OpenLAB Studio Student Work

Each semester, the OpenLAB Studio explores a different scale and urban context. Students are challenged to learn how to address a complex design problem, working at multiple scales and exploring multiple processes: urban design, building design, landscape architecture, building science and prototype design through fabrication. Model making and fabrication are stressed throughout the semester to clarify and explore design intent. A controlled palette of materials is initially prescribed at the beginning of the semester for all studio and fabrication explorations; however, after the midterm review for the building design component, students are given the freedom to employ techniques that they feel are the best way to describe their design intent for each project.

urban inlay studio 2023
Director of OpenLAB Boston and Faculty: Kevin Sullivan
Mentors: Dane Clark; Kofi Akakpo; Sarah Radding; Stephanie Balsam; Shaun Morris; Wesley Schwartz; Xuancheng Zhu

The 2023 URBAN INLAY Studio, which included 14 fourth-year architecture students from Virginia Tech and Hampton University, focused on seven building sites across Boston’s North End. The sites were quirky residual gaps in the well-established urban fabric of the North End that were formed over time. Due to the odd shape of the parcels, creative architectural invention was necessary to respond to the challenging dimensions and specificity of each site. Over the course of the semester, the students studied interventions that both respected and responded to context while subverting assumptions of space and density.

oasis studio 2022
Director of OpenLAB Boston and Faculty: Kevin Sullivan
Mentors: Susan Blomquist; Ching Hua Ho; Jessica Jorge; Mark Oldham; Mark Scott; Lucia Valentin

In 2022, 13 fourth-year architecture students from Virginia Tech focused on a neighborhood health and community center in an in-fill site in the center of Boston’s Chinatown. The ground floor program included an urgent care clinic and diagnostics screening center, with the remainder of the building determined by the individual teams following a period of contextual analysis. The students teamed together in pairs to propel the themes of sustainability, embedded nature and community-centered design into a deeply realized and complex project.

nexus studio 2021
Director of OpenLAB Boston and Faculty: Kevin Sullivan
Mentors: Leon Drachman; Craig Mutter; Mark Scott

In 2021, PAYETTE hosted 10 Virginia Tech Architecture + Design students from the Center for Design Research OpenLAB Studio. The course explored Boston and its evolution into one of the most important life science and technology hubs in the world. The NEXUS Studio explored an interdisciplinary hive for collaboration comprised of several buildings on a downtown Boston site. Students were asked to consider and test the challenges and design opportunities related to performance, sustainability and resiliency that the unique site conditions imposed.