Project Overview

In the first Studio H project ever, thirteen high school students from Bertie County, NC designed and constructed a 2000-square-foot farmers market for their hometown of 2000 residents. In a rural food desert with an agricultural legacy, the farmers market was the perfect project to catalyze the community. With the support of the mayor, families, farmers, and neighbors, students engineered and physically constructed the farmers market, by hand, over two semesters and the following summer. The project was featured in Architectural Record and is the subject of the documentary film If You Build It. To date, the farmers market has retained a thriving community of over forty vendors, created four new businesses and fifteen new full-time jobs.

Studio H is an in-school design/build class for 6th-12th-grade students. First launched in Bertie County, NC and now based at Realm Charter School in Berkeley, CA, Studio H students apply their core subject learning to design and build audacious and socially transformative projects. Students of Studio H have previously dreamed up, designed, and constructed a 2000-square-foot farmers market pavilion, their own school library, a pop-up park, laser-etched skateboards, sculptural concrete public furniture, roadside farm stands, tiny homes, and more. Through experimentation, non-stop production, tinkering, and a lot of dirt under their fingernails, students develop the creative capital, critical thinking, and citizenship necessary for their own success and for the future of their communities.The work of Studio H is the subject of the full-length documentary If You Build It.

Project H uses the power of creativity, design, and hands-on building to amplify the raw brilliance of youth, transform communities, and improve K-12 public education from within. Programs teach rigorous design iteration, tinkering, applied arts and sciences, and vocational building skills to give young people the creative, technical, and leadership tools necessary to make positive, long-lasting change in their lives and their communities.