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Framework studios
Flexible, repeatable experiences aligned with NuVu’s core academic standards.
Design studios
Ideas become real here.
Students investigate consequential questions, acquire new skills, collaborate with peers and experts, and create original work through an iterative design process.
See how studios work ↓
What is a design studio?
One challenge. Many possible answers.
A NuVu design studio is a three- to four-week interdisciplinary learning experience organized around an open-ended challenge.
Coaches provide structure, expertise, feedback, and technical instruction while students make meaningful decisions about the questions they pursue and the work they create. Several studios run each session across engineering, computation, storytelling, architecture, social justice, biology, art, and emerging technology.
Designed with intention
Creative and spontaneous. Grounded in a thoughtful framework.
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Experimental studios
Boundary-pushing experiences that encourage risk-taking and may inspire future Framework Studios.
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A consistent process
Topics change, but every strong studio creates space for research, skill building, decisions, critique, iteration, and reflection.
How a studio unfolds
Encounter the challenge
Students enter a field through readings, precedents, demonstrations, fieldwork, and conversations with people who have relevant experience.
Build knowledge + skills
Coaches introduce the concepts, tools, and techniques students need to participate meaningfully.
Define a direction
Research and brainstorming help students identify a focused question while constraints make experimentation productive.
Prototype + test
Sketches, models, experiments, drafts, code, storyboards, and functional prototypes make thinking visible.
Critique + iterate
Feedback from peers, coaches, users, and experts helps students examine assumptions and improve their work.
Present + reflect
Students communicate the outcome and the evidence, failures, revisions, and decisions behind it.
Studios can begin anywhere
Different subjects. The same depth.
Film + storytelling
Robots and Monsters
Students studied the language of film, wrote scripts, learned professional production techniques, and created original science-fiction films with Cambridge Community Television.
Read the story →Computation + learning
Gamified Learning
Students investigated how people learn, then designed physical and digital games around clear learning objectives.
Read the story →Engineering + accessibility
Soft Robotics
Students used flexible materials, fabrication, and electronics to create assistive haptic technologies informed by real users and researchers.
Read the story →More examples
Juxtapose
Fashion, disability, identity, and social justice.
Reentry Housing
Architecture, incarceration, dignity, and community healing.
Home Assistive Robotics
Robotics, mathematics, generative AI, and accessibility.
Local Agents of Change
Public narrative, civic engagement, media, and activism.
What students carry forward
The project ends. The capabilities remain.
Enter unfamiliar subjects with confidence
Conduct meaningful research
Collaborate and manage shared work
Ask for and integrate feedback
Use tools in service of an idea
Persist when an approach fails
OI
Open Innovation
Students begin to define the challenge.
At the end of each trimester, students move into Open Innovation. Instead of beginning with a challenge defined by a coach, they identify the problem or opportunity themselves.
Open Innovation asks students to draw on prior studio experiences while developing greater independence: noticing what matters, defining an achievable direction, managing the process, and deciding what success should look like.
The culminating experience
Capstone
Nine weeks. One student. One question that matters deeply.
Part thesis, part design studio, Capstone asks seniors to apply years of collaborative, interdisciplinary project work to an individual, self-directed challenge.
Research + data collection
Students investigate the field, speak with stakeholders and experts, and allow evidence to challenge their assumptions.
Prototyping + testing
Ideas become experiments and prototypes that evolve through feedback, failure, and revision.
Production + storytelling
Students complete an authentic outcome and communicate the project’s purpose, process, and contribution.
Coaches and external advisors provide support, but each senior is responsible for directing the work. By the end, students present evidence of growth: the ability to research deeply, seek help, recover from failure, persist through uncertainty, and find their own voice.
Read the Capstone story →The progression
Participate in a studio. Define your own challenge. Direct a Capstone.
Over time, coaches define less, students decide more, and increasingly ambitious work becomes possible.