Almost everyone remembers their days in High School, going to English and Math class wondering how this might be useful in ‘the real world.’ Few actually get to apply their skills while still going to school, but students in Bertie County, North Carolina, were given that opportunity through Studio H.

Emily Pilloton has an undergraduate degree in architecture as well as a master’s in product design. After working in the field for a couple of years, she founded Project H Design, a nonprofit that uses design to empower local communities.  Asking her what inspired her to bring such an organization to life, Emily said she “[wanted] to bring [her] own practice back to a place that was more socially oriented, but more than that, that felt more meaningful.”

Starting Project H Design in 2008, Emily states that back then “people were really just starting to talk about social design.” “It was a really new idea that sustainability could be more than just environmental, that there was a huge social component to it; the idea that design could really affect society, and economy, and community.”

A short time after, Emily and her Project H partner Matt Miller developed Studio H, a high school design and construction curriculum. It is a one-year program offered to students in Bertie County, North Carolina, the poorest and most rural county in the state. The high school juniors learn design basics as well as hands-on skills. Talking about how Studio H got started and took shape, Emily explains that “Studio H as a curriculum came out of this idea that we had explored what design improvements – like actual environmental design improvements – looked like in the school facilities, but if we really wanted to explore the intersection of design and public education, we felt like we needed to be in the classroom, that we needed to actually  teach design as a skill set.”

The curriculum was inspired by programs like Rural Studio out of the University of Auburn, which provide a “precedent […] for community based design and construction programs.” Studio H is the only program so far that offers such a curriculum at a high school level. Emily explains that she and Matt wanted to pursue this idea, because “we saw […] the value in the design build process for communities, like being able to build physical contextually responsive and socially transformative architecture projects, especially in a rural location.”

The first project for the students was to build a farmer’s market pavilion, 100% designed and built by them. Community support has been overwhelmingly positive in Bertie County. Emily says that “the parents, the students, the families, the other teachers, the mayor […], the town council men, the community members, the farmers are all amazingly supportive and they all see the different benefits.” These include college credits and paid summer construction jobs for the students, a new way to buy produce for the community, and a new opportunity for farmers to sell their products.

In this panel, Emily will share the story about Studio H in more detail. She says “the drama and personalities involved are really entertaining, but more than anything I think it’s just an inspiring story, not about Project H, but about these kids and about the power of not just design, but real physical hands-on dirty construction […] and how that can really transform a community.”

In addition, Emily tells the story in hopes of inspiring “other people to not be fearful of trying seemingly crazy things.”

Below is a short clip from the Project H website about Studio H.

Studio H: Design. Build. Transform. (Promo #1) from Project H Design on Vimeo.