This paper presents five architectural studios that reframe infrastructure as a civic space, engaging students in critical design research that challenges professional boundaries. Civic projects begin by identifying societal needs, which are often ill-defined and involve contested interests, demanding navigation through conflict, resistance, and uncertainty. Each studio interrogates systems typically excluded from architectural discourse, and through research, resistance, and design, students cultivate civic imagination and devise spatial strategies for sites that both sustain or divide communities, advancing architecture’s role beyond shaping of physical form.