Studio H
The design-build class inside REALM, 2012–2019
Studio H was a design-build class founded by the designer Emily Pilloton through the nonprofit Project H Design. It began in Bertie County, North Carolina, and relocated to REALM Charter School in Berkeley in 2012, where it ran until the school closed.
The class put tools in students' hands. They learned drafting, welding, carpentry and fabrication by designing and building full-scale work — installations and functional structures, not models. Design publications and design institutions cited the program for years, which is why links to this address came from architecture and design press as well as from education outlets.
What the class demonstrated
Its core insight outlived the school: when students design for a real user, revision stops being a penalty and becomes the obvious next step. That shift is what most programs adopting the language of design thinking fail to reproduce, because it requires projects that can genuinely fail.
What became of it
The design-build lineage continued after REALM closed through Girls Garage, a Berkeley nonprofit founded by Emily Pilloton-Lam. Girls Garage is a separate and independent organisation; it is named here only because readers arriving from a Studio H citation are usually looking for it. This archive is not affiliated with it.
This page is an archive record. REALM Charter School closed in June 2019. Nothing on this page is an active service, offer, or invitation, and no information is collected here.