The Imperative of the Metastudio

The activities we engage in when we design form a broad and disparate palette. We explore, research, make marks, make artefacts, experiment, review, discuss, critique, assess. The ‘home’ of this palette of activities is ‘the studio’; a combination of laboratory, library, workshop, forum, exhibition.

It became apparent a few years ago, that the nature of the central plank of the studio dialogue, the tutorial, was changing. Students were bringing a wider range of media to the tutorial to represent their developing ideas. Importantly, this included, increasingly, electronic media, typically ‘live’ CAD models on laptops.
As a tutor, the importance of the internet in tutorials, to share material, images, precedent with students, was also increasing. The tutorial was enriched. But it was harder to organise, and particularly it was harder to record, to provide a cohesive log of the dialogue, the feedback, the references. Much of the feedback in tutorial is drawn, and drawn freehand, in quick and dirty, intuitive mode.
It became apparent that it would be very helpful to find a way of pulling this melee of feedback and discussion together, of organising it for students and staff, but retaining the immediacy of the quick and dirty drawn discussion and freehand feedback.