Our first cohort of Studio H students (2010-2011 school year) are officially high school graduates! After two semesters, 17 college credits, learning how to use every tool in the wood and metal shop, building a 2000 square foot farmers market for their home town, our 13 Studio H students have successfully completed their high school career and will move on to the next chapter. Some will be attending 4-year colleges, some are the first in their families to go to college, or graduate high school.

Last night, we attended the annual award banquet for the regional chapter of CEFPI (Council for Educational Facility Planners International). CEFPI is a great group of architects, educators, and business folk who “seek to improve the places where children learn.” I’ve known of them for years now, and last year, was one of the speakers at their annual conference. After hearing about Studio H, the chapter president offered two of our students $1000 college scholarships, though they could not be awarded until this year (now

This Thursday, November 17th, the first ever public exhibition of Studio H’s work will open at the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon. The exhibition, entitled “Studio H: Design. Build. Transform.” will highlight the products and process of our first year of the Studio H program, including the chicken coops and farmers market pavilion. We hope folks in the Portland area will attend! We will also be in Portland for a public lecture at the Ziba Auditorium on Friday, December 2nd at 6pm. Below

In the past few weeks, after opening the farmers market on October 1, we’ve been lucky enough to have some great media coverage of our project. Now that Year 1 of Studio H is complete, and we’re gearing up for a new class of students, we can tell the story of our first year from start to finish – all 14 months of it. Here are a few recent press clippings about the project: The New York Times, October 23, 2011: “Humanitarian Design Project Aims

With the disclaimer that our video editing skills are severely lacking, here’s a quickly spliced-together time lapse of our four-month construction project with our students. 2000 square feet and a construction crew of 17-year-olds. Four months into 25 seconds… enjoy!

At the opening ceremony of the farmers market pavilion on Saturday, the Mayor of Windsor, Jimmy Hoggard, gave us the key to the city. It has only been given to one other organization. We are so honored and grateful. Then, our students gave us an honorary “thank you wrench,” as a response to the engraved bolts we gave them as trophies for completing the Studio H academic program on the last day of school. These two objects pretty much say it all.

A few nights ago, once the town turned on our electrical hookup, we went over to the site after sunset to see our farmers market structure glow. We had designed the siding with enough spacing to allow light (and air) to permeate. The result: a glowing lightbox on a dark site. Gorgeous!

This past Saturday, a wonderful thing happened. The mayor of Windsor, the town councilmen, our Studio H students, 15 vendors, and about 100 residents of Bertie County joined us at the newly completed Windsor Super Market (farmers market) pavilion our high school students designed and built this past year. At 10am, we officially opened the market pavilion to the public, with a quick ceremony thanking all involved, and with a few key speakers including the mayor and Kerron, one of our star students. Our pal

Yesterday, the local building inspector GT Pittman came by the site to do a last walk-through, check the electrical, and sign off on the farmers market building. He has been great the whole way through the project, and we developed a good relationship with him in order to ensure that we had done everything to his liking (including the 80-foot handrail we installed last week). Once the “a-ok” was given, we went to the county building to get our official Certificate of Occupancy, which certifies

We’re racing around town, cleaning up the site, welding a handrail, moving dirt, and otherwise scrambling to finish the farmers market building in time for our grand opening ceremony on Saturday! In case you haven’t seen the details, they can be found here. We’re excited to have everyone come out on Saturday to inhabit the farmers market pavilion for the first time – we’ll have an architectural photographer and documentary crew in town, as well as (of course) our students, the mayor, town councilmen, vendors,