Rosa’s teaching and creative practice focus on two areas. The first is human/non-human collaboration, which she explores through her teaching and recent performances (see below). The second area is the intersection of technology and the human body through the design and fabrication of sculptural wearables for dance, speculative prosthetics, and assistive devices for people with disabilities. Rosa was trained as an architect, and engages in design as a critical practice, using research and interviews to see beyond dominant narratives and question the status quo.
CREATIVE PRACTICE
Rosa is currently working on a performance with Emily Beattie, U-Meleni Mhlaba-Adebo, and Akili Jamal Haynes called The Shift Show. Their July 2022 residency at the Mills Gallery at the Boston Center for the Arts was partially funded by a LAB grant. Rosa’s installation and set pieces for this project were completed at the Microsoft Garage with support from Tom Jaeger. This project brings together her interests in dance and human/non-human collaboration.Before The Shift Show, Rosa created a functional wearable with integrated electronics for researcher and dancer Ilya Vidrin. She also has an ongoing collaboration with critically acclaimed dancer and choreographer Heidi Latsky. Her focus on dancers inspired her recent project “Classp,” a novel mechanism for attaching clothing to the body.
TEACHING
Previous to her current position, Rosa was a visiting professor at Smith College for Fall ‘21 to Spring ‘22. At Smith, Rosa taught architecture studios and digital media, including a course with Heidi Latksy Dance and a course on Beaver Centered Design. Last spring, she taught in the industrial design departments at RISD and Keene State College. She was a member of the teaching team for Product and Experience Design for Desirability at Harvard University in 2020. From 2014-2020 served as a Senior Coach (teacher) and the Director of Studio Development at NuVu Studio, a full-time innovation school for middle and high school students based on the architectural studio model.Rosa strives to foster creativity and collaboration in open-ended, project-based learning experiences. She pushes students to move past implicit biases and cliches and develop generative concepts for their projects. Central to her teaching philosophy is the idea of “concept,” imported from architecture and art, which, when paired with critique, adds depth and rigor to a student’s design process.
Rosa has developed approaches for teaching digital fabrication to both beginners and advanced students. Drawing on her extensive professional and personal network, Rosa creates rich experiences in which students interact with clients and subject-matter experts.
COMMUNICATION
Rosa regularly speaks about decision-making and cognitive biases in design. She has given talks and written about creativity for Processing Community Day, Boston Tech Poetics, and Jeff VanderMeer’s Wonderbook, and she has been interviewed for Boston Art Review.Her latest writing project will include essays related to design education, and she recently wrote an essay with Yusuf Ahmad (Lifelong Kindergarten, MIT Media Lab) and David Alsdorf on creativity and collaboration in virtual classrooms.
Her work and her students’ work have been presented in diverse contexts, including Boston Fashion Week, the Whitney Museum of Art, and Lincoln Center Outdoors and publicized on NPR and Mashable.