Academics . Craft + Design . Facilities

Craft + Design Facilities

CIA's Craft + Design studios were designed to provide an extensive array of capabilities while also encouraging collaboration, like you'd experience in a studio after graduation.

Having all these spaces interconnected helps students experiment and think more broadly about materiality and context.

You'll have your own studio space with access to the tools, technology and peer support to help you explore and execute your ideas. Developing a sense of community and collaboration is an important aspect of the program.

Ceramics Studios
Our sky-lit studios with floor-to-ceiling windows offer large common workspaces with access to specialized spaces for clay making, glaze making and testing, and plaster working.

CIA is one of only a few ceramics departments in the country to own a digitally-controlled, Blaauw gas kiln. A unique kiln, it is fully computerized and capable of any firing cycle, oxidation, or reduction. Our sizeable kiln room also contains three gas kilns, eight electric kilns and one raku kiln. Students may fire work ranging from six inches to five feet in height.

Glass Studios
CIA has one of the best-equipped undergraduate glass studios in the country. The well-ventilated, three-station hot glass area features furnaces for melting clear and colored glasses, benches and tools for working hot glass, and large annealing ovens. An adjacent area holds additional computer-controlled ovens for casting, slumping and special forming projects. The cold glass facility is furnished with great lighting, diamond saws, lapping wheels, German and Czech engraving/cutting lathes, polishing lathes, and assorted hand tools for grinding and polishing. Lampworking also has a designated space to complement the other complex glass-working processes.

Jewelry + Metals Studios
Our studios offer exceptional opportunities to explore and create using a full range of materials and technologies including traditional metalworking, kilns for enamel, casting, as well as CAD, 3D modeling, and 3D printing. You’ll have access directly in the studio to 3D printing to turn your CAD models into real 3D elements for jewlery, accessories, and objects.

Fabrication Studios
CIA also houses the fabrication studios, a shared space, staffed and supervised by highly qualified technical specialists. Students from all courses of study are encouraged to use this space and do hands-on material studies. This communal environment gives students optimal means of making for their individual exploration and group projects.