Designers are 'craftsmen' and craftsmen are masters of technique in all its forms. But perhaps even more importantly, designers are also masters of when and why to use that technique. A true craftsman (m/f/x) can only be made in one way: by taking and receiving the time to truly become proficient in the depths of their craft.
In a studio students learn to expand the relevant designer skill- and mindset needed for it’s specific design discipline, and combine them to consciously create designs that relate to, and have a place in the world. In addition to this the Studio is part of a larger community of studios that facilitate multidisciplinary work.
The studios actively contribute to the five pillars of CMD LWD (community-based, demand-driven, competence-oriented, practice-oriented, and cosmopolitan).
To achieve this, the studios use:
“Pick one thing and spend the rest of your life getting deeper into it. Mastery is the best goal because the rich can't buy it, the impatient can't rush it, the privileged can't inherit it, and nobody can steal it. You can only earn it through hard work. Mastery is the ultimate status.”
To make these goals more practical we’ve set up 9 Studio Principles. These serve as our guidlines for optimizing our Studio environment but also as a quality check so if you’ve got feedback for your Studio on any of these principles don’t hesitate to share it with them.
Because your time in a Studio is limited, you should be able to focus as much as possible on creating designs. This means a Studio tries to avoid students getting too involved in things that are not relevant to achieving a (good) design. This can be achieved by creating a learning environment that is fundamentally simple and predictable. By using an ‘adapter', appropriate to the field's context for learning outcomes, a Studio ensures a streamlined, compact process cycle that is easy to follow.
Iterations form the backbone of a good design process - making, testing, evaluating, and adjusting are all essential steps in creating something tailored to its purpose. Because fast iterations require an agile process that can easily adapt to feedback, it's important for a Studio to facilitate these iterations, preferably in a predictable and simple manner (see principle 1).