Silvia Acosta has been teaching design studios and seminars that maintain linkages to the fine arts. These courses include the acts of drawing, painting and making a variety of things, from spatial studies to objects of use. Teaching has also taken her to other places, and she is grateful to have had these very exiting and personally enriching involvements with other schools. However, she still considers the best part of her education to have taken place while teaching at RISD. She continues to take immense pleasure in working with individuals who have the desire to initiate work and the need to draw and make every day.

Although Acosta supports the uniqueness of personal ingenuity, when it comes to the creation of architectural projects, she’s also interested in the making of collective works. As much as architecture comes from our individual creativity, it is also a collaborative practice, and in the best of situations, its beauty comes through in the inclusion of humanistic values, both in its making and in its offering.

Her interest in this approach to academic searches is founded on two beliefs – that joint endeavors outweigh work conceived from a single point of view, and that architecture is made and then given away. No matter who sponsors it, architecture is in the world and for the world. These opportunities to make an offering are about observing, listening and doing. They are also about responding with a sense of obligation towards humanitarian concerns.

Fall 2018 Courses

• ARCH-2101-01 The Making Of Design Principles
• ARCH-2196-03 Thesis Sem: Navigating The Creative Process

Spring 2019 Courses

• ARCH-2352-01 Advanced Topics In Architectural Theory
• ARCH-2198-03 Thesis Project