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Echoes of Scent: Redefining Museum Accessibility
Full text linkMuseums and art galleries have traditionally been visually dominant, relying on sight as the primary means of experiencing art and presenting information. However, for blind and visually impaired visitors, these spaces can feel alienating or exclusionary. Museums and galleries must move beyond visually dominant exhibits to create inclusive, multisensory experiences, especially for blind and visually impaired visitors. This thesis challenges conventional, sight-reliant exhibition design and advocates for a shift toward approaches that fully engage the human sensory spectrum. Rooted in empathy and inspired by the lived experiences of visually impaired individuals, this work explores how museums can become more inclusive by fundamentally reimagining how exhibitions are conceived, designed, and felt.
To achieve this, the thesis proposes the integration of a “smell box” system — specially designed scent devices located near exhibition displays — which will release carefully curated fragrances to make the displays more engaging and accessible. This thesis adopts this system to increase participation and sensory engagement within gallery spaces. Scent serves as a primary tool for introducing and navigating the exhibition and enhancing engagement. Rather than functioning as an ornament, scent is used intentionally to define space, evoke memory, and deepen narrative connections. Beyond improving accessibility, the use of fragrance encourages all visitors to slow down, heighten their awareness, and experience exhibitions in a more embodied, emotional way.
Ultimately, this thesis positions the museum as a space for shared sensory discovery — one that embraces difference, centers inclusivity, and reimagines what it means to experience a place, a story, or a moment in history
Stranded in Time: Reawakening the Crook Point Bascule Bridge through Temporality
Full text linkMany urban structures fall into a “stranded” state—physically present, yet socially invisible. The Crook Point Bridge in Providence is a prime example: a decommissioned piece of industrial infrastructure, too large and symbolically heavy to vanish entirely, yet gradually fading from public awareness. This thesis explores how temporary, experience-driven interventions can reawaken the social relevance of such neglected spaces. Rather than proposing a fixed future, the project seeks to prompt public reconsideration through fleeting spatial experiences that require no irreversible transformation. The first intervention utilizes balloons—fragile, inflated, and inevitably collapsing—to embody the theme of accelerated disappearance, echoing how memories fade faster than we realize. In later phases, cyclone fencing is introduced as a contrasting material: representing slow erosion, accumulating physical and psychological boundaries over time while still bearing traces of human passage and resistance. Torn fences become visual thresholds, inviting viewers to look inward and experience decay not as absence, but as transformation. The exhibition unfolds through a series of staged phases, gradually wrapping, framing, and opening the abandoned bridge. The structure becomes both the site and subject of the exhibition. These temporary installations do not aim to restore or beautify, but to make visible the act of slow disappearance—challenging the bridge’s infrastructural permanence with softness, porosity, and transience. In the final stage, after the balloon exhibition and projected installations, the bridge is transformed into a temporary pavilion enclosed by a multi-layered cyclone fence, showcasing its layered history and memory. This thesis proposes temporality as a critical spatial strategy—one that softens perception, evokes memory, and catalyzes public dialogue. The project seeks not to determine the bridge’s final fate but to return it to the city’s cultural consciousness as an object of imagination, memory, and open-ended possibility
Rooted in Learning: Eco-Art Pedagogy and Place-Based Learning
Full text linkThis thesis explores the integration of eco-art pedagogy and place-based learning (PBL) in secondary art education, investigating how these approaches help develop artistic practices and deepen environmental awareness among high school students. The study focuses on the implementation of a 4-week curriculum at Mount Pleasant High School in Providence, Rhode Island. This research examines how art making and place-specific learning contribute to local environmental investment, personal connection and environmental engagement. Using a mixed-method approach grounded in arts-based research (ABR) and teacher-research methodology, this study analyzes teen-created artworks, sketchbook and journal reflections, and researcher personal reflections and field notes. The research is informed by literature and academic study that positions eco-art pedagogy as a positive and effective vehicle to integrate ecological principles into art making (Inwood, 2010; Graham, 2007) and PLB as a framework for fostering connections between education and local environments (Gruenewald, 2003). These methods align with broader discussions in art education that advocate for socially and environmentally responsive teaching practices. 6
Ultimately, this study contributes to the evolving field of eco-art education by offering fresh insights for integrating ecological and place-based approaches into art classrooms. With a rapidly changing world and climate these insights help keep progress for positive environmental change relevant but also helps shape a web of connection and resources. This thesis also critically examines my positionality as a researcher, addressing issues of privilege, power, and ethics in working with youth, educators, and community organizers. With the constraints of a one-year graduate program, this work is designed to be a seed for future engagement.
Keywords: Eco-art pedagogy, Place-based learning, Art education, Participatory action research, Community, Climate, Engagemen
Silent Witnesses: Reconnecting Landscape through Lost Narratives
Full text linkIn the heart of the vast Arabian desert, a forgotten tale of tragic love unfolds. Aja and Salma, figures from two different tribes in pre-Islamic Arabia, embody a romance that has long faded into obscurity. The two mountain ranges in Hail, Saudi Arabia, bear their names, standing as silent witnesses to a love story that ends in tragedy—one in which each is killed on separate peaks. Over time, the story has faded, leaving a gap between the landscape and its cultural significance. Could a narrative-based tourism experience revive this link, blending the mountains’ natural beauty with their forgotten story?
This thesis explores how storytelling, spatial, and experiential design can reconnect the landscape with its lost narratives. By integrating myth and place-making, this proposal demonstrates how such an approach enhances tourism while fostering a deeper connection to cultural identity.
“The power of the story realm lies in the devices that create a coherent sense of closure—an ordering of event, time, and place shaped by the intent of the designer.” ¹
My design approach for the site focuses on dividing the story into a series of key moments, each translated into visual cues or ‘devices.’ These elements act as narrative tools, guiding visitors through emotional states such as relief, tension, silence, and grief. Informed by keywords drawn from the story’s pivotal moments and enriched with symbolic elements referenced in the narrative, these devices create a spatial sequence that unfolds along a hiking trail within Aja Mountain—inviting visitors to experience the landscape as a living story.
¹ Matthew Potteiger and Jamie Purinton, Landscape Narratives: Design Practices for Telling Stories (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1998)
Modes of Seeing, Means of Telling
No full textIn a world increasingly threatened with dis- and misinformation, far-right nationalisms, geopolitical violence and conflicts, I am interested in graphic design as a tool for investigation and interactive storytelling.
To investigate is to track a movement, to untangle a situation, to search for the roots of an incident. In adopting the posture of the researcher, the journalist, or the pedestrian observer, I engage in the work of collecting vantage points: data, records, images, from academic papers to personal anecdotes. I position them in larger sociopolitical contexts, making visible how they might all fit together. Who holds the power of narration? Who is pushed to reside in the margins? Zoom in, zoom out; I reconfigure the fragments to tell a new story.
The world around us is one in constant expansion. This thesis is a reminder to be in the perpetual motion of searching rather than knowing; this way, I can start to see the cracks and gaps within. I hold my gaze
No One Thing
Full text linkGraphic design has mobility. It is oriented toward action, travel, and distribution.
My projects put me in touch with people and ideas, language, and visual form. They’re broad, conversational, and curatorial in spirit. They allow me to cut a path through the discipline of graphic design, and to branch opportunistically out to others, when I can—to art, architecture, fashion, writing. I expand my field of operations. Make it as big as you are. Make it 1:1. Take the part and run with it. Fold it up, send it away
Note of an Image-Game Maker
Full text linkThis notebook archives the process of cases I turn images into games, and my own evolution as an image-game creator along the way. A clarification: image games are not images made for games, but images as games. This is a diary, a scrapbook, a message record, an album, a specimen folder. Here, I attempt to analyze the experiences that make up my artistic body. To unfold why image games have become my intuition. Or, even if I never find the answer, to leave an anchor for the future me. Ideally, one of the four editions of this notebook will always exist somewhere in the world, updated as I continue to create
this is how to shoot a gun.
Full text linkThe textile work I have developed for my thesis is a curated exposing of the social interactions and violent phenomena of underprivileged realities. It investigates the theatrics of community violence, mechanisms of survival both through labor and bullets. Elements of my work are inspired by setting a scene through minimalistic installation and allowing you, the audience member, to become a spectator. With an emphasis on the injured form, the work incorporates identity-driven artifacts of my neighborhood back home. My garments in this graduate collection which are hand-patterned and self-sewn aim to represent victims, perpetrators and spectators of violence.
Subtle moments in my collection feature woven guns belonging to my two brothers, exposed “innards” (pockets) and palimpsest inspired textiles. Intimate moments of real bullets are hand woven into cloth using the linear exchange of the double block weave structure. Select textiles for my apparel are predominantly hand-woven on an eight-harness floor loom, making hand work highly important for this thesis development. The installation layout reflects both a violent scene, but also a candled curb which is meant to mourn the death of a community member, publicly. People back home threw punches, and here at RISD is where I learned how to throw picks. I describe garments as artifacts rather than archetypes and provide congruence between gunman and laborer; both who utilize contradicting tools.
Finally, through my thesis work, my direct intention is to force your gaze to shift onto the sections of marginality I am affiliated with through legacy. As I invite you to take on the role of spectator, I rehearse the violence we perform and the tools we carry with us. These are not only traditional tools but metaphorical tools. This semester I ask myself if a gun and its bullets can be considered a tool. These are the tools of my family members, immigrants, and gang members alike. Tools that blister a hand and tools that bloody a hand. Earning a Master’s degree at the Rhode Island School of Design is my choice of weapon. I promise to keep it concealed.
This is how I load my gun
Time Reclamation
No full textIn today’s involution culture or “internal competition”, epitomized by China’s 996 work schedule, time is tracked like a quota rather than lived. Drawing on Camus’ call to make one’s very existence a quiet act of rebellion, this thesis answers alienated time with multisensory design.
Four interventions, the Thermochromic Table, Blinds Light, Dappled Shadows Light, and a haptic Squeeze Timer, using temperature, light, shadow, and touch to stage brief “moments of awareness.”
Instead of urging users to optimize every second, these objects invite them to pause, feel, and enjoy time. Each prototype softens the clock’s rigid tick into a gentle cue, helping people reclaim personal rhythms and restore presence. To inhabit such moments, even briefly, is to practice the freedom Camus envisioned: living authentically enough that being itself becomes resistance
MEMEGANDA
No full textMEMEGANDA investigates how meme culture and speculative design can transform everyday objects into covert communication tools under authoritarian censorship. In environments where digital expression is heavily restricted, memes—often dismissed as entertainment—emerge as a powerful medium of resistance. This thesis reimagines physical artifacts such as delivery helmets, receipt printers, and hotel carts as vehicles for hidden messages, bypassing digital surveillance systems. Drawing on personal experience, historical symbolism, and global examples like the White Paper Movement and banned protest songs, the project centers blue-collar workers as unlikely messengers of dissent. By embedding emotional, political, and satirical content into mundane urban materials, MEMEGANDA proposes a new design language: one that speaks through silence, camouflage, and irony. It is a critical response to shrinking spaces of expression worldwide, and a speculative blueprint for how humor and design can safeguard truth and build solidarity in plain sight