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Studios at the College of Built Environments

Studios are the lifeblood of the College of Built Environment and what differentiates us from other colleges and departments. The rigorous demands of these immersive environments challenge students to combine curriculum and personal creativity in individual or group settings.  While many departmental studios are exclusive to their students, several studio offerings are open across disciplines or to non-CBE students. Many of these specialty students partner with regional clients to create tangible results (design builds) or teach a unique skill set (furniture studio) not found in more traditional studios.

Spiral wooden structure

Featured studios

McKinley Futures Studio
This cross-disciplinary studio invites students to participate in work dedicated to a specific region or topic related to the future of the built environment. Taught by faculty from different disciplines, students are tasked with producing projects that generate research-based hypothetical design scenarios and are challenged to consider larger problems facing society—health, the environment, the economy, science, and technology.
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Wooden table with a cactus on topFurniture Studio
This course involves the design and construction of a piece of furniture such as a small table, case, chair, bench or stool or an architectural element such as a door or screen. The approach to the studio is based on the “Studio Furniture” movement in the United States, where individuals with small shops design and build one-of-a-kind or limited production furniture pieces.
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Person pointing at a project poster on a wallNehemiah Studio
In this interdisciplinary studio, graduate students work to articulate the social, urban, and economic issues and test feasibility for development scenarios with the goal of providing affordable mixed-use projects according to community needs and desires to retain, bring back, and attract new residents.
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Cross disciplinary studios

Scan|Design Master Studio

The Scan|Design Master Studio combines international study experience with multi-disciplinary collaboration on local projects to develop planning and design solutions for Seattle’s public realm. Before the studio, students travel to Copenhagen, Denmark to visit the office of the renowned Copenhagen firm Gehl Architects and see the city through its people-centered urban design lens.

Scan|Design Master Studio

Storefront Studio

The Storefront Studio is an outreach design studio, focusing on small towns in Washington State. It is offered as an undergraduate studio, the last in the sequence of studios, or as a vertical studio combined with graduate students. The focus of the studio is an investigation into the historic Main Streets of Washington State communities.

Student designs facilitate discussion on, and funding for, a mix of community-generated projects in architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design. Although individual programs and projects vary, every project enhances community resilience, inclusivity and authenticity, through historic preservation, economic revitalization, complete street/green street strategies, and enhanced public parks and infrastructures.

Storefront Studio

Department studios

Architecture

The Department of Architecture offers specialized studios as a part of the curriculum at both the undergraduate and the graduate level. Typically, Furniture Studio is offered in the spring quarter for graduate students and the winter quarter for undergraduates. Storefront Studio is offered for undergraduates in the spring quarter. Neighborhood Design/Build Studio is offered for both undergraduates and graduate students in the spring.

Recently, the department has created several new specialized studios, including the Scan Design Foundation Urban Design Master Studio, the Scan Design Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor Master Architecture Studio, and the Barry Onouye Endowed Studio. In the past, projects from all of these studios have gained regional and national merit and recognition.

Architecture department studios

Landscape Architecture

Our mission is to offer nationally recognized, professionally accredited undergraduate and graduate degree programs in Landscape Architecture that focus on Urban Ecological Design. We frame Urban Ecological Design (UED) through five interrelated themes: Design as Activism, Design for Ecological Infrastructure, Design for Ecological Learning and Literacy, Design for Human and Environmental Health, and Design for Social and Environmental Justice. These themes underlie studio, lecture, and workshop format courses as students engage in design, ecological and cultural systems, theory, history, communication, and implementation. We engage in a range of spatial and temporal scales within the curriculum, and with community-based organizations, particularly in design studios and the Capstone / Thesis projects for MLA, or Design/Build Capstone for BLA.

Landscape Architecture studios

Urban Design & Planning

Studio classes are an integral part of the educational process in the Department of Urban Design and Planning. Studio classes offer graduate students (and sometimes undergraduate students) the opportunity to engage in a hands-on, collaborative, real-world planning issue in a local, regional, or international community. In studios, theory, process, methods and skills are brought together to construct a (story, argument, position, strategy, etc.) in a spatial format that reflects the CST matrix—culture, space, and time aspects of community (all or nothing).

Urban Design & Planning studios