URBANFRAME
Ideas That Change Cities
visible
cities
"Visible Cities" - Spring Break 2016
A one-week field program where students learn to read complex systems up close—then turn what they notice into life skills they can use.
The next few years are full of high-stakes choices, and most people make them from a distance—based on advice, rankings, and other people's frameworks. This studio teaches a real-world alternative. When you can walk into a situation and quickly understand what's shaping it—the unwritten rules, the pressure points, the workarounds, what's being rewarded, what's being avoided—you get clear faster. You make better choices, and you can explain why.
We treat the city as a living lab. Each morning you'll engage with a real urban system: transit stations, hospital waiting rooms, service counters, civic thresholds. Each afternoon, you'll work in the studio turning what you captured into insights that matter in your own life.
Foodtruck owner describing how he builds customer trust and friendship. Mass Ave, Cambridge, 2016.
"I learned more in one week than in a semester. Daniel’s way of teaching made me trust my own perception." - Grady, 19 yrs.
"They have a way of making chaos make sense, without over simplifying it. I see the complex things I care about way differently.” - Joyce, 16 yrs
“Honestly, we went to some unexpected places and it felt like stepping outside my comfort zone, but that’s where the shift happened... we stopped guessing and started thinking from what we could see." - Dillon, 18 yrs.
Ages Juniors, Seniors, and Gap Year (16–19 yrs)
Enrollment 16 students
Location The Foundry 101 Rogers St, Cambridge, MA 02142
Dates Session I - 23-27 March 2026 or Session II - 20-24 April 2026
Transportation The Foundry's Rogers Steet studio is a ten minute walk from Kendal Square (MBTA, Redline). Pay parking is also available nearby.
Bring Seasonably appropriate outdoor clothing, digital camera (phone), lunch
Tuition $1,200. (Early bird: $900 - register by February 15). Financial assistance available by application.
How it works
Five days. Cambridge, MA. The city as working laboratory.
Mornings - You'll go to places people move through but rarely study—transit platforms, hospital waiting rooms, campus dining halls, service counters, building lobbies, street corners where people hesitate.
You're not touring. You're tracking: who shows up, what breaks down, where friction happens, what gets ignored.
Document it—phone, notebook, voice memos—then compare with what others saw.
Afternoons- Identify patterns. Name the forces shaping behavior. Figure out what the place is designed to do versus what it's being used for.
Final day: Pull it together and use an evidence-first method on the big choices in your own life: what you’re drawn to, what matters, what’s influencing you, and a few stronger ways to think about what comes next.
Safety
Fieldwork in public settings only.
Adult supervision & buddy system when outside the studio.
Phone/camera use is for capture and program use only.
No posting or social media during the program.
Leadership
Daniel Hewett, architect and Urbanframe founder, has led field-based observation programs since 2009. He is the co-founder of the Center for Complexity at the Rhode Island School of Design. Daniel teaches the same observational methods he uses professionally as an educator, architect and organizational consultant and his URBANFRAME students have gone on to architecture, urban planning, public health, policy, and technology fields—carrying forward the capacity to read complex systems.
Grad students, and guest contributors from design, technology, and civic sectors may join during the week.