Field Studio, developed by Assistant Professor Elpitha Tsoutsounakis, brings together diverse community partners to inform management, stewardship, and experience in rural places and public lands through education, design research, and product design.
Field studio engages community partners though collaborative practice, and makes space for diverse student perspectives and processes. Students define their own emphasis in design resulting in a wide variety of outcomes including physical, digital, experiential, spatial, speculative, and social products of design.
The studio requires students to think beyond commercial markets and direct their design practice in service of the community, explicitly rejecting colonial and capitalist logics that commodify nature, labor, and reproduction.