Design projects
Studio experience without the studio tuition.
Eight-week design challenges run like a first-year studio: a real brief, weekly critiques, and a final presentation. Beginners welcome — the brief teaches the process.
Design briefs
Current & upcoming challenges.
Micro Library Challenge
Design a 400 sq ft neighborhood library for a real corner lot. Constraints: daylight, accessibility, and a budget that forces hard choices.
Skills you build
Community Pavilion
An open-air gathering structure for a park: structure, shade, and shelter with a material palette you must defend in critique.
Skills you build
Sustainable Tiny Home
A 280 sq ft dwelling designed around passive heating, cooling, and water strategies for a climate you pick.
Skills you build
How studios run
Critique is the curriculum.
Weekly live critiques
Pin up your work, explain your thinking, and get structured feedback from studio leads and peers — the way real architecture school works.
Free tools only
Everything runs on free software and hand drawing. The Design Software Class covers the tools if you're starting from zero.
A finished board
Each challenge ends with a presentation board: drawings, diagrams, and a narrative — a ready-made portfolio piece.
Showcase day
Final boards are presented at the end-of-cycle virtual showcase and published in the student gallery.
Student gallery
Work from past studios.
A sample of final boards from recent challenges. The full gallery lives in the portal for members.
Corner Lot Library — N. Kim
Final board · selected pages
Shade Pavilion Study — G. Liu
Final board · selected pages
Desert Tiny Home — A. Santos
Final board · selected pages