What constitutes, defines or bounds the ‘studio’ in architecture education when it is wholly online? The design studio contributes to a very particular spatial construct in proximal teaching, one that has been challenged during the pandemic as educators have adopted distance and online learning and teaching. This paper presents a brief history of the design studio in architectural education and speculates about three dimensions of visibility therein. It contextualises the design studio against the broader higher education experiences of teaching online during the Covid-19 pandemic, in particular so-called ‘Zoom anxiety’ and ‘Zoom fatigue’ experienced by teachers and students. The paper explores how the visibility of teacher and student in the studio conspire in the reproduction of inequity and precarity in higher education, while also raising questions about students’ agency in disabling their cameras in online teaching.