Boston OpenLAB Studio – Year Four

We are incredibly excited to welcome ten fourth-year architecture students from Virginia Tech’s School of Architecture and Hampton University’s School of Engineering, Architecture and Aviation to our fourth year of the Center for Design Research OpenLAB Boston Studio.

Across several courses, including an integrative design studio, fabrication seminar and professional practice course, the OpenLAB Boston Studio will offer the experience of working in an architecture firm and introduce students to the concept of Research as Practice.

Each year the Studio explores a different scale and urban context. This year’s studio project is called Isthmus, a collection of five sites in the historic fabric of Boston’s Nubian Square. As an urban form, Nubian Square has a fascinating social and morphological history. Students will spend the first two weeks of the semester exploring its history, community, social geometry and the changing nature of the landscape and urban form, culminating in a master plan for the precinct that will be used to guide the five sites. For the remainder of the semester, five teams of two students each will each develop one of the five parcels while considering the findings from the master plan effort, collectively transforming Nubian Square. 

Throughout the semester, Fabrication will be integrated with the studio to explore design through the art-of-making at multiple scales. The semester will begin with a Digital Quilt exercise to quickly assess student capabilities and learn techniques and then quickly jumps to encourage a series of rapid iteration exercises to assist with the evolution of the design process through fabrication.