Rhode Island School of Design
- Facilities

Eclectic Mix of Old and New

RISD is an urban campus which pretty much means that over the years it has acquired a number of different buildings throughout Providence. Some buildings, such as 15 Westminster (15 west for short) a neo-classical refurbished and repurposed bank building which contains RISD's (quite impressive) Fleet Library, dining cafe and hundreds of dorms. The Freshman Quad on the other hand is getting on in age but serve their purpose for what they are...freshman dorms. The workout center is what you would expect from a small art school but it is surprisingly sophisticated and has just undergone a major renovation. Each Major either has its own building or its own portion of a building, this is where RISD really shines. Each major provides its students with an incredible selection of expensive state of the art tools facilities and machines that few other institutions in the world can say they provide.

Libraries

Very nice! The librarians are very polite and helpful. They will try their best to find the books or articles that are helpful to you. There are tans and tans of resources about art and design. And the special collection area is amazing!

Modern, Artistic and Green.

The Rhode Island School of Design facilities are certainly up-to-date technologically and aesthetically. The school utilizes energy saving techniques with their electricity in all of the studio workspaces. A new implementation in all of the RISD buildings throughout campus is the "RISD Water" system. This system is comprised of purified water fountains meant to be used by students and faculty for filling their reusable water bottles. The studio spaces themselves are more than adequate providing for the 15-20 student to one professor ratio. Our campus library is absolutely beautiful architecturally. The resources available to the students are infinite, including an image library, special collections library, a plethora of online databases and original copies of texts, artifacts, paintings,drawings, etchings, etc on reserve. Also on campus is our immaculate Rhode Island School of Design museum. This museum is open to the public and used as another resource for the students as well with over 25,000 artworks, artifacts, textiles and apparel on display or in storage available by appointment.