Should a book about the educational design studio include a definition of studio? Probably. Have we defined studio in Studio Properties? Umm … yes … and … no. Studio is challenging to define. It just is. The complexity and ambiguity of studio makes it difficult to describe and pin down. Yet, at the same time, the complexity and ambiguity of the studio is precisely what makes it work. It turns out that the simple question  – ‘what is studio?’ – isn’t so simple. Studio slips and slides when you try to describe it – as you will know if you’ve ever listened to a group of educators talking about studio or engaged with the research literature.

With Studio Properties, we never directly addressed a definition head-on, but we did engage with the question: ‘what is studio?’. Our approach to this question was emergent, and it started from a list of terms in Derek’s notebook.

Derek’s list consisted of what people said or wrote when they described studio education, and he referred to it as a list of ‘properties of the studio.’ We began to add to the list. Our initial idea for the book was to document the ‘properties of studio’ and, in the process, build a picture of studio education. Reasoning, if we could be comprehensive in describing the properties of studio, a more distinct and precise shape would emerge, and we would have an answer to the question: ‘what is studio?’ 

As our collective list of properties grew, however, we weren’t getting any closer to answering that question. What we had was emergent, but it was also very messy.

Studio as a Messy Object
The social theorists John Law and Val Singleton coined the term messy object to describe things or ideas that appear to defy knowing: “Mess is other to clarity, systematic study and knowledge. It defies knowing.” (2003, p.2).  Messy objects confound researchers, not because they can’t bring clarity, but rather, it is a condition of the object itself. In other words, researchers cannot tidy up messy objects. 

While it certainly felt to us like studio defied knowing, we were also mindful that simply labelling something a messy object is not enough. In the face of such a messy object, how could we offer some clarity or a heuristic framework that describes studio, that structures the messy object in a way that makes it accessible for others to understand, without being the actual structure of the studio? Bringing clarity to a messy object that defies understanding became the central conundrum of this book.

How did we solve that conundrum? The book has an unconventional structure; it doesn’t have chapters, and we didn’t write it as a linear account of the studio. Instead, it comprises 57 properties clustered thematically.

Image above: A double-page spread showing the nine thematic clusters.

Image above: At the start of each cluster, a single paragraph connects the properties in that cluster.

Image above: The connections between the properties in a cluster are also presented in a diagram to provide the reader with a visual representation of the cluster.

Image above: The heart of the book is made up of individual properties.

But perhaps the most important contribution the book makes, and our strategy for dealing with the messy object of the studio, is not so much the properties themselves, but rather the connections between them. Each property references multiple other properties, creating a web of interconnected patterns. In the text snippet below, taken from ‘Making Visible’, we can see that the properties of affect, belonging, performance, habits and rituals, identity, and enculturation are all mentioned in a single paragraph.

Image above: Close-up of a paragraph from Making Visible Property, which shows how the connections to other properties are integrated in the text.

In this way, the book is hypertextual – it exhibits characteristics of a wiki, a field guide, and a pattern language (see Alexander, Ishikawa and Silverstein 1977 A Pattern Language). We adopted this approach to circumvent the perennial challenge of systematic study, which often breaks things down into constituent parts and then examines the parts. This method risks not seeing the whole or the relationships between parts. With Studio Properties, we have created a book that enables readers to navigate between the whole and its parts and understand the “mutually elaborative” interconnections between properties.

Studio Properties doesn’t offer a definition of studio, but we have attempted to answer the question ‘what is studio?’ by cohering the messy object (studio) into a series of relationships in ways that are productive for educators, researchers, students and advocates of studio education.

Law, J. and Singleton, V. (2003), ‘Object Lessons’, published by the Centre for Science Studies, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YN, UK, at http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/sociology/papers/Law-Singleton-Object-Lessons.pdf