities to participate in design research and intellectual exchange.

“This new program provides RISD Architecture faculty members with needed support to produce a robust body of design research, cultivating a presence on both the national and international stage,” says Associate Professor Amy Kulper, who heads the department. “Culminating with an exhibition, a lecture and a publication, this program provides an elevated platform that allows the voice of an emerging architect to be heard.”

This program provides an elevated platform that allows the voice of an emerging architect to be heard.

Assistant Professor Emanuel Admassu, the first recipient of the award, focuses on the problems and opportunities associated with the diasporic condition. He’s now using the seed funding to continue his research on urban marketplaces in Africa.

Throughout the 2018/19 academic year, Architecture faculty, students and alumni will gather for a series of TableTalks designed to build common ground in support of Admassu’s research. Three global interlocutors will help forge a conversational context around this work. The project also provides several students with the opportunity to work with Admassu as research assistants—giving them a critical window into the conceptualization and production of new research.

Admassu’s Two Markets research project examines the constructed spatial and sociopolitical identities of two urban marketplaces in sub-Saharan Africa: in Dar es Salaam and Addis Ababa.

“What I find so exciting is that the fund creates a rich design culture that invites student participation, and the program models new forms of critical exchange,” says Kulper. “We are grateful to have this important new resource that provides vital opportunities for our faculty and students to advance and explore design research together.”