The College of Design wrapped up the 2012-2013 academic year with a series of final reviews featuring the culmination of the year's research. Below is a short description of four studios, which are featured in the slideshow above, along with many other exemplary projects:
Professor Mike McKay's PERFORMA, an intensive research and fabrication studio. Professor McKay’s research work involves the investigation of formal systems and design strategies that create multi-performative material systems utilizing optimization, aggregation and efficiency. Simple units and semi-finished materials are physically tested in order to extract potential performative characteristics and limits.

• Professor Akari Takebayashi's Primitive City aimed is understand the relationship between architectural form, urban economy and history of building typologies. The core lies in the new figure to ground relationships possible in a city. The course's objective was to seek a harmony between architectural form and hybrid spatial occupancies using primitive geometries.
• Students in Lindsey Guinther and Helen Turner's Retail Studio worked closely with the owner/design director of Lexington’s Creative Retail Services, Clifford Goss, to envision a design proposal for a new retail space located at 126 North Broadway. The work developed over the course of a semester demonstrated explorations in brand identity, surface articulations, visual merchandising and interior design planning and programming.
• Doug Appler's Historic Preservation Planning Studio focused on the survey process that is the cornerstone of the preservation process. It allows a community to identify its historic resources, and assess whether a neighborhood or district is likely candidate for protection through the creation of a local district, or whether it could be nominated to the National Register of Historic Places.