‘Are you going into the studio today?’ A question we have all probably heard at least once. However, with the rise of covid and the restrictions that followed, it was a question that no longer needed asking.
EMPTY STUDIO DURING COVID-19
The pandemic caused a tectonic shift in many areas of our lives, of which we are still experiencing the aftershock, and the studio space is no exception. Tutor and Lecturer Daniel Mallo comments how the studio was a place “where you can spend lots of time and there was always this issue of eating together and staying for long hours” this idea of studios being communal hubs where work and socializing intersects is echoed by a fellow student, “For Architecture, it’s pretty important to have people who are working on the same thing around you”. Covid has disrupted this, another student adding “It’s kind of isolated the course as well”. The ways in which the pandemic’s restrictions have atomized us and our working habits is something that, ostensibly, seems difficult to reverse.
So how do we move forward in fostering a positive and lively culture for studios? Mallo suggests a focus on reviving the social aspect of the studio, because “in essence, the good thing about studio culture is peer learning. The social aspect promotes this peer learning”. So perhaps the next time we’re asked that familiar question, we remind ourselves what studios can be for us, not only as spaces but as places.