Foundation

Focus: Design Fundamentals

Studio Name: To Begin With

Design is everywhere. We observe and encounter design during every moment of our daily lives: the objects we interact with, the spaces where we live, work, and play, the landscapes that surround us, the transportation systems that help us move, the communication systems we use, the streets and cities we navigate. In this studio, students will learn foundational design principles and technical skills to unweave and weave back together an understanding of a human-made artifact and dwelling that tells a unique story of why and how it was created.

Structurally, the studio will be partitioned into three modules. Part I, will give students the opportunity to dissect and analyze artifacts of personal significance, unveiling an understanding of the artifact through both a technological and anthropological lens. In Part II, students will utilize these newly developed design skills to interpret and abstract formal understandings of poetry, resulting in a series of photos, drawings, material studies, and crafted 3D models. The third and final portion of the studio will allow students to synthesize their understanding of the creative process through the design and fabrication of a board game. 

Cumulatively, the studio will assemble a collection of each students’ work that bridges design principles to poetic concepts, resulting in both 3D exhibit pieces as well as a printed portfolio of their work that can be used as a design process reference in future NuVu studios.

Intermediate 

Focus: Experimental Design

Studio Name: Innovate to Activate

Everywhere we go, we have hundreds if not thousands of interactions with our environment and each other. We take in facial expressions, advertisements, sensory information, even the layout of the spaces we occupy - and use all of this information to consciously and subconsciously move throughout the world. As designers, we can make intentional decisions to guide how people perceive information and encourage certain behaviors. Particularly now, after a year of minimal public interaction, we have a ripe opportunity to redirect people towards a positive, generative, caring relationship with the space around them.

In this studio, students will explore the public spaces and resources in our Cambridge community, and map out the intricacies of how people interact with them. We will use this data to identify and design for a specific element of our community in order to highlight and amplify the wealth of culture and resources available - whether that be the public library, small businesses, or the diverse needs and interests of the people in this city. We will conduct interviews, test our work, and ultimately build interactive physical installations that address the above in a compelling and accessible way.

Intermediate

Focus: Digital Media and Virtual Reality 

Studio Name: Revolutionary Spaces

In this studio students will explore virtual and augmented reality workflows in order to create new avenues of learning. As a class we will conduct a series of exercises that reinforce NuVu’s learn-by-doing approach. Inspired in part by our shift to remote learning during the covid-19 pandemic and in order to leverage our technological privileges to create more equitable learning experiences, we will be exploring virtual reality as an educational tool. 

At the start of the studio, students will learn about  collaborative VR learning, communication, and effective research techniques. In the style of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History, students will identify potential areas of research. Nuvu students will work in partnership with local museums and libraries and select historical topics to research. In creating these projects, the students will seek to understand what stories and events from the past require a shift in our prior thinking. 

Students will follow through on these collaborative designs using VR creation, and storytelling. Once the worlds have been built, students will further the projects through scripting. They will draw on game design and educational strategies including puzzles, experimentation, and mindfulness in order to achieve the most effective project. Finally students will present their projects to an audience of their peers, collecting data and feedback in order to deconstruct and analyze the effectiveness of their tools.

Advanced 

Concentration: Spatial Derivatives 

Focus: Architecture

Studio Name: When Movement Creates Environment

“The body moving through space in time is a central experience of both architecture and dance.” Throughout history both disciplines have used space as a vehicle for creative interpretation. Architects anticipate the choreography of a person’s path through space, while in dance a choreographer prescribes the space in which the body moves. Both disciplines provide an aesthetic quality to its medium, architecture provides it to human habitation and dance provides it to human movement. Looking back to the etymology of the word Choreography we will find that it is derived from the ancient Greek word Khôra, which has been described by philosophers such as Plato as a ‘receptacle or space’ a form that gives space. 

In this concentration students will have an immersive experience, exploring how architecture and dance influence one another, and how we all have the capacity to become dancers in the way we engage with our built environment.Through a series of studies, students will investigate the harmonious connection between the body and the built form ,using movement as a means of studying body and space relationship, and  utilizing choreography as a vehicle for design investigation.

In the first studio, students will learn about architecture principles through the lens of dance, using dance spatial concepts to inform the architecture of space, where the body is the soul active agent to create spaces. Students will engage in a series of movement classes and use their new body intelligence to express their ideas. The outcome of this studio is an installation designed through choreographic compositions in response to each student’s chosen social/cultural issue, which then is translated into material and form. This studio will be taught in collaboration with Emily Beattie, a choreographer, performer, and educator based in Massachusetts. Emily’s work explores the relationships between souls, space, time, and technology.

In the second studio, students will explore the dynamic relationship between participants and the built environment through moving from the notion of Place to Taking place, thinking about their installation when witnessed in presence of participants,exploring how their installation can shift and evolve to become a dynamic and immersive experience,where participants can actively engage and mark their presence. Through this process students will learn about interaction design and Biosensors. This studio will tentatively be taught in collaboration with Kristin Neidlinger, a biomedia designer, founder of SENSOREE – her work explores bio-responsive fashion to promote extimacy, externalized intimacy. With a background in dance, design, and in physical therapies as a Dance Medicine Specialist.