The Elevator Pitch
Integrative Studio is a foundational semester-long course during which students learn how to explore and engage with ideas by way of hands on making and ideation. By developing concepts that experiment in meaning and redefine context, students begin to investigate the very notion of creative making itself. Integrative Studio is a generative space where students can test their ideas through methods and materials.
Official Course Description
From the Course Catalogue
In this course we explore the creative process. It’s not simply about what we make, or how we make it, but why? What do you do with an idea? Is there more than one way to approach an assignment? How can research become part of this process? You will engage in a series of cross-disciplinary projects that ask you to make up and define your own rules. You will actively: question, observe, visualize, play, fail, reframe, experiment, fabricate, and reflect.
In Integrative Studio 1, projects scale from the individual to the collective. You will start with the self, and then enter into a conversation with your peers, before moving into a collaborative group dynamic. Finally, you will use research conducted in Integrative Seminar to inspire a culminating project which utilizes skills built over the semester across courses.
At the heart of the integrative model is the connection to your Integrative Seminar class. Our goal is to make reading, writing and critical thinking essential components of the art, design and strategic thinking processes. The two courses are tied together conceptually through a shared theme (as defined by the keyword of your class) and through bridge projects. Bridge projects are shared assignments between studio and seminar. They ask you to explicitly and productively blur the boundaries between the two courses. What happens when making becomes a form of thinking and writing becomes a form of making?
How One Instructor Describes This Course
“Integrative Studio is dynamically paired with Integrative Seminar; both courses engage with elements of creative research. Seminar introduces traditional research practices, whereas Studio investigates the ways in which craft itself is a research practice — one that requires students to engage with the history of a medium, genre, or form in order to understand what marks and materials actually mean.
Integrative Studio offers time for creative work, group activities, and collaboration, as well as field trips and field work, or observational research. Content and themes are “bridged” between the Studio and Seminar courses— rarely do the two professors appear together. Instead, diverse student viewpoints and unique approaches to the work are the threads that knit the two courses together.“
-Jennifer Maza
The Uniqueness of Integrative 1
The semester is structured around key moments when students consciously connect the content between the two classes; these “bridges” are designed to help students broaden their perspectives. By using both language and making, both critical and creative processes, students are able to access and explore different parts of their own thinking brains.
Because Integrative 1 is actually two distinct classes taught separately, two instructors work together to weave a cohesive learning experience during the entire semester. This includes but is not limited to: idea generation, conceptual thinking and planning, experimenting through risk-taking (affording student resiliency), self-reflection and assessment, and process-oriented exploration with an emphasis on learning through failure. The dynamic and supportive atmosphere created between the two classes can be described as “alchemical”.
The Learning Portfolio & The First Year
In Integrative Studio students are introduced to the Learning Portfolio (affectionately known as the LP). This online digital platform is encouraged and used extensively across the entire First Year. In their classes, students discover how others perceive their work; conversely, the LP is the place students learn what they think about their own work. The LP is a platform where they can record making and thinking processes, evidence growth, and ultimately become better makers and thinkers through self-reflection and assessment.
Week by Week Layout and Project Examples
Sound Portrait of New York
Zihang Yu
Bridge 1 – Memoir: A Focus On Listening
Weeks 1 – 2
How can we become better listeners? How does sound shape our experience?
In this bridge students focus on the underserved sense of sound by connecting their current experiences with their past lives. Students engage with their own memories, assessing how they connect or disconnect from this new stage of their life in New York. This sample bridge project focuses explicitly on listening and involves collecting sounds from daily life in order to create two distinct sound portraits of NY: 1) Familiar Sounds Portrait (a mix of sounds that remind them of their pasts) and 2) Unfamiliar Sounds Portrait (a mix of sounds that are new). References: New Music Composers Annea Lockwood, Christopher Kallmyer, and Pauline Oliveros. Readings include Joe Brainard’s “I Remember”.
Bridge 2 – Peer to Peer: Parsons – The Game
Week 3 – 4
How did you end up at Parsons — did your peers follow the same path you did, or did they follow different ones? Can we engage in collective, creative play to uncover the role of games, maps, and recipes in our own experiences of memory?
While Bridge 1 was focused on listening to the world (macro), Bridge 2 requires students to lean in and listen to their peers (micro). Students incorporate peer interviews with a collaborative process of mapping, prototyping, and other research and design strategies in order to create a board game that reimagines the paths they took to Parsons.
Original Inspiration from the Metropolitan Museum of Art 
I also researched on many different types of Noh Costumes and found that Nuihaku is one of the most luxurious types 
Reading Notes (from the timeline of art history) 
Iteration 1: ideation through sketching and material investigation 
I chose toilet paper and tissues as my materials. Because they have a softer texture, which is similar to the original fabric, silk 
I did research and found that Tie-die is also a traditional Japanese technique. In Japan history, tie-dye has another name called ‘Shibori’. meaning to wring, squeeze, or press 
Shibori Tie-Dye Research 
The first dying experiment is good. The only issue was that the colours became uneven because of the rough texture of the tissue 
Since my garment does not have a front side image on the Met site, I search online and found a sketch of another Japanese Nuihaku. Although it is not my piece, the basic style is the same, so I made my iteration based on this image 
Iteration 2: Muslin 
Iteration 2 notes 
Final dying results 
I am not very satisfied with the final dying result, because the muslin was shrunk after the dying process, so the final garments became shorter and the texture got too wrinkled. I noticed that the dye should be applied to smooth fabric such as cotton material. 
Reading Notes as Research Continues 
Iteration 3: cotton fabric & PVC 
The cotton fabric did produce a brighter and more vivid colour than the muslin. Since the texture is smooth, the colour can penetrate the fabric evenly. 
I directly applied the spraying paint onto PVC in a random shape. 
From the sides 
Front and back
Lexie Hu
Bridge 3 – Multiple Perspectives: Kimono Style
Week 5 – 8
For the next project students transition from collaboration back to independent work. In this particular example, students attended the “Kimono Style” exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The show explored artistic exchanges between the kimono and Western fashion and also critically engaged with the practices of appropriation. Students were asked to reflect on the curatorial choices and ideas communicated in the show and later developed their observations into an exhibition write-up. In Studio students used the same observations to create a project based on paper prototyping techniques and other inspirations.
Jessica (Yuming) Chen
*click on image to expand
Bridge 4 – Introduction to Research: An Artist Diary – Writing as Investigation + Making as Thinking
Weeks 9-14
For this bridge students visit a museum or gallery with the explicit goal of encountering multiple artists. Afterwards in Seminar they narrow their focus, selecting one of the artists to explore further in an Artist Journal. Students then attempt to “become” their chosen artist. After extensively researching the artist’s life and work, they emulate their voice in faux journal entries.
In Studio the same bridge has multiple iterations including a self-portrait (as their chosen artist), an exploratory mood board, and a project of their design developed in conversation with their Studio teacher. Students engage in observational research and image analysis, utilizing artworks, photos, and other materials associated with their artist. They are also introduced to the process of Formal Analysis (or “reading” an image by way of its visual components). They then use this observational research tool to further document and examine other aspects of their artist’s life and work.
“I think my perspective on creating art changed the most during bridge 4, just because I could see that my highest quality piece of art in Studio was a result of having the highest quality research done in Seminar.”
Unit 5: Reflection
Weeks 14-15
During the final bridge students reflect on the entirety of the semester. They prepare a presentation that not only speaks to Bridge 4, but also more broadly explores connections to other aspects of their first semester experience. Here they determine which skills and ideas to carry with them beyond our course.
What Students Take With Them When They Leave
“Integrative Studio actively engages with the Learning Portfolio (LP), a blog made for digital presentation of student work. The ongoing documentation of inspirations, process, final work, and most importantly, self-reflection and assessment, enables students to create presentations and proposals that are thorough, detailed, and engaging. The LP fosters skills that students can later implement in other facets of their learning experience as well as in their life beyond Parsons.”
-Jen Mazza