At the UB School of Architecture and Planning, the design studio is the domain of synthesis. It is where our students bridge their developing skills and knowledge—spanning technical subjects, history and theory, and cultural context—through situated, project-based learning. Our studios cultivate iterative problem-solving, critical thinking, and professional formation through engagement with complex, often real-world design challenges.

We believe the studio must continually respond to an evolving cultural and technological landscape. This is where we look for ways to advance spatial reasoning in the face of emerging social and political conditions activated by transformative dynamics impacting how humans and non-humans inhabit the world: climate change, artificial intelligence, mass migration, underdevelopment, social fragmentation are some of the complex topics that make their way into design syllabi to be boldly taken on by our students. Especially at the later stages, the studio is therefore a multi-layered, integrative platform for interdisciplinary and community-engaged work.

This exhibition reaffirms and chronicles where we are in this mission. It presents the inaugural showcase of selected works from all studios from Fall 2024 to Spring 2025. Our goals are threefold: first, to celebrate the excellence of design work and teaching at UB; second, to frame the exhibition as a platform for reviewing and debating our studio pedagogy; and third, to encourage all students to engage with these works as a shared resource and sustain the collective dialogue on advancing spatial professions.

Looking ahead, we also hope that the exhibition fosters a broader conversation about how we can better cultivate more productive interdependencies between the studio and other modes of learning and teaching in our school—lectures, seminars, directed and independent research.