SHIFT 3

Studios.
For architecture students, the thought of studios evokes anticipation of painful olfa mishaps, the exhaustion following consecutive sleepless nights, and the brutal attack on our monetary funds. Despite all that, the studio still occupies a special place in our hearts (and in some cases, our dining rooms).
TheStudio can be more than just a space, but rather becomes a world of its own, bubbling with creative energies where students share ideas, tools, and techniques and develop a strong sense of community. It’s where the magic happens.

Because of the lack of studio space for undergraduates, students in U of T’s Architecture Studies program are forced to get innovative with where they work, spreading across bedrooms, dining rooms and basements throughout the GTA.
On-campus, students work in constrictive dorm rooms, take over common rooms and co-opt dining room tables for studio projects, then hurriedly clean up before dinnertime. These studios are more like events or rituals than places – but where is the student in residence to work?
Off-campus conditions are slightly better, generally offering larger territory to spread work and sometimes even parental units to help with transportation of material goods and final creations. (Not to mention the fully stocked tool bench in the basement.) Downsides: the time devoted to commuting can be better put towards creating, and students living on the outer fringes of the city are forced into creative isolation in between studio classes, working in solitude until class the next week.
On or off campus, we are still architecture students. We all look forward to studio class for the chance to look at other people’s work and get feedback on our own work. We like bouncing ideas off of each other. We value each other’s techniques and ideas. And most importantly, we love to create.

We work very separately in our program but what can we learn from each other’s techniques? How do students make do, both in the process of model-making and in creating the space itself? How is the workspace reflective of the work we produce? Does it make a difference to have an individual studio space rather than a communal one? What do students do to help ease the pain of notorious all-nighters and treacherous commutes? And—the burning question—what do these studio spaces look like?

Come explore these ideas and more in our second installment in a series investigating the spaces that define the experience of an undergraduate architecture student at U of T! Welcome to our home studios! Play our match-the-model-to-the-home-studio game! Look at studios elsewhere! Learn from each other! Commiserate! No—Celebrate!

STUDIOS >>> OURS | THEIRS | OTHERS | THE HOME STUDIOS GAME