Studio through studio: A diffractive reading of the educational design studio

This article aims to unsettle familiar notions of the educational design studio by examining how it is different from the professional studio. Both settings share similar routines, practices, and physical features, however, I argue their operations differ in critical ways. By bringing attention to these differences, I hope to open up new perspectives on how learning happens in educational studios and make a case for further material and spatial accounts of learning. I will draw on empirical accounts of professional studios from the book Studio Studies. Wilkie and Farias identify the studio as a sociologically significant yet overlooked setting for understanding how creativity happens. They implore researchers to take materials, spaces, and routines seriously to enrich our understanding of what takes place in studios. Through a close reading of Studio Studies, I identify five critical aspects of the professional studio: 1) the outside; 2) gathering; 3) material intimacy; 4) boundary-making practices and; 5) making. Taking each aspect in turn, I examine how they do or do not appear in accounts of contemporary educational studios. The intention is to provide new frames for studying the educational studio and develop enriched accounts of how learning happens in the studio.