at rhode island school of design

RISD hosting SURF undergrad research fellows

June 2014

Walking into the RISD Nature Lab is like stepping into a cabinet of curiosities, brimming with odd and interesting artifacts from the natural world. But unlike collections that age, fade and recede in relevance behind glass cases, ours is here to be touched, examined and borrowed by artists and designers interested in exploring the wonder and complexities of design in nature.

The 80,000 skeletons, shells, corals, fish, seeds, plants, rocks and microscopic specimen housed in the Nature Lab offer a hands-on learning experience that’s very different from online research. A site for many forms of inquiry and observation, the Nature Lab supports both individual and group learning about texture, color, shape, pattern, form, structure, systems and myriad other aspects of natural order with a direct bearing on the critical making that goes on in RISD studios.

expanded access to microscopes and micro-imaging systems opens new worlds of discovery for art and design students. These high-quality stereo and compound microscopes come with full-color, high-resolution cameras and the capacity to capture fluorescent images.

Since microscopy is based on intense visual observation, it offers art and design students an intuitive portal for discovery. And given that the Nature Lab can’t accommodate a large living collection, our microscopes allow for ready access to entire ecosystems.

Come see the wondrous variety found in a single drop of pond water — from bacteria to photosynthetic algae, invertebrate larvae, predatory fish and more.

The lab offers hands-on access to natural specimens, preserved and living.

working with a wide variety of fish, amphibians and other aquatic life gives students opportunities to care for and observe a range of living species. The lab’s small but ever-changing group of live inhabitants builds on a concept and collection first started in the 1930s by longtime RISD drawing instructor Edna W. Lawrence, a 1920 graduate of the Painting program.

Every summer — packed into a tiny coupe with her lifelong partner Bessie and their dog — Lawrence would take rambling road trips to collect natural specimens as inspiration for students in her nature drawing class. In 1937, when the new library opened in the College Building and space became available in the Waterman Building, she founded the Nature Lab with her collection of 1,286 objects. By the time she retired 38 years later, the collection had grown to 25,000 — and it has more than tripled since.

unlike natural history museums, the RISD Nature Lab is designed for active use. Its staff of work-study students and professionals with scientific training keep the doors open 80 hours a week, helping visitors to follow their interests and check out more than 7,000 specimens a year. Rather than being rigidly organized by taxonomy, the collections are more compositional, with seeds organized by size and shape rather than genesis and minerals organized by color instead of chemical or physical properties. This approach encourages visual experimentation, inviting students to make comparisons and connections that feed their studio work.