April 30, 2026
What’s a Design Studio? Reading States of Nature
Political Philosophy and World Building
Coach Heide is known for inspiring NuVu students to dive into areas they’ve yet to explore. So when she noticed that students were excited to engage with the thoughtful readings she assigned during a recent winter studio, she was inspired to create her next studio: Reading States of Nature: Political Philosophy and World Building.
“It was a great experience to read intense books and talk about them,” she recalls, “and I wanted to expand upon that. But we don't just read at NuVu—we also make things.” With that in mind, Heide combined two elements: hands-on making with political philosophy.
A new experience for an experienced coach, Heide says it became a team effort to bring her idea to life. With Design Coach Maddie offering insight into the building process, Creative Director Nada bringing an architectural lens, and Heide guiding the deep-thinking texts, the studio evolved in a way that felt uniquely NuVu. “Where it started from and where it ended were so disparate, but at the same time, really came together in a kind of magical way as everyone became involved,” she says.
At the start of the studio, in those early weeks, the group dove into core liberal texts of political philosophy, including selections from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan, John Locke’s Second Treatise of Government, and the Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose work on political philosophy and social contract theory heavily influenced the French Revolution (“what kid doesn’t like a revolution?” said Heide), as well as the French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville, who wrote about civil spaces—passages the studio read aloud in a coffee shop to capture the spirit of his work.
From there, the studio moved into world building. Using one large land mass divided into four quadrants, the class split into four groups, each developing a backstory for their imagined country. Many of the narratives were heavily influenced by the texts they had read and the discussions that followed.
“They all wrote fascinating approaches to what their country's state of nature was and how they developed societies based on these states. From ‘what kind of resources do we have?’ to ‘what's our community's experience in the world?’”
One group’s story arc began with a richly resourced country that frequently experienced monsoons. At one point, the society formed an authoritarian government to protect itself from extreme weather, constructing fortress-like buildings for safety. Over time, however, their deep reverence for nature led them to overthrow that system when it became too disconnected from the land. They then allowed the natural world to overtake the brutalist architecture that had once separated them from it. “They had a socialist society after that,” explains Heide, “which was really a beautiful narrative about understanding how resources impacted their society, how it shaped the architecture and then how it eventually reshaped the architecture.”
For the physical builds, students worked with colored plexiglass, resin, wood, and model trees and foliage. “They worked extremely hard, both on conceptualizing and on building that pieces,” said Heide. “Kids told me they were staying up late then coming in at seven in the morning just to come into the shop to work on their build. It was just really impressive and they made very beautiful worlds.”
Heide says there were two key outcomes of the studio. The first was seeing students—many of whom claimed to be uncomfortable with reading—discover that they could tackle challenging texts and even enjoy engaging with big social ideas. The second was creating finished pieces that embodied everything they had absorbed through those readings.
“The cool thing about these pieces was that all of them intersected with one another, which meant that all of the kids were very aware that if they didn't finish their piece, it would be visible to all of their classmates and to the whole school. So they knew that they had to make something that was as beautiful as the group next to them,” she says.
In the end, the studio became what Heide calls a proof of concept. “What we're doing at NuVu isn't just design, it's understanding big ideas and turning them into real things.”
