December 4, 2025 | 55 minute read

Design studio culture: the experience of learning design

Note; this is the output of my first quarter independent study

Introduction: Going to studio

Designers often speak of "going to studio." This phrase, said purposefully without an article ("the") implies the unique nature of studio-based experience. Studio is not just a physical place to be in; it's also a conceptual place with cultural expectations, unique behavioral approaches, and ways of being. Design studio culture describes the way these qualities mix to shape how design work is done.

In this text, I describe how learning occurs in the context of this design studio culture. First, I present the nature of situated learning in the studio. I next describe how students respond to this unique form of learning. Finally, I show how, over time, design studio culture helps students gain a sense of identity and a way of claiming membership in a participatory practice.

In each section, I present existing scholarly research that shows evidence of how these various elements occur. As a conclusion and summary of all sections, I indicate where there are gaps in research that can be addressed through future investigation and describe why additional knowledge in those areas can support improvements in education in a studio design culture context.

Situated learning in a unique environment

Learning in a design studio culture is different from in a traditional classroom, and for many students, it's the first time they have experienced this form of situated learning. This situatedness has unique attributes. These include:

An expectation of constantly making artifacts, rather than simply talking about ideas, absorbing knowledge through lecture, or taking examinations
A culture of criticism, where it is expected that students receive direct, informed, and often negative feedback about their design work, and learn to provide that same type of criticism to other students
A non-traditional physical classroom, where the space is dynamic, work is constantly externalized, there are no rows of lecture seats, students have dedicated workspace, and students have a high degree of freedom and control
An open, close-quarters, largely public environment, and an expectation of showing work in an equally open, public, and exposed manner
A dynamic sense of time, where students work independently on projects that have only a loose project plan and approximate deadlines

An expectation of making things

Most typical educational environments are structured around the one-way transmission of knowledge. Professors hold specialized disciplinary expertise, and their role is to convey this expertise to students through lectures, readings, and exams. Learning, in this model, is measured by how effectively students can reproduce and apply what they have been taught. The assumption is that knowledge exists prior to instruction and can be transferred from teacher to learner. This structure reinforces a hierarchy, where the professor knows, the student learns, and understanding is largely based on what the student "does" with the information after receiving it. The student's role is to absorb and then integrate.

In an educational design studio, however, learning is prompted largely by making things rather than by the professor proactively saying things. Responding to a student's work, the "professor explores the implications of various design choices, suggesting alternative possibilities, or offering ways for the student to proceed in his or her exploration of the problem" (Shaffer, 1997, p. 252).

In a studio, a design professor is rarely an expert in any particular problem or content of a student's project, and "when students embark on a project in response to a brief, they can find themselves in territory uncharted by the teacher… [this is] called 'reverse transmission' because the students appear to be transmitting the knowledge they have created to the lecturer rather than vice versa" (Orr & Shreeve, 2018, p. 117). Instead, professors are experts in the process of design—framing problems, managing ambiguity, applying various methods, and solving problems creatively (Rauth et al., 2010). Learning happens through a conversation among the student, the artifact, other students, and the instructor, and the artifact becomes the medium through which knowledge is constructed; Fleming (1998, p. 61) explains that "while it is the students who present their ideas and artifacts in the conversations… it is the professor who responds to these presentations, endorsing, interrogating, and pushing the designs towards increased or decreased stability."

Claiming only loose ownership of artifacts

The things that are made are generally process artifacts rather than "final answers." It is expected that they provoke the next thing to be made, and so they are transient and disposable. The process assumes that each idea must be externalized to be understood, and that progress comes from revision, not perfection (Vallée-Tourangeau et al., 2024). In this sense, ideas can't be seen as precious, and students are taught to make lots of things, not just one thing. The fidelity and level of completeness of what a student makes is related to the maturity of the idea being explored. Students begin to understand when a thing is "done enough" to move forward; Corazzo (2019, p. 1256) describes the studio as a place where the "ongoing act of making, renders the material dimension of learning visible."

Cennamo (2014, p. 66) notes that in one of her studies, more senior design students saw ideas as flexible and provisional. One student explained, "the second I put something out there, it's not mine." This perspective captures one of the most fundamental aspects of studio pedagogy: that ideas are not possessions. The value lies not in the idea itself but in the process of exploring, refining, and building with it. This is an acknowledgment of the concept that ideas are free.

Surrounded by constant criticism

The externalization described above provokes a culture of constant critique. Dannels (2005) describes that there are different types of critique, including design "crit," pin-ups, juries, and open houses, which happen continuously across a student's educational experience. Cennamo et al. (2010, p. 2) describe critique as a way for students to "learn the process of design from each other, from faculty, and from professionals in the field." Critique has a number of ways of showing up—both formally and informally—and is a "form of distributed learning and evaluation, which occurs through social interaction and engagement in the design studios" (Gray, 2013, p. 194).

Critique is a formal delivery of feedback and support that "provides an opportunity for a verbal explanation of the thinking process the student has gone through. In return, students are required to think about the feedback they receive during the crits and reflect on it to improve their work even further" (Al Maani & Roberts, 2023, p. 35).

The audience for critique may include other students, and Healy (2016, p. 7) indicates that "students providing feedback to their peers is a key aspect of the development of professional norms that are expected of design graduates." These interactions model the behaviors and expectations of professional design practice.

Critique defines studio learning

Some scholars feel that critique isn't just an isolated practice; instead, it defines the entire educational experience, where "the tradition of ongoing and reciprocal performance punctuated by criticism is so central to the pedagogy of the design studio that it is not considered assessment at all. Rather, it is the essence of instruction" (Cossentino, 2002, p. 44)—it is the "active pedagogy of the studio" (Hokanson, 2012, p. 74). The phenomenon of critique is well studied in academic research, but there is substantial evidence that the findings from empirical research have not found their way into the practice of educators, who often include critique in their educational approaches but without a strong sense of pedagogical purpose (Percy, 2004; Webster, 2007; Blair, 2007).

Critiquing work-in-progress

Cennamo & Brandt (2012, p. 852) argue that project critiques were "most valuable when students presented their work as in-progress, narrating their thinking, rather than demonstrating their final products." The "intermediate crits or pin-ups," where students share early design concepts while still working through decisions, "cannot be overstated" (p. 852) in their importance. Making work visible early and often encourages dialogue and situates learning in the process rather than the product; "What has been a very private process for the student is made public," which leads to students gaining greater self-awareness of who they are as designers (Brandt et al., 2013).

Studio talk through critique

Cennamo & Brandt (2012, p. 842) situate studio talk at the center of the pedagogical process. They describe studio pedagogy as consisting of "project-based assignments followed by public presentations of student work for critique." These presentations represent the "essence of instruction," quoting Cossentino, who "rightfully noted that, 'the tradition of ongoing and reciprocal performance punctuated by criticism is so central to the pedagogy of the design studio that it is not considered assessment at all'." Fleming (1998) similarly argues that the pedagogical role of studio talk is to first help students and faculty align on a shared vision of the designed artifact, and then work to solve design problems.

Studio conversation, while related to making, is distinct from it. Svensson & Edström (2011, p. 20) argue that "artistic development… is the most relevant quality with respect to which the use of studio conversation should be considered in an education perspective." They acknowledge that "one may argue that the education includes the whole environment offered to the students to benefit from," but ultimately conclude that "even if studio conversations are just part of the education, it is the one that is generally considered most important" (Svensson & Edström, 2011, p. 22). Conversation around an artifact is an active part of learning, where tacit knowing becomes verbalized, negotiated, and understood. A design studio culture is a way of learning that is focused on verbal interactions: "continuous dialogue, conversation, asking questions, and giving and receiving critique" (Fallman, 2007, p. 5).

Questionable educational value

Some authors have described critique as a miseducative approach to learning. As students become immersed in design studio culture, they react to the unique nature of the experiences with complex and extreme emotions. The emotion that has been given extensive attention in scholarly research is fear.

The folklore of critique as emotionally terrifying has persisted for generations of design students. Webster (2006) describes this reputation as mixed: some students recall critique as positive or even exhilarating, while others report developing strategies to cope with what they saw as an extreme and public form of teaching. The setting itself contributes to that emotional intensity. Critique is a ritualized performance, centered on a student surrounded by jurors. Prior to a critique, students often work through the night, neglecting sleep and personal routines, and later recount those efforts with fondness. Yet few are formally taught how to participate in critique. Instead, they learn the expectations and customs of the event by observing others and inheriting behavioral norms from their peers.

Students report that they are "literally frozen with fear," unable to listen to others or absorb feedback on their own work (Blair, 2007, p. 89). Over time, they adopt strategies to cope with this discomfort—over-preparing, agreeing automatically, or performing confidence. Webster (2007) notes that students adapt to this recurring structure by developing artificial confidence. They over-exert themselves in preparation, listen passively to responses, and agree with things they don't necessarily understand. These coping mechanisms, she argues, "clearly negated the possibilities of deep, transformative learning because they suppressed honest reflection, self-doubt, and any admission of not knowing or not understanding" (2007, p. 25).

The public and intense nature of the critique may lead to negative sentiment, which causes a student to shut down (Al Maani & Roberts, 2023). Some have gone as far as to call critique a highly emotionally charged pedagogical approach to teaching and learning that may not actually be effective at all (Webster, 2006); these ideas, taken together, indicate that there is "little space for students to communicate through critique" (Gray, 2013, p. 196).

Percy (2004, p. 152) links the erosion of dedicated working spaces to the changing spatial culture of critique, arguing that "with the demise of the 'base room' and the informal day-to-day contact with the students, the crit has taken on the privileged arena of a performance art, where competing staff did battle for supremacy." The structure of space organizes power and visibility: it determines who can speak, who can see, and who is seen.

Fear may not be entirely incompatible with learning. Cennamo (2014) characterizes studio culture as defined by a fearlessness, a desire for criticism, and a democratic perspective of idea ownership. For design students, critique and risk-taking are not external pressures but intrinsic to the culture of making. When these students collaborate with peers from other disciplines, the cultural contrast becomes evident. The norms of open critique—embracing feedback, relinquishing ownership, and continually refining ideas—can appear harsh to outsiders, but within design, they signify maturity and trust.

Learning in a non-traditional classroom

The iterative cycle of making and critique occur in a classroom that is perhaps the most immediately obvious difference between studio learning and a traditional classroom. The studio space is open and dynamic, and upon first glance, an educational design studio often looks more like a messy, modern office than a place of learning. This type of messy studio serves as a central site where learning takes place, combining "the use of material space, and a tendency to demand physical and temporal immersion" (Corazzo, 2019, p. 1249).

Types of studio spaces

Thoring et al. (2018) identify several distinct spatial archetypes within studio education. Personal spaces allow for heads-down focus. This often occurs at a dedicated workspace, rather than a small desk that might be found in a lecture hall. Collaboration spaces afford dialogue and shared work. These may be large working tables or desks pushed together. Presentation spaces structure the one-directional exchange of critique or instruction. These often take the form of a pin-up-style wall or a more traditional digital projection. Making spaces support hands-on experimentation, noise, and mess, and these are often the most iconic elements of a studio environment. Intermission spaces—corridors, stairwells, kitchens—enable informal social interaction.

Learning to inhabit an unfamiliar environment

Students enter these types of studio spaces without understanding how to use them, and an absence of explicit instruction means that students must learn through observation, imitation, and experimentation how to inhabit a studio as a workspace and a cultural space (Modell & Gray, 2011). Corazzo (2019, p. 1257) views the studio "as a space of ambiguity with few actual clues to expected behaviors," which must therefore be "made coherent by the tutor," but if that coherence isn't provided, students must learn when to speak, where to sit, and how to occupy the space. The studio's physical differences from a classroom signal both creative freedom and little hierarchy; the room has no front, which challenges the conventional alignment of power between instructor and student. Spatial design implies behavior, as a room's organization suggests expected conduct, and its qualities reflect institutional culture. As Thoring et al. (2018, p. 64) note, a unique creative physical environment acts as "a source of stimulation," shaping not only what students learn but how they think about learning itself.

A unique space for making things legitimizes the study of design; its physical and cultural distinctiveness signals to new students that the educational experience they have begun is a specialized way of working. Activities such as critiques, pin-ups, and shared making carry authority because they occur in the studio. The space embodies the norms of the field and frames them as integral to design education (Corazzo, 2019).

Space as resource and constraint

Studio requires a broad physical footprint, and as universities grow and budgets tighten, "space is at a premium," and dedicated work areas for each student are no longer feasible. The administrative demand for efficiency of use conflicts with the pedagogical need for immersion. Cennamo and Brandt (2012, p. 840) describe that some of the problems of implementing a studio approach to education are that they are "resource intensive, requiring dedicated studio space, large blocks of class time within a student's course of study, and extensive faculty time."

Place, as much as space

While the physical space of studio is an arrangement of elements structured for use and the needs of interactions, like desks and walls, the physical studio space is not the same as the place of studio. A place is not three-dimensional; it "derives from a tension between connectedness and distinction" (Dourish & Harrison, 1996).

Place has a number of distinct qualities that extend beyond physical structures. Relationship orientation and reciprocity are a shared understanding of constructs like up and down, or the ability to reference things vaguely, but with spatial language. Proximity and action frame how people relate to one another, and how we respond to that (such as seeing a group of people as compared to a single person.) In a space, we are aware of activities and people. These are all ideas that let us behave "appropriately," and are considered "appropriate behavioral framing."

Place has different qualities than space: while "space is the opportunity, place is the understood reality." Place is typically a space that has "something added," and those added elements are related to cultural conventions, social norms, and an understanding of ourselves in relationship to other people. Students can claim ownership over the space of studio and turn it into a place by adapting it to their lives and making it a reflection of themselves (as is "turning a house into a home.") Place emerges over time; "space is the opportunity, and place is the understood reality" (Dourish & Harrison, 1996).

"Being in place," Williams explains (2017, p. 93), "defines the various spaces that reflect and hold students' emerging identities as practitioners." Through embodied learning and repeated participation, design students practice becoming designers by inhabiting the social and material routines of professional life. Studio pedagogy extends beyond knowledge transmission; it is a structured environment for self-making. Corazzo (2020, p. 3) supports this view of studio as place; he views studio as relational—where the "social and the material are joined to form the sociomaterial" (p. 3). In this view, place is not background. It functions like language or drawing, a means through which creative activity takes form and meaning.

Because the place of studio is constructed and negotiated by those in it, entering it comes with various expectations, often unspoken. These may relate to privacy, such as "convenience, turf, control of embarrassment, and control of information," (Dourish & Harrison, 1996) and these are established through social convention. This construction means that a space is not a place simply by existing, and providing a room or physical structure does not mean people will create a place within it (or at least not as it was intended.) Behavior comes with a place (and builds and reacts to it), and there is social meaning embedded in the place.

Space as presence and proximity

Williams (2017, p. 93) identified through their research a unique quality of how students experience studio. Students "held in tension two often conflicting desires: to create an equipped space of creative potential, free from practical and time constraints; and the need to work or simply 'be' in the presence of others." The first emphasizes privacy, immersion, and flow, while the second emphasizes collaboration and belonging. These are interdependent conditions that reveal the dual role of studio as both personal space and collective community. Williams interprets this through multiple lenses—Lave & Wenger's Communities of Practice, Aristotle's hexis, and Bourdieu's habitus—each emphasizing that learning in studio is simultaneously social, embodied, and cultural.

Jones (2022, p. 9) distinguishes between proximity and physical nearness, describing semi-proximate studio environments as those that "depend on arranged or semi-formal local organization." Proximity, he suggests, is relational rather than physical and is constructed through patterns of interaction and degrees of access.

Presence, for Jones, extends beyond physical attendance. "Being present is to be engaged cognitively, emotionally, and/or bodily in space and time" (Jones, 2022, p. 13). Engagement can shift among these dimensions, and students may inhabit presence differently across moments of work. Studio encourages this by supporting alternative modes of participation—observation, listening, making, reflecting—that expand what counts as being there. Sometimes, studio "leaks out" into someone's home and personal life (Jones, 2022, p. 17); its style and conceptual nearness continue even when physical nearness goes away.

Externalized creativity

Externalization is central to studio learning. Students make their work visible by pinning it to walls, spreading it across tables, and displaying it in progress. These actions show a sense of progress, shape the dynamic of the studio, build shared ownership of space, and reveal both individual and shared processes.

Displaying work in progress

In design studios, students learn to externalize their in-process work publicly. The space is material; the walls have images, sketches, and other content, and it may "appear slightly chaotic to an outsider" (Fallman, 2007, p. 5). Material artifacts such as sketches and models take on multiple roles. They are "coordinative artifacts," objects that hold and transfer meaning and "translate certain intangible work practices into more visible work information" (Vyas et al., 2013, p. 415). The studio provides that context: it is a "visually rich ecology" that serves as both organizational memory and distributed cognition. Vyas et al. describe these artifacts as one of the richest means for engaging with collaborative work, indicating that "use of artefacts can be seen as externalization of thoughts, ideas, and concepts" (p. 421).

These artifacts exist within a designed environment that supports social and cognitive activity. Studio space provides artful surfaces—surfaces that "designers create by externalizing their work-related activities, to be able to effectively support their everyday ways of working" (Vyas et al., 2013, p. 429). These are not display surfaces in a traditional artistic sense, but tools that track design thinking. They allow designers to visualize the history of their decisions, see current trajectories, and immerse themselves in a problem. These surfaces are used to orient design activities to a present moment, acting as planning tools, and they often serve as evidence of design choices that have already been made.

Artful surfaces also prevent ideas from disappearing within the complexity of studio work. As Vyas et al. (2013, p. 430) observe, "even a slight or unintended change can lead to problems in their design practices and in some cases once a design artifact is lost from the 'sights' of designers, it would eventually mean that the design artifact may never be retrieved again." By maintaining visibility, designers and instructors can "fly through" the evolving body of work and understand its current state at a glance. These visual surfaces act as a form of externalized memory that allows teams to organize and reflect collectively; they act as an audit trail of the work history (Brandt et al., 2013).

The wall itself becomes an instrument of communication. Dannels (2005, p. 147) identifies two defining elements of studio teaching: the wall as a "commanding force" and the feedback that follows from audience engagement. The wall functions as a focusing surface upon which presentation, reflection, and critique occur. Students must "establish a connection between the wall, themselves, and the audience," highlighting the interplay between visual and verbal modes of expression. Faculty emphasize that students must "learn to become critical" and to "propel forward thinking about a design project" (2005, pp. 147-148).

Dynamic sense of time

Time is one of the least visible yet most structuring conditions of studio learning, and time in studio is very different than time that students may have experienced in their earlier education.

Time as a medium of learning

Academic institutions operate through fixed and measurable time—semesters, credit hours, and deadlines. Studio learning, however, relies on more fluid blocks of learning. As Jones (2022) observes, formal education "chunks" learning into discrete intervals, while studio practice requires a looser conception of how long activities might take. Design learning is embodied and emergent; its pacing depends on any one student's use of material, collaboration, and reflection. Jones (2022, p. 7) describes the studio as both "planned and unplanned," where each moment arises from overlapping activities—"advising a student to do 'smaller' or 'larger' bits being entirely dependent on the circumstances."

For students, managing this unique passage of time is part of learning to design. Abrupt changes to the systems they are familiar with cause disruption; enough disruption ultimately leads to a rejection of the change (Zerubavel, 1977). Classes are much longer than in a traditional classroom, and are also much less structured than a student may be used to; the "informal approach to time in the studio made it difficult, sometimes, to organize activities" (Williamson-Shaffer, 2007, p. 105). Many students are unsure how long things will take, or when to pause, reflect, and start again. Studio time stretches and contracts: long, ambiguous "marinating" periods alternated with frenzied bursts of making things, which is a rhythm that reflects what Orr and Shreeve describe as the balance "between stasis and chaos" in studio learning (2018, p. 146); when students have dedicated desks, the permanence of their spaces provides a way for students to leave their work in progress, supporting this unstructured process of time (Williamson-Shaffer, 2007).

Organization and experience over time

Time can be intentionally structured to shape experience. Fine (1990) identifies several dimensions of temporal organization—periodicity, tempo, timing, duration, and sequence—that influence how work unfolds and how it feels. The synchronization of tasks, the sequencing of actions, and the pacing of labor together form the way work is done. Too much pressure creates frustration; too little activity leads to boredom. "A fit between time and attention," Fine notes, "characterizes an experience of flow." Organization, emotion, and time are "intimately linked" (p. 210). These insights translate directly to the rhythms of studio practice, where collective making depends on the coordination of energy, attention, and tempo.

In a studio, time is controlled, and Al Maani & Roberts (2023) note that the asymmetry of professor and student—considering who gets to speak, who waits, and when—can reproduce more traditional classroom dynamics even in ostensibly open or flat studios. The negotiation of temporal power, like the negotiation of space, is a defining feature of studio learning.

Sharma's work (2014, p. 57) on temporal labor offers a useful analogy for understanding time as a social and political force. In her analysis of taxi drivers, she describes "laboring within a temporal infrastructure while being cast outside it": workers experience time as both resource and constraint. Within a studio learning environment, similar dynamics exist. Students need to learn to manage time as both structured and improvisational.

Time also structures the way student work is evaluated. Healy (2016) distinguishes between formative critiques, held mid-project and focused on process, and summative critiques at the end, which emphasize output. Orr & Bloxham (2012) add that assessment emerges over time, as faculty leverage previous knowledge they have of a student as they assess that student's work.

Behaving in a new type of space

Over time, students embrace strategies to help them manage the emotional experiences that occur in a design studio. Some of these strategies are productive and mirror approaches that occur in industry, while others are unproductive and may lead to miseducative experiences. These strategies are largely focused on claiming territory, establishing a sense of privacy, collaborating and conversing with other students, and developing ways of working.

Establishing ownership over a territory

Given the importance of externalized creativity, faculty encourage students to "work in the studio, rather than at home during off-hours" (Brandt et al., 2013). A studio often functions as what Corazzo & Gharib (2021, p. 156) call a "basecamp, a place where [students] bring and leave things, a place where they will set up camp." Part of this camping is a delineation of territory. Brown (2009, p. 4) describes these territorial behaviors as communal rather than personal, noting that they "are not simply about expressing ownership over an object (this is mine), but are centrally concerned with establishing, communicating, and maintaining one's relationship with that object relative to others in the social environment (this is mine and not yours)."

Cai & Khan (2010, p. 59) argue that, for beginning students in particular, territoriality supports identity formation: "it is rather important to be surrounded by their best work, as the first-year studio is a process of building the 'toolkits' or professional skills and languages, and their design confidence." Without dedicated space, students lose the continuity that helps them trace their own progress over time. Territory externalizes learning—it becomes a spatial archive of effort, reflection, and growth.

Territoriality often emerges from the bottom up rather than being imposed through organizational hierarchy. Brown (2009, p. 6) explains that people regulate privacy by marking spaces or objects with symbols that communicate ownership or identity. This marking helps organize the environment and "fulfills the need to have a sense of place," even when it does not explicitly claim privacy. Students in a design studio often have their own desks, and they customize their personal areas with "sketches, postcards, inspirational examples of architectural design, and even candy and other junk-food wrappers pinned up as merit badges for work done through the hours of the night" (Williamson-Shaffer, 2007, p. 105).

But when newcomers fail to interpret these signals—or deliberately ignore them—territory is infringed on. In these cases, individuals may respond proactively or reactively to protect their perceived control. Brown (2009) observes that while this might resemble a display of power, it is better understood as a means of regulating privacy and maintaining a sense of autonomy within shared environments.

The negotiation of territory has implications beyond the space itself. Vinsel et al. (1980) found that students who had more control over privacy were less likely to drop out of university, suggesting that the public nature of studio work can have unintended effects on student performance if privacy is not supported.

Forced to be nomadic

While some schools provide students with dedicated spaces, others require students to be more flexible in where and how they work. Studio-based education has traditionally assumed that each student has a dedicated workspace—a desk, a wall, a small area of ownership within a collective environment. Increasing class sizes and institutional constraints, however, have disrupted that assumption. Cai & Khan (2010) describe how, in many contemporary settings, students share a studio space; they have no dedicated area and cannot establish permanent territory or 'ownership' over an area. The result is a form of "nomadic" studio use, analogous to corporate "hot desking," where the utilization of space becomes temporary and fluid.

Student-to-student encounters are central to studio, encouraging spontaneous dialogue and peer critique (Corazzo, 2019). Cennamo & Brandt (2012, p. 841) emphasize that "the unplanned interactions that occurred within open studio hours were especially important in moving students' ideas forward when they were stuck." Arvola & Artman (2008) find that without access to other students in the studio space, students struggle to try out design decisions prior to a more formal classroom interaction with a professor.

This idea of nomadism has some value. Behavioral mapping of studio use shows that open-plan, non-territorial configurations "allow students to be exposed to different neighbours' work and interact with more peers… the nomadic style of studio use increases the chances of encounters and interactions between students" (Cai & Khan, 2010, p. 58). Without fixed seating or personal zones, students move through a constantly shifting social landscape, broadening their access to different perspectives and practices. In this sense, the lack of territory can foster a kind of distributed learning community, encouraging serendipity and exchange, while claimed territory may strengthen belonging, it might also limit the ability for new relationships to grow. Modell & Gray (2011, p. 67) describe how one student in their study explained, "if someone's there, I move to a different spot," implying that an interaction opportunity was lost.

Mixed signals from faculty

Faculty often value open-plan arrangements that enable observation and transparency; students, however, seek privacy and autonomy. Corazzo (2020, p. 7) describes how the physical organization of space—what is visible, who can close themselves off—becomes an "ongoing, but subtle, tussle" between students and faculty, where faculty find themselves 'literally ceding ground to [students]'."

Faculty, then, need to introduce the pedagogical intent of the space, and frame it in relation to the privacy needs of students. In researching student use of a space intended for studio work, Modell & Gray (2011) report observing a misalignment between the design intent of the space and the actual usage of the space. Faculty envisioned an active, "very messy place" resembling a traditional studio, but students largely ignored it. One faculty member explained that the space "has not really [been] incorporated intentionally in the courses" (p. 66).

To encourage a particular style of use, Cai & Khan (2010, p. 44) explain that "extensive involvement with the environment" provides an unspoken introduction to the "new field of language and communication" that characterizes studio life. These spatial routines and material interactions form a hidden curriculum, teaching students not just design skills but the social and behavioral norms of professional practice. When space is transient or poorly introduced, this teaching doesn't happen effectively.

Collaborating and conversing with other students

Studio culture is heavily dependent on student-to-student interactions, because students often enter a program as a cohort and work through challenges together.

The role of a cohort

Students begin at the same time and work alongside one another, and faculty presence remains consistent across the experience (Loy & Ancher, 2013). Camaraderie can emerge from extended and trusting collaboration.

Students working within a design cohort often become close enough with one-another to finish one another's sentences when describing their process. In Cennamo's research (2014, p. 68), a student explained that toward the end of a project, their collaboration has become nearly uninterrupted: "we never really left the meeting." Another followed, "it was almost like a continual meeting with people kind of coming in and going out." The shared physical space, the continuous nature of interaction, and the open ownership of ideas create a form of continuity that defines the studio experience.

Group work can deepen that sense of community. It allows students to "bounce ideas" off peers and to gather immediate, frequent, and unfiltered criticism on their projects. Over time, "strong cohesion among students and a sense of responsibility for one another over years of collegial enterprise" can create an environment of trust. This peer-based trust changes the structure of learning, offering "a difference in structure than the normal asymmetrical power relation between student and teacher," particularly when students work collaboratively within a larger cohort (Hill, 2016, p. 301).

A loss of cohort structure, due to short-term program structures or staggered enrollment pacing, can weaken this sense of connection. Loy & Ancher (2013) point to several factors—budget constraints, modular and customizable curricula, and the reliance on part-time faculty—that make cohort-based learning less common. These conditions "develop a lack of cohesive identity for the cohort." Without a shared identity, both students and faculty experience reduced motivation, increased isolation, and a loss of "an overtly expressed shared vision that all are committed to." They propose that studio pedagogy should be developed collaboratively with students to counteract this loss. A shared vision of the curriculum should be co-created and made visible to all participants, communicating the "ethos of the programme [and] its scope and intent" (Loy & Ancher, 2013, p. 551). When students help define the values and goals of the program, they also strengthen their identification with it.

Helping others

The design studio functions as a space of friendship and mutual care. Because studio education is known to be demanding and time-intensive, students spend long hours together in close quarters, often late into the night. This extended proximity fosters both social connection and shared purpose. As Broadhead (2018, p. 17) describes, "virtuous acts of friendship" become a fundamental part of the communal experience, with studio friendships influencing the development of creative virtuosity. Some students actively seek feedback as a way of escaping what Svensson & Edström (2011, p. 10) describe as "solitary studio work" that can feel isolating or demoralizing.

A space for socializing

The studio is recognized as a social space, where socializing is not peripheral but essential to the learning process. Mc Donald et al. (2018) note that students identify social interaction as one of the most important benefits of this form of teaching and learning. The shared rhythms of work and casual interaction form the basis of a collective culture—one that sustains motivation, supports creativity, and turns the studio into a community of practice.

Peer-to-peer critique

Collaboration is evident in the way students discuss each other's work. Mc Donald et al. (2018, p. 154) found that, for newer students, "their greatest perceived benefit was the concern reviewers showed for their learning." This concern took the form of individualized attention and new perspectives. Beginning students "enjoyed working with reviewers who were in similar situations to themselves" and gained introspection into their working habits, especially related to time management; the "enthusiasm and interest that advanced students showed helped build confidence in the beginners, which was at least as important (if not more so) than the actual substance of the feedback that was given" (Mc Donald et al., 2018, p. 154). This informal exchange created a sense of belonging and affirmation within the cohort, and Forlano & Smith (2018, p. 288) note that one of the most important conditions for that collaboration is "access to physical studio space and desk space for informal critiques."

Establishing trust

The group climate of a studio depends on trust. Climate, in the sense of studio learning, refers to the collective conditions that enable students to pursue challenging work with confidence in one another. Climate frames a space where ideas are treated seriously, where team members feel heard, and where high standards coexist with psychological safety. Cennamo (2014) describes this climate as involving criticality, comparison of ideas, intrinsic motivation, and beneficial competition.

Trust allows for both openness and rigor, ensuring that critique and collaboration occur in a spirit of shared purpose rather than judgment. When trust is established, students are more willing to let ideas circulate freely. In research with industrial design students, Cennamo (2014) observed that they had become familiar with the particular climate and processes of design education, while students in other disciplines—such as education—were not. When these students worked together, the difference led to mutual misunderstanding. The education students were surprised when the design students received negative criticism after spending so much time producing something creative, and even more surprised when, following the critique, "the students simply resumed work reconceptualizing the project." For the industrial designers, ongoing discussion was not a formal event but "an expected and desired way of working in a studio" (Cennamo, 2014, p. 60). In contrast, the education students viewed these discussions as confrontation rather than collaboration.

The spatial dimension of the studio reinforces this climate of trust and shared authorship. The pedagogy of studio is not defined solely by its problem-solving orientation or its use of critique, but by the relationship between space, collaboration, and creative emergence. Studio-centric teaching and learning occur in the interplay between physical setting and social practice, where ideas can be generated, discussed, and discarded without fear. Cennamo (2014, p. 71) captures this nuance by proposing that educators "can work to establish social norms that value generating and discarding ideas freely."

Inevitable comparison

Students in design studios continually compare themselves to one another. A comparative studio is as Corazzo & Gharib (2021, p. 152) describe, "used by students to benchmark themselves against their peers and observe each other's workings." Dannels (2005, p. 151) observes that studio is about "noticing other students' work," and comparative discussion plays a role in helping one student see how their work is progressing relative to that of another student. Each student's progress becomes part of a shared reference system through which others learn. These comparisons are often informal and peer-driven, allowing students to calibrate their progress and understand quality through observation. Because the professor-as-judge is not present, this kind of comparison is described as relatively low-risk. This comparison is a form of reflection, and, for most students, occurs at a time in their lives where they "establish new identities and when peer groups exert particular influence and are motivated to comply with group norms" (Ashton & Durling, 2000, p. 4).

While students may enter school with an expectation that there is a right answer to a design problem, the "right thing" in a social group is created by the group's dynamics. This is a social reality, and students "establish correctness by discovering what the shared understanding of right and wrong is in that particular context" (Ashton & Durling, 2000, p. 5).

Students form ways of mediating their socially-prompted reflections. One way they do this is through group decision making (such as agreeing on the type or amount of work to show in class), and another is through emulating what the "highly rated students—group leaders" were being praised for (Ashton & Durling, 2000, p. 11).

Listening is central to this process. Cennamo & Brandt (2012) describe how students engage in "listening-in," observing one-on-one work-based discussion between peers and instructors. This practice allows them to gather feedback indirectly, broadening their understanding of what constitutes effective work and how evaluative dialogue unfolds.

Students want to do the "right thing," and that thing is "value-loaded—it is created by the group itself and most notably by those who are able to exert influence or leadership" (Ashton & Durling, 2000, p. 12). Sometimes these leaders emerge by being the most capable; other times it is because they have strong socio-emotional skills, like helping and supporting.

In a studio without dedicated space, or in an online environment, this informal comparative learning is largely absent, reducing opportunities for casual observation and peer critique. Some students describe this loss as detrimental to confidence-building, while others experience relief from the social pressure that accompanies constant exposure (Corazzo & Gharib, 2021).

Putting on a performance

Studio culture is performative. Karabulut & Celikoglu (2019, p. 2) draw a parallel between the educational design studio and Goffman's dramaturgical approach, where "an individual has to act in a way that he deliberately or not expresses himself and in return, observers inevitably have to be impressed." Through observation and conversation with students, they identify different archetypical "performers," noting that these are "transitional descriptions in which performers can move around." This movement signals how students test out ways of being—how they experiment with participation, confidence, and voice.

Students are "practicing" the kind of performer they want to be. Professors, having already established their own classroom persona, engage with "double novices"—students who are new both to the discipline and to the identity work it demands. This creates an opportunity for instructors to step beyond the traditional authority role and help students see performance as a tool for reflection. A "bad student" can be a "good actor"—able to perform disengagement as easily as they might later perform professionalism (Karabulut & Celikoglu, 2019). Helping students recognize this performative dimension of creative work gives them a chance to reflect on how they present themselves and how they are perceived.

Students who recognize their role as performers can engage in intentional reflection about the behaviors, postures, and expressions that shape their professional presence. The same lens applies to "real-world" environments, where performance remains central—during presentations, client reviews, or collaborative negotiations. Each of these settings has its own audience and standards, and becoming aware of this helps students develop adaptability and judgment (Karabulut & Celikoglu, 2019).

The structure of studio conversation also shapes faculty/student relationships. Sawyer (2019, p. 411) identifies key dynamics that occur during a creative conversation, beginning with transition-relevant places—the implicit moment when one speaker stops and another can begin. Instructors and students often navigate this transition differently: some students defer to authority and wait for permission, while others move fluidly into conversation. In successful studios, these moments evolve into natural, shared participation.

Sawyer (2019, p. 415) further describes how professors move along a spectrum between authoritative and participatory modes of speech, sometimes blending both in what he calls "double-voicing," where an instructor offers both direction and collaboration within a single comment. Control over the conversational floor—what he terms "floor rights"—may occur naturally but can also be strategically assigned to foster inclusion. These linguistic choices reveal how critique and conversation are shaped as much by power as by pedagogy.

Becoming designerly

Studio is a place where students learn more than simply to design; Williams (2017, p. 98) describes studio education as "a process of self-transformation and of becoming, rather than the straightforward acquisition of knowledge." This process includes entering a community of practice, gaining a disposition toward creativity, and learning to talk and act like a professional: it is Lave and Wenger's legitimate peripheral participation in action, where knowledge acquisition is intertwined in a process of "becoming a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these systems of relations" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 53)—it is about becoming a designer.

Entering a community of practice

Becoming designerly is about entering into a new community (Corazzo & Gharib, 2021); in the studio, students internalize the culture of design and begin to see themselves as part of that larger community of design practice (Corazzo, 2019). Academia "serves as a bridge between academic and professional communities." This is an experience that is not yet part of gaining peripheral participation but is also not a simple duplication of a real-world studio environment. In this context, faculty "broker" interactions between academic studio and post-academic studio, slowly "making explicit tacit rules of design practice for students" (Brandt et al., 2013).

Because the place of studio is constructed and negotiated by those in it, entering it comes with various expectations, often unspoken. These may relate to privacy, such as "convenience, turf, control of embarrassment, and control of information" (Harrison & Dourish, 1996, p. 5) and these are established through social convention. This construction means that a space is not a place simply by existing, and providing a room or physical structure does not mean people will create a place within it (or at least not as it was intended). Behavior comes with a place (and builds and reacts to it), and there is social meaning embedded in the place.

As students move from peripheral participation toward more central roles, they learn to interpret and inhabit the culture of design. This involves learning tacit expectations: how to explore ideas, respond to feedback, collaborate, and navigate the uncertainty that defines creative work. Over time, these patterns of thought and behavior become embodied habits, marking the shift from being a student who studies design to someone who is a designer.

Students gain a disposition toward creativity

In studio, students become designerly by developing a disposition toward creative work. Students must learn to persist through uncertainty and to recognize that quality comes from effort and refinement. In some studios, a student's work is evaluated based on the process by which they got to a solution, and in those classes, professors look for evidence that students have lived up to their role: that they explored broadly, followed through, and responded thoughtfully to feedback (Orr & Bloxham, 2012).

This disposition comes through repetition and immersion. The daily act of making things teaches that creative work is laborious. Iteration becomes valued, and students begin to see their process as a reflection of character, where doing the work becomes part of being the kind of person who does design.

Students begin to talk like designers

Finding a voice is a central part of becoming designerly. Discussing their work, as Mc Donald et al. (2018) observe, helps students develop professional language, decision-making confidence, and the capacity to frame their work persuasively. Corazzo & Gharib (2021, p. 157) describe the studio as "a stage for students to behave like professionals." Through their talk, gestures, and critiques, they signal belonging to a professional culture. Students learn to talk like designers and to situate their ideas within a broader discourse; "Even if studio conversations are just part of the education," Svensson and Edström (2011, p. 22) describe, "it is the one that is generally considered most important."

In Sawyer's research (2019), a group of students discussed work with a professor with a sense of fluidity, suggesting a strong relational foundation between the professor and students; this likely emerged through "modeling," where an "instructor [offers] both explicit and tacit guidance into the norms of what constitutes 'good design' or productive design practices" (Cennamo & Brandt, 2012, p. 850).

Modeling provides access to the language of the community, and provides legitimacy into existing in the peripherality and moving towards participation. Stories are a large part of that claim of legitimacy; Lave and Wenger quote Jordan in showing that "stories, then, are packages of situated knowledge" (Lave & Wenger, 1991, p. 108). Telling a story is a way of displaying membership, and of helping students enter into the social system of design. Conversation in the design studio distributes voice, models professional speaking approaches, and teaches students how to navigate power hierarchies through talk.

As Mc Donald et al. (2018, p. 149) argue, "the purpose of design studio teaching is to enculturate students into the customs, habits, and skills of professional design practice." Through their academic experience, students establish a shared set of skills and vocabulary that mirror what exists in professional practice. This helps to transition them from student to designer; Mc Donald et al. continue to show that over time, as "students took on increasingly more complex design problems, there was a palpable shift in the ways they positioned themselves as more knowledgeable and identifying as 'designers.'" Williamson-Shaffer (2007, p. 121) observed that "students were not merely solving problems; they were engaged in an iterative process of expressing—and thus shaping—their identities."

Gaps in existing research

While existing scholarly research has provided extensive investigation into some aspects of design studio teaching and learning, there are significant gaps in knowledge. Additional research into design studio culture can help address these elements.

Collaborative skill acquisition

There is a very large body of scholarly knowledge around how design work is done—Schön's Reflective Practitioner (1987) and Cross' Designerly Ways of Knowing (1982) have acted as foundations for substantial contributions in journals like Design Issues and Design Studies. However, there has not been a great deal of investigation into how students support one another in gaining practical abilities in their field. Given that students are in proximity to each other for many more hours than they are in proximity to a professor, it is likely that various forms of student-to-student teaching are occurring, but it's unclear exactly how. There is a nearly blank slate to explore what skill development experiences students are having in the studio without support from the professor.

Student sentiment

Much of the scholarly work that focuses on design studio culture has examined critique, and nearly all of that research emphasizes the negative emotional impact of crit: how critique provokes fear and anxiety, and can act as a traumatic experience rather than a learning experience. This is significant, as critique is a practice that is deeply intertwined into all aspects of studio culture. However, there are likely a number of other meaningful emotions at play in a studio context, often completely unrelated to the practice of crit; one exception is a study from Hill (2007) that describes a feeling of positive connection with the faculty, but this is limited to interior design students in upper-level classes, uses only a broad quantitative measure, and only describes students' feelings about their instructors. There are few other studies related to student sentiment of studio learning, specifically.

It is hypothesized that when students make things, they see their identity intertwined with the work—they "are" their work, and if they don't like what they make, they may find themselves experiencing feelings of shame or lack of worth. This might lead them to avoid making things entirely, resulting in a lack of growth. Similarly, it is likely that when a student makes something that they feel is representative of their effort, they may experience an emotional high, with feelings like pride or even surprise. Comparison between students likely brings with it strong emotions, both positive and negative. Being in close quarters makes that comparison more obvious than in a standard classroom, and it's reasonable that this form of environment would amplify these types of emotions. Further investigating these hypotheses would provide valuable data for reconsidering or restructuring studio pedagogy.

Faculty sentiment

Very little research indicates how faculty feel about teaching in a studio context, and it is expected that the demeanor, attitude, and emotion of an instructor have a material impact on how students learn. Research in this space might explore what parts of design studio culture are particularly exciting, challenging, or confusing for educators, and this would highlight areas for professional development.

Self-organization and self-governance

Studio is largely controlled by students, but little research has been done to understand how that self-governance occurs and the impact of it. While students may learn how to use the space for creative activities, it is unlikely that they are ever explicitly "taught" how to manage the interpersonal dynamics that emerge in a close-quarters working space. It is reasonable to expect that different roles are taken on by different students, that some form of leadership emerges, and that there are inevitable conflicts that must be resolved; it is likely that these all impact learning. Additionally, as students often have unconstrained access to the physical space (and even keys to the studio), cultural norms are likely established that may not be visible to faculty. There is room to further observe and investigate how the studio is "managed," outside of the rules set by administration or faculty.

Different cultural backgrounds

Design schools attract students from a variety of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds, and these differences likely play a meaningful role in how a student experiences design studio culture. While there exists a large body of work about inclusion at the university or college level, there is little scholarly work investigating the way students from different backgrounds experience the unique nature of the design studio. There is a great deal of room to explore and understand how students of color, students from lower-income families, students of various genders, and students from various geographical regions experience design studio education.

Generational changes

Undergraduate students who are in their early 20s have had materially different formative experiences than their professors; the things they do and the ways they live and the emotions they experience and the ways they handle these emotions may be at odds with the way studio culture has evolved. Little research has investigated how generational changes impact the way creativity is encountered in education; there is room to better understand the lived experience of modern generations in the context of learning design.

Becoming designerly

A number of research articles explain how studio culture helps designers become active participants in the field of design, but few illustrate this explanation through real examples or with depth of inquiry. Being "designerly" has obvious qualities, like the acquisition of skills, but also subtle or invisible elements related to professional participation. There are opportunities to understand what entering the profession means for students and faculty, and how studio culture can better prepare students to form a designerly identity.

Summary

This text has summarized the primary set of literature related to studio culture, and identified gaps in that research and writing. Existing research has primarily focused on critique, as well as situated learning, learning within a unique type of classroom, managing fear, and gaining membership in a participatory practice. Gaps are spread across a number of topics and areas of focus, indicating that there is a large opportunity to help improve teaching and learning through additional research, with a primary emphasis on the way students experience design studio culture, as compared to how design skills and methods are taught and learned.

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