HDT CoLab Fall 2026 teaching platform
Curate Studio: a block-by-block virtual curation studio a block-by-block virtual curation studio
A teaching platform on which a class builds its own exhibition. The teacher opens a gallery and sets the permissions; the students raise the walls, hang the works and write the labels.
- Programme
- HDT CoLab
- Term
- Fall 2026
- Type
- Teaching platform
- Roles
- Teacher · student · visitor
- Unit of space
- One block
- Dependencies
- None
- Runs on
- Node.js + Three.js
- Output
- A published gallery
What it is
Curate Studio is a place for a class to build an exhibition together. A gallery is laid out one block at a time; the works are hung on the walls the class raises, the labels are written beside them, and the finished show can be opened to visitors. The room is therefore a decision the class makes, not a template it fills in.
How a class uses it
- The teacher opens a session, which acts as the exhibition venue, and sets what each student may do.
- Students raise the walls, the floor and the ceiling, one unit at a time.
- They hang works from an upload, write the wall labels, set display cases for objects, and choose the wall and floor textures.
- The light is adjusted through a day and night cycle.
- The session is published, and guests walk through it in a browser, read only, with no account.
The vocabulary
- Session
- The gallery a teacher opens for one exercise, and the permissions that go with it.
- Block
- The unit of the room: one block is one unit of space, so a wall is a decision.
- Wall label
- The caption and credit line that sits beside a work.
- Case
- A display case for objects that cannot be hung.
- Guest
- A visitor with no account, who may look and not touch.
What students learn
Spatial design at the scale of a room; the order in which an exhibition should be read; the craft of the label; and the discipline of building something a visitor can walk through. The technical surface is deliberately low so that the curatorial argument stays in front.
Where it runs
The platform is Node.js and Three.js with no third-party packages. One command starts it, and the data and the uploaded images are created beside it, so it runs on a laptop, in a computer room or on a small server.
Status and access
The studio is in use for teaching, and development continues with each course that runs on it. Access is arranged with the platform.
plates
The room is a decision, not a given: the class builds the space it then has to argue for.
