The studio is a next-generation learning environment for a school of architecture, combining a highly adaptable interior renovation with a custom-designed technological infrastructure to enhance design learning.

The design process embraced innovative collaborative tools and techniques in a co-creation framework.

The 2000 sf studio is designed as a prototype for anticipated replication (in whole or in part), maximizing impact at the lowest cost by using off-the-shelf components and technologies in a componentized way.

It is implemented as an adaptable stage set to support the widest array of teaching styles and remain agile in an era of rapidly changing technologies.

We were initially asked to develop a proposal for a next-generation studio based on our past work implementing technologically-mediated environments. This proposal was funded by private external sources, at which point we developed the brief from the only two requirements explicitly expressed to us:
1. renovate an existing design studio for up to 36 students and three faculty; and
2. integrate new design technologies.

The typical design studio environment in the school of architecture building is rooted in the combination of a 19th century beaux-arts atelier and a mid-20th century corporate drafting room: a still-prevalent model throughout North American schools. Over the past century, responses to changing disciplinary and professional demands, including the advent of new technologies, have simply been packed into this model, creating a clumsy meld of new and old technology and work methods.

In addition to the two criteria articulated by the school, we developed the brief to include the following:
--accommodate a diversity of teaching and learning styles, seamlessly integrating new technologies without prescribing their use;
--accommodate shared group-work space – something the traditional studio model offered none of;
--accommodate the removal and addition of new technologies without forcing the fit; and
--be financially, structurally, and spatially repeatable, in part or in whole, in other areas of the building.

We wanted the studio to support the greatest potential for hands-on exploration with design technologies, and sought to design an adaptable structure that not only would accommodate this, but which would explicitly encourage team-based learning and interdisciplinary work. As well, the space is conceived to support the widest array of teaching styles and remain agile in an era of rapidly changing technologies.

Borrowing conceptually from C. Carney Strange and James Banning, we built on the idea of a probablistic (vs. deterministic or possiblistic) space: a space designed to increase the probability that certain activities will occur within it. We addressed this in three ways:

--borrowing the model of a stage set, which creates great flexibility in the use of its floor surface and spatial volume through the use of overhead and off-stage elements;
--conceiving of the furnishings, technologies, information graphics and deployed technologies as “prompts” of potential uses; and
--abstracting or 'despecifying' the terminology used in the design and realization process, primarily through the replacement of words such as “table” or “floor” or “wall” with the generic term “surface.”

Together, these perspectives, combined with the self-imposed mandate of flexibility through user-adaptation, created opportunities for us to fold new media technologies into the transformable structures of the room AND suggest possible uses of these technologies without necessarily even foregrounding them.

The project was developed with a rigorous stakeholder engagement process, including workshops with students, faculty, administrative, custodial, and technical staff. As well, students and faculty from outside the school of architecture were engaged to build a perspective on the external perception of the school as a place of potential collaboration.

As this project represented the first major reconsideration of the studio-teaching environment in the school in decades, we took the position that these voices and perspectives were critical to making a space that not only looked forward to the future,but served as a benchmark of what has been (both positive and less-than-positive). The uncomfortable fit of new technologies and teaching styles on relatively inflexible (and historically grounded) studio arrangements and furnishings may seem simple to solve with more adaptable furnishings and fixtures. Yet, disciplinary inertias remain, and in an academic environment where the stakeholders are also all designers, the method of determining which 'solution sets' are the 'best' ones to proceed with is a paramount challenge.

During the academic year prior to the implementation of the studio, we were able to secure a public exhibition area in the school and populated it initially with images of design studios throughout history (1300 – 2013,) including a number of innovative designs and contemporary case studies. It was configured as a hybrid digital (using Picasa, Google+ and Facebook) and physical 'conversation board' encouraging anyone to post new images, comment on existing images, and/or rearrange images in particular configurations.

A second phase of the exhibition added to this the staging of potential furnishings and technologies that were meant to provoke and/or excite imaginative use (basically, this was our collection of samples and demonstration units). The exhibition served an important role in the stakeholder engagement process, allowing all students, faculty, and staff to participate in a collective vision on a daily basis. As furniture samples arrived – primarily in the way of innovative work surfaces – the exhibit was constantly changing, eliciting always-changing feedback.

Finally we ran a series of participatory workshops in the pre-renovated studio, asking participants to literally label existing elements as “preferred” or “not preferred” and why. From existing furnishings and floor raceways to walls, doors, and windows, we were able to develop a model of preferences that was immensely informative. Among the more interesting results was the realization by stakeholders that the same element could be both “preferred” and “not preferred” – even by the same individual, a measure of the multivalence of components based on aspects of performance rather than the identification of a particular physical object. Together, these discoveries complemented our conceptual framework of probablistic 'prompts.' The breaking down of environmental and technological components into smaller elements that afford different aspects of this multivalence allowed the more deleterious aspects to be pulled out while accommodating those aspects that were preferred.

We see three significant impacts of the project already in its first months of use.

1.We designed the project and all of its components to be at a price point that would allow replication through the School of Architecture. It was clear to us that the clients wanted a design that could serve as a model for future developments, and while donor funding made this project a reality at this scale, we didn't want to price out the possibility of future replication. Already, the clients have requested break-outs of the various components (the storage solution, the multi-purpose video wall, etc.) for future studios in the school of architecture.

2.The project has been well received by not only the school but the university at its highest levels. The project has been described as an “impressive example of forward-looking design” (Vice Chancellor and Provost) and an “incredibly flexible teaching space with the kind of technologies that spark excellence and collaboration” (Chancellor). It has been identified by the university's CIO as “the” model for other spaces across the campus – in both discipline and discipline-neutral spaces, with two such projects already under construction.

3.An academic paper co-authored by the designers and the first faculty to teach in the studio (A Hybridized Pedagogical Approach through a Next-Generation Design Environment) has already been accepted to the 2014 international conference of the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture.

One of our core mottos for the three-month long changing exhibition of samples and demonstrations was “This is Not A Desk,” placed as a flyer on the “not-desk” work-surfaces to encourage stakeholders to question the status-quo prominence the drafting desk has played in this particular school's history. By provoking this question of what is a “desk,” we were able to introduce interactive work surfaces; standing desks; and mobile workstations from medical, auto-repair, and fieldwork applications into a conversation about a school of architecture renovation project. They became “surfaces” for various applications, which allowed us to reconstitute and disperse the expected functions of the traditional desk.

Our conception of the space, its furnishings, and its media screens as a composition of surfaces also provided an opportunity to fluidly incorporate new technologies into the space in unexpected ways. The floor became a projection surface, desks function either as interactive media surfaces or modeling tables, a tackable pin-up wall doubles as a 20' x 4' seamless multi-projector interactive video wall. An in-studio 3d printer and 3d scanner afford quick, iterative digital-physical workflows. Furthermore, the availability of personal technologies (handwriting-recognition pens, pens that record ink drawings as digital vector graphics, pocket-sized projectors for spontaneous small-scale group meetings, and small tablets for inclusion in scale models as media surfaces) serve as prompts for how new media technologies can transform design practice.

In order to experiment with the technical and social possibilities that this new design environment offered, as well as to advance research on such environments, the first professors to teach in the studio designed a hybridized pedagogical approach for the space with an architectural graduate design studio. Research methods of the social and behavioral sciences were grounds for experimentation in architectural production, with mixed methods and model studies offering the studio innovative possibilities for various forms of collaboration. Co-taught by three instructors, various research “models” challenged students to reimagine design motivations, attitudes and agencies. In particular, the studio was organized into three serially taught workshops (one per instructor), taught to all 36 students at one time. Utilizing the studio's flexibility to its advantage, each of these workshops included both synchronous and asynchronous instruction, group work of various scales (from pairs to groups of six), and various forms of class-wide presentation.

Students and faculty reported positively on the capacity for the studio's furnishings, walls, and technologies to be easily reorganized in order to accommodate the varied pedagogical goals of the workshops. According to the faculty, “the space uniquely afforded the incorporation of experimental social formations as a collaborative core to our pedagogical approach. [Our goal of creating] a shared knowledge space for critical thinking, collaboration and analysis was made possible by the environment’s spatial flexibility and new technologies. None of the other studios in the building would have allowed us to teach this way.”