Yesterday was our second design critique for the design of our farmstands, three of which will be built around Bertie County by the end of the semester (one in Powellsville, one in Lewiston-Woodville, and one for a farmer who lives off route 308). The task today was to present the integrated designs, which are the result of two students paired together. Their original, individual designs each had some great elements, and we paired students in ways that would hopefully enhance both designs, and combine the

This past weekend, I gave a talk at the well-known and chaotic SXSW (South by Southwest) conference in Austin. The interactive portion of the event (there is also a film and music festival) brings in hundreds of speakers and panelists to share stories around technology, creativity, and interesting new initiatives. I told the story of Studio H year one: the adventure, the struggle, and the triumph of the farmers market build. During my talk, a “visual recorder” from Ogilvy created a graphic using tidbits from

Studio H lecture: Structures View more presentations from Emily Pilloton. In Studio H, we don’t design anything without building it. Our current farmstand design project is in the concept development stage, and we have until the end of the semester to take our wild ideas to reality, building 3 full-scale farmstands for the county. Students have been working hard, doing rapid ideation of ideas in cardboard model form, and last week they presented their final design concepts in a class critique. This week we are

Yesterday we had our first design critique of the semester. Students had been working for the past week on initial design concepts for the farmstands, and we used the class period on Friday to share those concepts with the rest of the class, talk about their positives and negatives, and practice verbal presentation skills. The critique is a crucial part of the design process (and architectural education), in which peer review and constructive criticism help us elevate design concepts, pushing them further towards buildable solutions.

I came across two items today, one which made me grin from ear to ear, and one that made me cry. Both are incredibly fitting to post on Studio H’s blog, because they speak to both the potential of and the dwindling value we place on “real work:” real, dirty, steel-shavings-in-your-hair work. In Studio H, we teach design, creative and critical thinking, community engagement, but we teach these things only as a means to do real work FOR our community. Last year, this real work

One of our favorite quotes, which fairly accurately describes the design process, was written by German sculptor Bernhard Hoetger, published in 1928: “The creative moment demands not the transparent wall, not the beautiful surface, not construction but synthesis. And this synthesis is not the sum of petty and doubtful details, but the outcome of an intuitive frenzy.” We had this sentiment in mind as we begun the design ideation for the farmstands. Coming off of a great programming brainstorm and precedent studies, we had enough

Last year, we looked at open-air structures as precedents before embarking on the design of the Windsor Super Market. The lessons learned from these iconic precedent studies helped students understand the mechanics of a piece of architecture (circulation, material, parti, lighting, siting, etc), and also helped them make decisions about their own market designs once we got into the farmers market design process. This year, our project is the design and construction of a few smaller farmstands for the outlying towns in Bertie County, to

Our second project has begun! Last year, Studio H built a 2000-square-foot farmers market pavilion for the town of Windsor, which we proudly named the Windsor Super Market. This year, we’re building a few smaller farmstands for the outlying towns of Powellsville and Lewiston-Woodville (and possibly one other) in Bertie County, calling them the “Super Stands.” These stands will serve as produce-selling spots open to all, as well as a way to expand the Windsor market into a countywide network. Instead of giving our students

On Tuesday night, we opened our doors to students and their families to come to Studio H, check out the recent work, and learn more about the program. Because what we do is sometimes hard to describe (“is it art class? shop class?”), it is great for parents to visualize the projects their children are working on, and to hear the pride in our students’ voices when they walk their parents through their workspace. Almost every student and their families attended, and most parents left

Check out the final cornhole boards (mini-cornhole boards, actually, which we’re donating to the elementary school math classes) – their design concepts originated with the knot drawings our students did, and evolved into lovely graphic representations of students’ individual visions. The boards themselves were also built by students in their first woodshop project, using the chop saw, table saw, router, sander, biscuit joiner, and other hand tools.