Sarah Williams. Photo: Laura Kerwin/Center for International Studies.
Digitally mapping informal transportation networks in developing cities can help them reach the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals.
Danielle Wood (left) and Christine Joseph. Image: Bryce Vickmark.
Researchers say new facilities in space should be available to scientists from any country.
Sarah Williams. Photo: Laura Kerwin/Center for International Studies.
Mapping urban transport
How can city planners make decisions about where to place critical public services when faced with data deficiencies? DUSP's Sarah Williams MCP ’05 discusses her new initiative focused on empowering individuals and creating data for civic change. MIT News.
Meet Lydia Kallipoliti, special guest at Archinect Outpost
Building Technology alumna Lydia Kallipoliti SM ’04 is profiled in Archinect for her work leading up to her recent publication “The Architecture of Closed Worlds.”
Gregory Falco. Image: Ian MacLellan
Researchers design a negotiation strategy to help cities and organizations minimize losses when their data are held hostage.
Photo: Jake Belcher
DUSP student will pursue an advanced degree in educational policy at Cambridge University.
Yazmin Guzman, a master's student in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has won the prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship, which offers students an opportunity to pursue graduate study in the field of their choice at Cambridge University.
Photo: Songela Chen
More than 100 middle school students compete at the fourth Northeast Regional Science Bowl, hosted by students at MIT and sponsored by the School of Science.
On Saturday, Feb. 23, more than 100 middle school students gathered at MIT to compete in the annual Northeast Regional Middle School Science Bowl.
Poster design: TANGRAMA
Intellectual Commons
At a time when digital communications are growing, the need for direct interaction is all the more vital. At a time when MIT is building bridges across schools and disciplines, we can no longer operate primarily at the scale of micro-units. This reflects neither the interests of the new generation nor the nature of the problems that the world is leaving at our doorstep.
A new report from DUSP alumna Melissa Chinchilla PhD '18 identifies challenges and opportunities to address Latinos housing & service needs.
Stemming the rise of Latino homelessness
A new report from DUSP alumna Melissa Chinchilla PhD '18 identifies challenges and opportunities to address Latinos housing & service needs. Read the report.
Civic innovation: Our futures with city and technology
Photo: Jake Belcher
“We see an incredible future where the College of Computing channels the collaborative potential of disciplines,” says grad student Matthew Claudel.
When MIT graduate student Matthew Claudel learned of the student computing challenges launched to accompany the three-day celebration of the MIT Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing that begins today, he eagerly signed on.
The Greenway, Boston. Credit: Greenway Conservancy and Kyle Klein Photography.
New prize honors legendary developer and philanthropist Norman B. Leventhal.
Vibrant, innovative cities most often result from powerful collaborations among diverse constituencies.
Hiroshi Ishii. Photo: Mariko Tagashira
Media arts and sciences professor is recognized for a career of contributions to human-computer interaction.
Hiroshi Ishii, the Jerome B. Wiesner Professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT, has been awarded the 2019 Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) SIGCHI Lifetime Research Award. He will accept the award and deliver a keynote presentation at the 2019 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Glasgow, Scotland, this May.
Dan Huttenlocher
Alumnus and founding dean of Cornell Tech in New York City will return to MIT this summer.
Courtesy of Judith Barry and Mary Boone Gallery, NYC.
Professor Judith Barry’s attention-grabbing installations create thought-provoking experiences for viewers.
For the first half of 2018, a large contemporary artwork greeted people entering the famed Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. An image two stories high on the museum’s façade showed people in a refugee boat looking upward — where a drone was taking photos.
Skylar Tibbits speaks to NYC alumni
At a March 12 gathering, Skylar Tibbits SM ’10 (MAS), cofounder of the MIT Self-Assembly Lab and Assistant Professor of Design Research in MIT Architecture, will join fellow alumni to discuss his work and research. Learn more and register for the event sponsored by the MIT Club of NY and MITArchA.
Justin Steil is among three to be honored with the Committed to Caring Award.
Graduate students facing obstacles in their lives turn to their academic advisors more frequently than any other on-campus resource, according to the most recent MIT Enrolled Graduate Student Survey.
Noelle LaCharite of Microsoft (left) and ACT's Lara Baladi. Photo: Sean Hanratty/We Are Listen.
MIT designers, researchers, and students collaborate with The Metropolitan Museum of Art and Microsoft to improve the connection between people and art.
Courtesy of Benjamin Wood, MArch ’84
Changing the urban landscape in China
Former fighter jet pilot Architecture alum Benjamin Wood MArch ’84 is helping to rethink Chinese cities. MIT Technology Review.
(Stock image)
Moods expressed on social media tend to decline when air pollution gets worse, study finds.
For many years, China has been struggling to tackle high pollution levels that are crippling its major cities. Indeed, a recent study by researchers at Chinese Hong Kong University has found that air pollution in the country causes an average of 1.1 million premature deaths each year and costs its economy $38 billion.
When Sonia Vallabh lost her mother to a rare disease, she and her husband, Eric Minikel, set out to find a cure. Images: Elinor Carucci
One couple’s tireless crusade to stop a genetic killer
“For two graduate students who are not trained in science to come in and do what they did? Absolute forces of nature.” Eric Lander of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard describes DUSP alum Eric Minikel MCP '10 and Sonia Vallabh's research to stop a genetic killer. WIRED.
Image: Courtesy of the researchers
New 3-D imaging technique can reveal, much more quickly than other methods, how neurons connect throughout the brain.
Researchers have developed a new way to image the brain with unprecedented resolution and speed. Using this approach, they can locate individual neurons, trace connections between them, and visualize organelles inside neurons, over large volumes of brain tissue.
Thunkable gives noncoders the ability to create professional-grade mobile apps.
More than 1.5 million mobile apps with around 16 million monthly active users have been created on Thunkable, a platform that grew out of MIT. The apps were designed to do things like educate, entertain, and turn a profit — and they were all built without writing a single line of code.
Noted urban anthropologist in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning championed advocacy and social change.
Lisa Peattie, a celebrated scholar and a lifelong activist who was a professor emerita of urban anthropology in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and recipient of the ACSP Distinguished Educator Award, passed away on Dec. 13, 2018. She was 94.
Postcard for “Fire and Light: Otto Piene in Groton, 1983–2014”
“Fire and Light: Otto Piene in Groton, 1983–2014”
A new exhibition at the Fitchburg Art Museum will feature works by Otto Piene, former fellow and director of the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies. On view February 9–June 2, 2019, “Fire and Light” will showcase Piene’s primary threads of production since the mid-1980s, including fire painting, Light Ballets, and tempera gouaches. Learn more.
This spring, SA+P Dean Hashim Sarkis is continuing to sponsor free wellness classes with more "Yoga and Mindfulness" sessions for our School community.
MONDAYS
Yoga & Mindfulness: 12:30pm - 1:30pm - 9-450
http://signup.mit.edu/1000062106
Photo: Scratch Team/MIT Media Lab
The new version of the popular free coding platform builds on a robust community of kid coders.
A new report co-authored by DUSP alumna Jessica Wolff MCP '18, examines how cities worldwide support displaced persons.
How are cities addressing the refugee crisis?
A new report, "Urban Refuge: How cities are building inclusive communities," released by the International Rescue Committee and co-authored by DUSP alumna Jessica Wolff MCP '18, examines how cities worldwide support displaced persons. Learn more.
MIT Media Lab PhD student Shriya Srinivasan. Photo: James Day.
New optogenetic technique could help restore limb movement, treat muscle tremor.
Image courtesy of the Collective Learning Group/MIT Media Lab
Study explores the micromechanisms underlying regional economic diversification.
Diversifying into new industries is vital to an economy’s ability to grow and generate wealth. But to branch out into new industrial activities, a city, region or country must first have a pool of people with the right mix of knowledge and experience to make those pioneering firms a success.
Photo: Sham Sthankiya
Dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning will curate the global showcase for architectural work.
Hashim Sarkis, Dean of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, has been named curator of the Venice Biennale’s 17th International Architecture Exhibition, to be held in 2020.
The exhibition is a premier global showcase for architectural work, and has been held every two years in Venice since 1980.
The Metropolitan Storage Warehouse. Photo: Bryce Vickmark.
Community-driven selection of project architect opens opportunities to imagine new life for historic building as future home for School of Architecture and Planning.
MIT’s campus is like a living organism, as changing programmatic needs and new opportunities make for a vibrantly evolving landscape.
Image: Daniel Oran
It’s not quite the Ant-Man suit, but the system produces 3-D structures one thousandth the size of the originals.
MIT researchers have invented a way to fabricate nanoscale 3-D objects of nearly any shape. They can also pattern the objects with a variety of useful materials, including metals, quantum dots, and DNA.
Kathleen Schwind. Image: Jake Belcher
An avid traveler, organizer, and educator, senior Kathleen Schwind helps others develop skills in negotiation and leadership.
SA+P’s Joy Buolamwini SM ’17, Tyler Clites PD '18, Rebecca Hui MCP ’18, Achuta Kadambi PhD '18, and Jonny Sun are among the thirty-one MIT community members named to this year’s list.
Forbes calls its 2019 30 Under 30 honorees “a collection of bold risk-takers who are putting a new twist on the old tools of the trade.”
AI and Machine Learning, Jennifer Conway MSRED ’18
AI + Machine Learning: Current applications in Real Estate
Merging different types of location-stamped data can make it easier to discern users’ identities, even when the data is anonymized.
A new study by MIT researchers finds that the growing practice of compiling massive, anonymized datasets about people’s movement patterns is a double-edged sword: While it can provide deep insights into human behavior for research, it could also put people’s private data at risk.
Image courtesy Zhengdong New District Committee
A new MIT program in the planned Chinese city offers opportunities for observation and collaboration.
Zhengdong New District is a planned mixed-use new city in the northeast quadrant of Zhengzhou Municipality, the capital of China’s Henan Province. Construction started in 2001 for what is one of many planned urban communities seeded across China to help accommodate that country’s unprecedented rate of urbanization.
MCP candidate Mercedes Bidart pitches venture Quipu at the November 28 event.
Nine multi-disciplinary teams join MIT’s design entrepreneurship accelerator.
Nine teams seeking to launch highly innovative ventures ranging from AI powered interior design, to “non-invasive” underground infrastructure machines, to reimagined design solutions for hospitals have been selected for the 2019 cohort at MITdesignX, the entrepreneurship accelerator of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P).
Apartments like Neri Carranza’s, on West 109th Street, are typical targets for landlords seeking to speed their properties out of regulation. Photo by Max Budovitch.
Country of Tenants
Rent control is finding new life as a pathway to housing affordability in expensive cities and as a source of grassroots power for tenants as a political group. Max Budovitch MCP '18 follows the regulation debate from Morningside Heights to Chicago’s Kenwood neighborhood, from the purchase of Manhattan to the defeat of California’s Proposition 10. Urban Omnibus.
Photo: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT News
MIT Corporation members boost plan to relocate School of Architecture and Planning into historic building.
The proposed renovation of the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse as a new location for the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) is one step closer to becoming a reality thanks to a significant gift from Carmen ’78 and John ’77 Thain, both members of the MIT Corporation.
Left to right: BethAnne McLaughlin, Tarana Burke, and Sherry Marts have won the 2018 MIT Media Lab Disobedience Award.
Three leaders of the #MeToo and #MeTooSTEM movements are recognized.
Michael Rakowitz SM ’98.
Crafting ‘ghosts’ from Iraq’s lost culture
The BBC follows artist and ACT alum Michael Rakowitz SM ’98 in Chicago, as he and his team create colorful likenesses of destroyed ancient Assyrian wall reliefs. In the studio.
Photo: Madcoverboy/Wikimedia Commons.
Worldwide honors for 2019 span three MIT schools.
MIT has taken the top spot in the Business and Economics subject category in the 2019 Times Higher Education World University Rankings and, for the second year in a row, the No. 2 spot worldwide for Arts and Humanities.
Singer Omar Ebrahim as Arnold Schoenberg as Humphrey Bogart, from Schoenberg in Hollywood. Credit: Peter Torpey.
New work by Tod Machover of the Media Lab's Opera of the Future group examines ideas of heritage, politics, and artistic integrity.
Image courtesy of the researchers, edited by MIT News.
Simple, scalable wireless system uses the RFID tags on billions of products to sense contamination.
MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a wireless system that leverages the cheap RFID tags already on hundreds of billions of products to sense potential food contamination — with no hardware modifications needed. With the simple, scalable system, the researchers hope to bring food-safety detection to the general public.
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning announces the call for applications for the Bill Mitchell ++ Fund.
Friends and colleagues of the late William J. Mitchell, dean of SA+P from 1992-2003, have established a fund in his honor to be used to support student travel and research projects that embody Mitchell’s spirit of creativity, playfulness, and rigor, particularly those that connect different disciplines in novel ways.
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning announces the call for applications for the Harold Horowitz (1951) Student Research Fund.
Established in 1999 through the generosity of alumnus Harold Horowitz AR ’51, the fund will be awarded to one or more students, graduate or undergraduate, enrolled in a degree program in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Awards will range from $1,000 to $4,000.
The Fund has three primary objectives:
• to support research assistantships and student-initiated research projects
Photo: Kris Graves, courtesy of Ekene Ijeoma.
The new media arts and sciences faculty member merges social justice with design, architecture, music, performance, and technology.
Alumni books podcast: “Claiming the State”
Gabrielle Kruks-Wisner MCP '06, PhD '13, assistant professor at University of Virginia and author of “Claiming the State: Active Citizenship and Social Welfare in Rural India” (Cambridge University Press, 2018) discusses her research in an interview with Slice of MIT.
Researchers (left to right), Joseph Jacobson, Pranam Chatterjee, and Noah Jakimo. Image: Melanie Gonick
Enzyme can target almost half of the genome’s “ZIP codes” and could enable editing of many more disease-specific mutations.
The genome editing system CRISPR has become a hugely important tool in medical research, and could ultimately have a significant impact in fields such as agriculture, bioenergy, and food security.
Massive global survey reveals ethics preferences and regional differences.
A massive new survey developed by MIT researchers reveals some distinct global preferences concerning the ethics of autonomous vehicles, as well as some regional variations in those preferences.
“My job is to be critical and deep as an art historian, and not as a politician,” says PhD student Nisa Ari.
Photo by Michael Falco courtesy of the City of New York: NYC Parks, Freshkills Park, and the Department of Sanitation.
Documenting the world's largest landfill-to-park project
Architecture alumna Mariel Villere SM '13 is part of the Freshkills Park team organizing “Capturing Change,” a photography series documenting the world’s largest landfill-to-park project. On view at the Architectural League of NY from October 24, 2018 through January 25, 2019. Learn more.
Image credit: Florida, US (Matthew Niederhauser and John Fitzgerald).
The MIT School of Architecture and Planning will offer a new concentration to support collaborative doctoral-level studies in Advanced Urbanism, with applications being accepted in fall 2018.
Image: Harry G. Traver / Wikimedia Commons
New MIT-hosted database is open to both examiners and the wider public, and seeks to reduce the number of wrongly-issued patents.
Imagine you have invented a device that could save millions of lives around the world. But instead of profiting from the invention yourself, you decide to share the design online, to allow others to make their own version at low cost.
L-R: David Sun Kong, Kade Crockford, and Jaylen Brown. Credit: Joy Buolamwini.
Hoops, tech, and justice
Polymath and rising NBA star Jaylen Brown discusses innovation, creativity, the intersection of basketball and culture, social justice, reflections on his career ahead, and his interests both on and off the court with Media Lab’s David Sun Kong '01, SM '04, PD '08, PhD '08 and Director’s Fellow Kade Crockford. Learn more and watch video.
Co-curators of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Architecture alumna Ann Lui SM ’15 (far right) and Mimi Zeiger (second from left).
Approaching Citizenship
Co-curators of the U.S. Pavilion at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale, Architecture alumna Ann Lui SM ’15 and Mimi Zeiger will give insight into the curatorial practices and research which led to Dimensions of Citizenship. Part of the Fall 2018 Experiments in Pedagogy: Agit Arch Experiments, organized by Architecture's Ana Miljacki. Attend the presentation on Friday, October 12, 6 PM in 7-429.
Image: Maciek Jasik
Cryptography techniques to screen synthetic DNA could help prevent the creation of dangerous pathogens, argues Professor Kevin Esvelt.
Opening doors
ACT Consulting Curator and SA+P alumna Laura Knott SM ’87 discusses her curatorial practice and the origins of her latest exhibition project Joan Jonas: Sources and Methods. Read the interview.
Ann M. Beha FAIA, principal of Ann Beha Architects. Recipient of the BSA Award of Honor.
BSA Award of Honor
Architecture alumna Ann M. Beha MArch ’75 received the BSA Award of Honor for her uncommonly profound lifetime contributions to the profession and to the Boston Society of Architects. Learn more about Beha’s work.
Piracy and terror
A new book from DUSP alum Eric Jay Dolin, PhD ’95 delves into the history of piracy in America. Read more at Technology Review and visit his events page for a list of upcoming book events.
2018 Mohamed Makiya Prize for Architecture
Soundings: Learn about DesignX
On Thursdays this September, hear about SA+P's DesignX accelerator and discuss your own venture ideas over dinner and drinks. Open to SA+P alumni and members of the MIT community. Learn more.
Image: Bryce Vickmark
Historian, curator, and designer studies architects and their quest to make a better world.
Inside Ana Miljacki’s office in MIT’s Department of Architecture, a sign hangs on the wall bearing a wry message:
UTOPIA IS HERE
JUST FOR TODAY
Kara Elliott-Ortega is the city's new arts and culture chief. (Courtesy)
DUSP alumna named Boston's new Chief Of Arts And Culture
John de Montchaux. Image courtesy of the School of Architecture and Planning.
Architect and planner remembered as a man who brought people together through a combination of wisdom, optimism, and charm.
Jean Pierre de Monchaux, an idealistic and optimistic planner and architect who served as dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning from 1981 to 1992, passed away on April 30, after living with Parkinson’s disease for 20 years. He was 81.
PhD student Paloma Gonzalez, Associate Professor Takehiko Nagakura, and two MIT graduate students. Photo courtesy of MISTI.
What if we could immerse ourselves in this UNESCO World Heritage Site through virtual reality or use augmented reality to interact with its 3-D site map?
Postdoc Rui Qing and Principal Research Scientist Shuguang Zhang. Image: Jun Ni.
By making hydrophobic sections water-soluble, researchers at the Center for Bits and Atoms hope to learn more about protein structures.
Buffalo Bayou Park, SWA Group and Page, 2015. Image: Jonnu Singleton/SWA Group.
Petrourbanism: Initial notes on Houston after theory
Almost a year after Hurricane Harvey, Architecture alum Michael Kubo PhD '17 explores Houston’s current urban transformations, sharing examples of hope for a new, more expansive urbanism for the city. The Architects Newspaper.
This fall, SA+P is expanding its wellness program to include more free classes sponsored by Dean Hashim Sarkis. SA+P will offer additional sessions of "Yoga and Mindfulness" as well as a 4-week "Koru Mindfulness" workshop to our School community.
MONDAYS
Yoga & Mindfulness: 12:30pm - 1:30pm - 9-450
Space is limited
http://signup.mit.edu/1245923679
Image: Christine Daniloff/MIT
In a novel system developed by MIT researchers, underwater sonar signals cause vibrations that can be decoded by an airborne receiver.
MIT researchers have taken a step toward solving a longstanding challenge with wireless communication: direct data transmission between underwater and airborne devices.
Photo: Judith M. Daniels
Corporations and nonprofits are applying the popular MIT online tool to shape policy and set wages.
Priyanka Shah SMArchS, MCP '08 has received the 2017 Lawrence B. Anderson Award.
Priyanka Shah wins Lawrence B. Anderson Award
Architecture and DUSP alumna Priyanka Shah SMArchS, MCP '08 has received the 2017 Lawrence B. Anderson Award for her research proposal, "The Architecture of the Deal: Excavating forces behind architectural form in the largest urban projects in New York and Paris.” The award will support Shah’s site-specific research. Learn more.
Project image, "The Architecture of the Deal: Excavating forces behind architectural form in the largest urban projects in New York and Paris.” Courtesy Priyanka Shah SMArchS, MCP '08.
Priyanka Shah SMArchS, MCP '08 has received the 2017 Lawrence B. Anderson Award for her research proposal, "The Architecture of the Deal: Excavating forces behind architectural form in the largest urban projects in New York and Paris.” The award will support Shah’s investigation of local development deals, zoning regulations, financing mechanisms, and the difference between welfare and pro-market governance to locate relationships between these drivers and the resulting architecture of two neighborhoods: Hudson Yards and Clichy Batignolles.
A design plan for Charlesgate Park. Courtesy Landing Studio.
New life for an Olmsted gem at Charlesgate
Could we be more faithful to Olmsted's vision of green, public space in Boston? The Landing Studio, the practice of Architecture alumna Marie Law Adams MArch ’04 has plans to improve green infrastructure, aid riparian systems, and provide community spaces. The Boston Globe.
Courtesy of the researchers.
Technique can capture a scene at multiple depths with one shutter click — no zoom lens needed.
MIT researchers have developed novel photography optics that capture images based on the timing of reflecting light inside the optics, instead of the traditional approach that relies on the arrangement of optical components. These new principles, the researchers say, open doors to new capabilities for time- or depth-sensitive cameras, which are not possible with conventional photography optics.
Machine-learning system determines the fewest, smallest doses that could still shrink brain tumors.
MIT researchers are employing novel machine-learning techniques to improve the quality of life for patients by reducing toxic chemotherapy and radiotherapy dosing for glioblastoma, the most aggressive form of brain cancer.
View of the Longhouse Northwest Elevation. Image: MIT Mass Timber Design
MIT class designs a prototype building to demonstrate that even huge buildings can be built primarily with wood.
The construction and operation of all kinds of buildings uses vast amounts of energy and natural resources. Researchers around the world have therefore been seeking ways to make buildings more efficient and less dependent on emissions-intensive materials.
Personalized machine-learning models capture subtle variations in facial expressions to better gauge how we feel.
MIT Media Lab researchers have developed a machine-learning model that takes computers a step closer to interpreting our emotions as naturally as humans do.
Image: Ian MacLellan
Doctoral student Parrish Bergquist investigates how politics affects environmental decision-making.
With an affinity for environmental issues and a knack for analysis, MIT doctoral student Parrish Bergquist aims to clarify the ways in which changing political landscapes influence environmental policy outcomes.
Image: Nick Philip.
MIT Media Lab and MIT Press announce winners of the Journal of Design and Science essay competition.
Proptalk: 5Q with Steve Weikal
DUSP alum Steve Weikal MCP '08, SM '08, head of Industry Relations at CRE talks to Headquarters Optimized about the real estate trends he’s watching for such as convergence, intelligence, and fracking. HqO.
Self-Assembly Lab, MIT + Christophe Guberan, "Liquid to Air: Pneumatic Objects."
Liquid to Air: Pneumatic Objects
An atmospheric scene, called "Forest," with video from thesilentwatcher.com, is part of the Mediated Atmospheres project by Nan Zhao. Image courtesy of Nan Zhao.
Project out of the MIT Media Lab uses biosensors and machine learning to optimize the sensory experience in individual work environments.
The atmosphere of a given space — the light, sounds, and sensorial qualities that make it distinct from other spaces — has a marked, quantifiable effect on the experiences of the people who inhabit those spaces. Mood, behavior, creativity, sleep, and health are all directly impacted by one’s immediate surroundings.
A rendering of Los Angeles depicts green space and wetlands as envisioned by the MIT team. Image: Jonah Susskind
LCAU's interdisciplinary team of engineers, urban planners and landscape architects presents a solution for urban storm flooding.
Engineered green spaces can capture and purify stormwater while delivering ecosystem and recreational benefits, MIT researchers report.
Photo: Stuart Darsch
An analysis from Architecture’s Les Norford and MIT researchers points the way to energy-efficient systems that take a location-specific approach to cooling and dehumidifying places where people live and work.
150 Years of Course IV
This June, over 140 alumni from class years ranging from 1955 to 2018 gathered at the New Museum to celebrate the upcoming 150th anniversary of architecture education at MIT. Read a recap of the event, co-organized with MITArchA and MIT Club of New York.
Image: Bryce Vickmark
Siqi Zheng studies the economics of China’s urban explosion.
In recent decades, China has built and expanded its cities on a scale never seen before in human history. Given the vast social, economic, and environmental changes that have resulted, it is tempting to say that contemporary China has been a laboratory of urbanization.
Dennis Frenchman, the Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Design and Planning. Photo by Bryce Vickmark.
Architect and urban designer brings to the role decades of global expertise on the transformation of cities
Dennis Frenchman, the Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Design and Planning in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), has been named the new faculty director of the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE). He will assume the role on July 1.
Image: MIT Media Lab
Machine learning network offers personalized estimates of children’s behavior.
Children with autism spectrum conditions often have trouble recognizing the emotional states of people around them — distinguishing a happy face from a fearful face, for instance. To remedy this, some therapists use a kid-friendly robot to demonstrate those emotions and to engage the children in imitating the emotions and responding to them in appropriate ways.
Photo: Kelley Travers/MIT Energy Initiative
Bruno Verdini, executive director of the MIT-Harvard Mexico Negotiation Program, discusses his award-winning research on negotiating for mutual gains.
Photo: Emily Dahl/MITEI
Through research on U.S. - Mexico hydrocarbon drilling rights negotiation, Bruno Verdini provides insights on how to resolve conflicts through proactive collaboration.
Our Cup: Watch the 2018 Men’s World Cup with real fans
Developed by MIT Center for Civic Media researcher and MIT Media Lab alum Rahul Bhargava SM ’02, "Our Cup" suggests which Fifa Worldcup 2018 games you might like to watch, based on the people who live in your neighborhood: ourcup.info
Image courtesy of the MIT D-Lab.
CITE and D-Lab study finds evaporative devices show promise for helping small-scale farmers, market vendors, and families store and preserve vegetables.
Credit: Courtesy Tom Harris/The Art Institute of Chicago/The University of Chicago.
US architects reflect on Trumpism at the Venice Biennale
Architecture alumna Ann Lui SM ’15, co-curator of "Dimensions of Citizenship,” the US pavilion exhibition at this year’s Venice Biennale of Architecture talks to CNN about how the exhibition addresses questions of belonging that have emerged in the wake of the inauguration, providing a framework for discussion and moving forward.
Artist and professor emerita Joan Jonas at MIT in 2014. Photo: L. Barry Hetherington
Artist and scholar cited for her “immeasurable impact” in pioneering the integration of performance art and new media.
Joan Jonas, professor emerita in the MIT Program in Art, Culture and Technology, is one of three individuals honored with the 2018 Kyoto Prize.
L-R: Meejin Yoon, Eran Ben-Joseph, and SA+P Dean Hashim Sarkis. Photo: Bryce Vickmark.
Historic building would create “design hub” for MIT, with benefits for surrounding community.
MIT has identified the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse as a potential new location for the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P). The proposed move would let the Institute create a new hub for design research and education, allow the school to expand its full range of activities, and open new spaces for public use.
University of Puerto Rico students visiting MIT this spring were (l-r): Gabriel Colon-Reyes, Angel Astacio-Echevarria, Swanny Lamboy Rodriguez, Raul Mojica Soto-Albors, and Jean Carlos Vega-Diaz.
“Since my time at MIT, I have become passionate about being a pioneer in Puerto Rico who can integrate communities into post-disaster reconstruction,” Jean Carlos Vega-Diaz is one of five Puerto Rican undergraduates invited to take classes at MIT this spring in the wake of the devastating 2017 hurricane. After he graduates this summer, Vega-Diaz will return to the Urban Risk Lab, where he's been working this semester, as a research scientist for a year, while also working on a design portfolio for his graduate school application.
Steve Weikal keynotes at the 2018 PropTech LatAm summit
Steve Weikal keynotes at the 2018 PropTech LatAm summit
350+ attendees from 10 countries in Latin America met at the PropTech LatAm Summit 2018, which brought together for the first time in Chile the leaders and disruptors of the Real Estate industry. LinkedIn.
Photo: John Phelan
Interdisciplinary undergraduate program combines urban planning and computer science.
Image: courtesy of the researchers
New technology could enable remote control of drug delivery, sensing, and other medical applications.
MIT researchers, working with scientists from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, have developed a new way to power and communicate with devices implanted deep within the human body. Such devices could be used to deliver drugs, monitor conditions inside the body, or treat disease by stimulating the brain with electricity or light.
Photo: AboveSummit with Christopher Harting
Ranked at the top for the seventh straight year, the Institute also places first in 12 of 48 disciplines.
For the seventh year in a row MIT has topped the QS World University Rankings, which were announced today.
Architecture alumna Sharon Lee MArch '81, MCP '81 thinks small to address Seattle’s growing homelessness crisis.
Brazilian pavilion receives press recognition
Jordan's new Prime Minister Omar al-Razzaz
DUSP alum Omar al-Razzaz MCP ’87 was appointed the new Prime minister of Jordan. Al-Razzaz is a member of the SPURS international advisory board. He will deliver a keynote the SPURS 50th anniversary this fall. Reuters.
MIT startup teams meet with Chinese industry partners at the China Future City Lab demo day. Photo: Lighten Studio
Ten teams will collaborate with local partners, pilot solutions to urban challenges.
Tyler Clites is a $15,000 Lemelson-MIT "Cure it" graduate winner for his novel surgical technique for limb amputation. Photo: Cameron Taylor
Award honors top collegiate inventors in the United States.
Image: MIT Media Lab/Biomechatronics group. Original artwork by Stephanie Ku.
New study describes first human implementation of novel approach to limb amputation.
Humans can accurately sense the position, speed, and torque of their limbs, even with their eyes shut. This sense, known as proprioception, allows humans to precisely control their body movements.
Despite significant improvements to prosthetic devices in recent years, researchers have been unable to provide this essential sensation to people with artificial limbs, limiting their ability to accurately control their movements.
Anne Whiston Spirn (left), the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Landscape Architecture and Planning. Neri Oxman (right), the Sony Corporation Career Development Professor.
School of Architecture and Planning professors receive national recognition for excellence, innovation, and impact through design.
Two School of Architecture and Planning professors are among 10 honorees for the 2018 National Design Awards from Cooper Hewitt, the Smithsonian Design Museum. The awards recognize excellence, innovation, and public impact in design across multiple categories.
Media Lab alumnus David Moinina Sengeh SM '12, PhD '16
Why Sierra Leone appointed a 31-year old MIT PhD as its first chief innovation officer
Discover why Media Lab alumnus David Moinina Sengeh SM '12, PhD '16 is uniquely equipped to lead Sierra Leone’s Directorate of Science, Technology, and Innovation as the country’s first chief innovation officer. Quartz.
Ann Lui (left) is co-curator of the U.S. Pavilion and Gabriel Kozlowski is co-curator of the Brazilian Pavilion at the 16th Venice Architecture Biennale.
Exhibitions tackle global questions with research-based approaches.
The 2018 MIT Media Lab Director's Fellows: (top row, l-r) Jamira Burley, Ben Draper, Ifeoma Fafunwa, Liz George, Allegra Libonati; (bottom row, l-r) Giorgia Lupi, Margarita Mora, Amanda Nguyen, Julia Reda, Harper Reed.
New cohort brings social, scientific, and creative experience to extend the lab’s reach beyond academia.
A number of SA+P professors and researchers are offering short courses and digital programs through MIT Professional Education.
Learn more about SA+P faculty-led courses which include:
Advances in Imaging: VR-AR, Machine Learning, and Self-Driving Cars
Ramesh Raskar, MIT Media Lab
Researchers design 3-D-printed, driverless boats that can provide transport and self-assemble into other floating structures.
The future of transportation in waterway-rich cities such as Amsterdam, Bangkok, and Venice — where canals run alongside and under bustling streets and bridges — may include autonomous boats that ferry goods and people, helping clear up road congestion.
Ed Boyden and Feng Zhang have been named HHMI investigators. Photos: Justin Knight.
Media Lab's Boyden is among 19 top scientists selected from across the nation.
Courtesy of the researchers
New dispatching approach could cut the number of cars on the road while meeting rider demand
The rise of self-driving cars is set to dramatically alter the way we move around cities in the future.
In particular, private car ownership is expected to shift toward shared mobility services, with vehicle fleet operators offering on-demand transportation. This should help to reduce traffic in urban areas and cut greenhouse gas emissions.
"Guizhou Project" from HTC alumna Catherine McMahon with ATLAS. Part of the Venice Biennale Collateral exhibition, "Across Chinese Cities."
ACT alum awarded Herb Albert Award in the Arts
Image: from left to right, Marion Cunningham, Marissa Marcoux, Harriette Crawford.
SA+P recognizes staff that have made exceptional contributions to their academic units, the school, and the Institute.
On Thursday, May 17th, three exceptional staff members of the MIT community were honored with Infinite Mile Awards. The awards were presented at a celebratory event to DUSP’s Harriette Crawford; ACT’s Marion Cunningham; and Media Lab’s Marissa Marcoux.
Spring books on architecture and design from Metropolis
An anthology of essays centered around New York City, What Goes Up: The Right and Wrongs to the City from Architecture alum Michael Sorkin MArch ’84, tops the list of top picks. Metropolis.
Photo: Paul Rivenberg
An interdepartmental collaboration brings out the music of nuclear fusion.
It could be the background soundtrack for a science fiction movie. Some sounds bubble up like prehistoric chirps from primordial ooze. Others whirl up and down octaves, quickly joined by a progressive rattling that slinks across the sound landscape.
Coryn Kempster receives the 2018 Architectural League Prize
So much more than a swing set: Coryn Kempster receives the 2018 Architectural League Prize
In a scene from her new film, Marisa Morán Jahn SM ’07 stands in front of a group of caregivers, allies, and friends at the Perez Art Museum in Miami. She has arrived in her 60-year-old station wagon, the colorful CareForce One, after a drive down the East Coast learning from caregivers, care receivers, policy wonks, and historians about the state of caregiving in America.
Photo: Catherine D'Ignazio
Make the Breast Pump Not Suck hackathon at the Media Lab emphasizes social and political issues over engineering.
DUSP's Jonny Sun jokes on late-night TV about his alien persona and the unique challenges of working on a PhD while creating a graphic novel.
Before code, beyond speech
Architecture alumna Lucy Liu SMArchS ’17 writes on drawing as an optimist form of communications. Are.na.
Faculty, students, alumni contribute as curators and exhibitors at the world’s premiere forum for architecture and design.
MIT faculty, students, and alumni will make significant contributions as exhibitors and curators at the 2018 Venice Architecture Biennale. Considered one of the foremost global forums for architecture and the built environment and drawing hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world, the Architecture Biennale takes place every two years in Venice, Italy.
Photo: Lauren McKown/MIT D-Lab.
The Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation teams up with the Technology Exchange Lab to produce a toolkit for technology evaluation in global development.
MIT’s Committed to Caring Award selects third slate of dedicated professors.
Courtesy of Amino Labs.
Alumna’s mini-lab kits include all necessary tools and materials for anyone to start engineering microbes.
MIT Media Lab spinout Amino Labs aims to bring synthetic biology to the world, with an all-in-one mini-lab kit that can be used in labs and classrooms, and even right at home.
Photo: Tata Center.
The MIT Tata Center for Technology and Design recently announced eight new projects that will be supported through its annual seed fund. Projects from Architecture’s Leslie Norford and DUSP’s David Hsu were among those selected for their potential impact on the developing world.
Ambitious new piece in his “City Symphony” series features the birthplace of American democracy.
Robert Schwartz; Panther Hollow Project by Harrison & Abramovitz, architect; New York, NY, ca. 1964. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University Architecture Archives. Michael Kubo with Rami el Samahy and Chris Grimley.
The Graham Foundation has announced over $530,000 in new grants to individuals around the world that engage original ideas that advance our understanding of the designed environment. Six of this year's 74 funded projects were from members of the SA+P community including: PhD candidate Michael Kubo (HTC); Can Bilsel SMarchS ’96 and Juliana Maxim PhD ’06 (HTC); Mimi Hoang ’93 (Architecture), with Eric Bunge; Gary Van Zante, MIT Museum; Ana María León PhD ’15; and Sara Zewde MCP ’10.
The SPURS Fellows of 1969-1970 pose for a class photo. Photo courtesy of SPURS.
SPURS Fellows serve as agents of change in international development.
Image: Lorrie Lejeune/MIT.
Electrodes on the face and jaw pick up otherwise undetectable neuromuscular signals triggered by internal verbalizations.
MIT researchers have developed a computer interface that can transcribe words that the user verbalizes internally but does not actually speak aloud.
The Plugin House exhibition will be at Harvard Yard during the Arts First Festival from April 26 - 29 and at Boston City Hall Plaza from May 4 - 13.
The Plugin House initiative
Easy to assemble, the Plugin House from Architecture alum James Shen SM ‘07 demonstrates the possibilities of smaller and sustainable living, providing opportunities for infill of vacant areas and additions in backyards to address the housing crisis. A prototype will be exhibited at Harvard Yard during the Arts First Festival, April 26-29 and at Boston City Hall Plaza, May 4-13.
NOODLE SOUP is the winning 2018 Ragdale Ring design.
NOODLE SOUP is the winning 2018 Ragdale Ring design
From Columbus, Ohio-based design team of Galo Cañizares Proaño SMarchS ’14 and Stephanie Sang Delgado NOODLE SOUP aims to empower the individual user to be engaged as a performer blending whimsy, playfulness and interaction into a transformable constructed landscape of fixed structures and soft, linear, pliable pieces of furniture. Archinect.
Lauren Kras, a wildlife bioligist, stood on a huge rock looming over the sand plain at the newly opened Mass Audubon's Tidmarsh Wildlife Sanctuary. Photo: John Tlumacki/Globe Staff
Garment factories, palm oil suppliers mapped for end-to-end traceability
Media Lab spinoff Sourcemap from alumnus Leonardo Bonanni MArch '03, SM '05 (MAS), PD '10, PhD '10 (MAS) is taking on the challenge of tracking supply chains for clothing and palm oil, two of the world's most difficult-to-track industries. Learn more.
Image courtesy of Thasos Group.
Startup’s platform crunches anonymized smartphone GPS data to understand how people shop, work, and live.
Carrying your smartphone around everywhere has become a way of life. In doing so, you produce a surprising amount of data about your role in the economy — where you shop, work, travel, and generally hang out.
Guy Satat, a graduate student in the MIT Media Lab, who led the new study. Image: Melanie Gonick/MIT.
Computational photography could solve a problem that bedevils self-driving cars.
MIT researchers have developed a system that can produce images of objects shrouded by fog so thick that human vision can’t penetrate it. It can also gauge the objects’ distance.
Photo: Ken Richardson.
Earlier this month, MIT women came together for a weekend of inspirational talks, story sharing, and advice, focused around themes of collaboration and action. Among the 75 alumnae who spoke at the inaugural MIT Women’s unConference were several from SA+P including Ann Beha MArch ’75; Mary Jane Daly MCP ’83; Catherine D'Ignazio SM '14 MAS; Cristina Dolan SM '94 MAS; Judith Donath SM '86, PhD '97 (SMarchS ’86, SM ’82 MAS, PhD ’97 MAS); Barbara Fields MCP ’85; Soyoung Kang '96 (ARCH); Paige Parsons '90 (ARCH); and Lynne Sagalyn PhD '80 DUSP.
DermalAbyss. Photo: Xin LIU, Katia Vega.
The Dermal Abyss: When Tattoos meet Biotechnology honored at SXSW
Congrats to Media Lab alumnae Katia Vega PD ’15 and Xin Liu SM ’17 (MAS), whose project DermalAbyss won the "SciFi No Longer” award at SXSW, honoring the coolest scientific achievement or discovery that before 2017 was only possible in science fiction.
As tuition expenses rise across the nation, graduates of the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning bear the burden of increasing student loans in order to make meaningful and lasting contributions to society through their chosen professions. The Excellence in Public Service Awards recognize outstanding public service achievements by DUSP graduates. These awards aim to encourage and inspire the pursuit of public service careers, providing a financial award of up to $10,000 to offset debt incurred by pursuing their graduate degree at MIT.
Courtesy of Skydio.
Alumni’s video-capturing drone tracks moving subjects while freely navigating any environment.
If you’re a rock climber, hiker, runner, dancer, or anyone who likes recording themselves while in motion, a personal drone companion can now do all the filming for you — completely autonomously.
Skydio, a San Francisco-based startup founded by three MIT alumni, is commercializing an autonomous video-capturing drone — dubbed by some as the “selfie drone” — that tracks and films a subject, while freely navigating any environment.
Jase Wilson.
What happens when citizens are empowered to crowdfund their cities?
Jase Wilson MCP '08 is innovating a new approach to investing in municipal bonds through his start-up, Neighborly. Neighborly democratizes and simplifies the investment process, so individual investors can finance critical public projects. OZY.
The American Institute of Certified Planners has awarded a team of 16 graduate students from the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) an AICP Student Project Award. The annual awards recognize outstanding class projects or papers that advance the field of planning. Winners will be recognized at the 2018 National Planning Convention in New Orleans.
Landscape architect Sven-Ingvar Andersson in his garden, Marnas. Photo courtesy Sven-Ingvar Andersson
With a new multimedia website, landscape architecture professor Anne Whiston Spirn makes a secret garden public and explores how ideas create form.
Photo: Melanie Gonick/MIT
Research project finds humans, not bots, are primarily responsible for spread of misleading information.
A new study by three MIT scholars has found that false news spreads more rapidly on the social network Twitter than real news does — and by a substantial margin.
Jasmine Kwak, MArch 2015, Living Large
QS World University Rankings place MIT No. 1 in 12 of 48 subject areas
For the fourth year in a row, MIT has been named the top university in the world for “Architecture/Built Environment” in the subject rankings from QS World University Rankings for 2018. In “Art and Design,” the Institute ranked No. 4 globally.
Y. Eva Tan (left) and McGovern investigator Edward Boyden (right). Photo: Justin Knight
Neuroengineering leader appointed to new professorship at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research.
Photo: Nathan Keay.
NewCity’s Designer of the Moment
"Even in the most seemingly mundane or boring task of capital-A architectural practice, say, drawing a wall section detail, there’s politics, economy, ecology." Architecture alumna Ann Lui SMArchS HTC '15 has been named Designer of the Moment. Read a profile at Newcity.
J. Phillip Thompson, MIT associate professor of urban studies and planning. Photo: Tom Gearty
Appointment recognizes Thompson's expertise in urban politics and coalition building.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray have appointed J. Phillip Thompson, associate professor of urban studies and planning at MIT, as deputy mayor for strategic policy initiatives for New York City.
Image: Melanie Gonick/MIT.
An Institute-wide effort including DUSP's Jason Jackson and MIT Media Lab's Iyad Rahwan will study the evolution of jobs in an age of technological advancement.
Today MIT launched its Task Force on the Work of the Future, an Institute-wide effort to understand and shape the evolution of jobs during an age of innovation.
“The Wind Egg,” Haseeb Ahmed SMVisS ’10.
Banking on Blockchain for Predictive Analytics
MIT Media Lab’s Sandy Pentland PhD ’82 talks social physics and how his company Endor is using blockchain technology in their next phase to predict the future. Forbes.
Image: Courtesy of the researchers.
Fluorescent sensor allows imaging of neurons' electrical communications, without electrodes.
Neurons in the brain communicate via rapid electrical impulses that allow the brain to coordinate behavior, sensation, thoughts, and emotion. Scientists who want to study this electrical activity usually measure these signals with electrodes inserted into the brain, a task that is notoriously difficult and time-consuming.
A sample of materials in the CAVS Special Collection. Photo: Laura Chichisan.
The collection features groundbreaking projects from pioneers working at the intersection of art, science, and technology.
Image: MIT Black History Project.
Digital archive features never-before-published image of MIT's first black woman student.
The MIT Black History Project has launched a new website that documents evidence of the role and experience of the black community at MIT since the Institute opened its doors in 1865.
Image courtesy of the Rose Art Museum, Brandeis University; Hays Acquisition Fund © Nam June Paik Estate.
“Before Projection: Video Sculpture 1974-1995”
A new MIT exhibition focuses on a body of largely overlooked monitor-based sculptures and includes work by alumni artist-fellows Ernst Caramelle, Muntadas, and Nam June Paik. On view at the MIT List Visual Arts Center through April 15. MIT News.
A depiction of the Future Heritage Lab planned facility in the Al Azraq refugee camp, Jordan. Image courtesy of the Future Heritage Lab
Artistic collaboration between MIT, German-Jordanian University is designed to reduce trauma for refugees in the Al Azraq Camp in Jordan.
Image: Jake Belcher
MIT senior Yazmin Guzman wants to change the educational landscape to provide opportunities to all K-12 students.
With one foot in a dual bachelor’s and master’s program in urban studies and the other in an array of educational and community outreach programs, Yazmin Guzman applies the same careful coordination she perfected as a Mexican folkloric dancer to her life at MIT.
Photo: jo.sau/Wikimedia Commons CC-BY
The new connector helps faculty, students, and alumni launch startups in China.
A new collaboration between MIT and Tsinghua University will help startup teams from both institutions launch ventures to solve urban challenges in China.
Photo: Bryce Vickmark
Examination of facial-analysis software shows error rate of 0.8 percent for light-skinned men, 34.7 percent for dark-skinned women.
Three commercially released facial-analysis programs from major technology companies demonstrate both skin-type and gender biases, according to a new paper researchers from MIT and Stanford University will present later this month at the Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency.
Lawrence Bacow (Photo: Stephanie Mitchell/Harvard University)
Lawrence Bacow ’72, professor emeritus in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), has been named the next president of Harvard University.
Bacow, who received an undergraduate degree in economics from MIT, began his academic career when he joined the DUSP faculty in 1977. Bacow left MIT in 2001 to become the president of Tufts University, but has remained on the SA+P faculty as professor emeritus. Read a full MIT News story on his appointment to Harvard and career at MIT.
Linda Pizzuti Henry. Photo: Matt Stone
Linda Pizzuti Henry acquires shares of the Boston Red Sox
Pizzuti SMarchS ’05 becomes first woman to own part of Sox since death of Jeanne Yawkey. Boston Herald.
2018 Young Architects Award Recipient
Photo: Jake Belcher
In MIT talk, prominent philosopher urges self-reflection to keep academic institutions vital and fair.
How can universities be a force for social good in turbulent times? At an MIT talk on Wednesday evening, the prominent philosopher Cornel West had a clear answer: painful self-reflection.
The Museum of Tort Law.
How do lawsuits grow our understanding of the risks and harms of new technologies?
Media Lab alumnus Nathan Matias SM '13, PhD '17 takes us on a tour of the American Museum of Tort Law, an impressive collection of horrifyingly irresponsible research and design, and entreats engineers and designers to acquaint themselves with tort law. Medium.
Courtesy of Ori
Smart furniture transforms spaces in tiny apartments into bedrooms, work spaces, or closets.
Imagine living in a cramped studio apartment in a large city — but being able to summon your bed or closet through a mobile app, call forth your desk using voice command, or have everything retract at the push of a button.
ACT alum Seth Riskin SM ’89 explores the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS) extraordinary history.
I Am A Man: A VR Civil Rights app
This interactive experience, set to historical events, from Architecture alum Derek Ham PhD ’15 opens at the National Civil Rights Museum on April 4, 2018. Look for a free download of the app this spring at Oculus. Learn more.
Photo: Steve Boxall/ZERO-G
The Media Lab Space Exploration Initiative shares results and next steps from its first zero gravity research mission.
What happens when 20 researchers conduct 14 projects from entirely disparate fields of research over the course of 90 minutes — while floating in zero gravity? Thrills, learning, magic — and results.
Dagdeviren (center) developed the device while working as a postdoc in the labs of Graybiel (left), Cima (right), and Langer (far left). Image: M. Scott Brauer
The Miniaturized Neural Drug Delivery System, MiNDS from MIT Media Lab’s Conformable Decoders group could be used to treat neurological disorders that affect specific brain regions.
Image courtesy Michael Maltzan Architecture.
As construction begins on the next-generation Vassar Street home for MIT undergraduates, lead designer and Architecture lecturer Michael Maltzan shares his aspirations for the building.
Image: Chelsea Turner/MIT.
AI platform allows chatbots to draw on robust language database to better navigate human conversation.
Before coming to MIT, Jeff Orkin SM ’07, PhD ’13 spent a decade building advanced, critically acclaimed artificial intelligence (AI) for video games.
Jill Magid performing Awaiting Alexander Calder, September 28, 2017 at the Whitney Museum of American Art. COURTESY CALDER FOUNDATION. PHOTO BY PAULA COURT
ACT alumna wins biannual $50,000 Calder Prize
Jill Magid SM ’00, the narrative-oriented conceptual artist based in Brooklyn, New York, has won the seventh edition of the Calder Prize, a grant issued biannually to a living artist by the Calder Foundation. Art News.
Using electric fields to manipulate droplets on a surface could enable high-volume, low-cost biology experiments.
MIT researchers have developed hardware that uses electric fields to move droplets of chemical or biological solutions around a surface, mixing them in ways that could be used to test thousands of reactions in parallel.
DUSP alumna Chrystal Kornegay. Photo: Jonathan Wiggs/Globe Staff/File 2015.
DUSP alumna appointed New MassHousing chief
Chrystal Kornegay MCP '97 has been tapped as the new Chief of MassHousing. Kornegay will be the first woman and first person of color to lead the billion-dollar, quasi-public agency that drives investment in affordable housing across the state. The Boston Globe.
Courtesy MIT Self-Assembly Lab.
A little hope for a homeless solution
Tiny MicroPad housing units from CRE alum Patrick Kennedy MSRED ’86 could provide a solution for homelessness. San Francisco Chronicle.
Scaling Up Impact in the Face of Crises
Through Nawaya Network, Zeina Saab MCP '09 is helping Lebanese and refugee young adults build income. Slice of MIT.
MIT professor’s new book calls for a more pluralistic, democratic vision of the city.
“The city is a people’s art, a shared experience,” a Philadelphia architect and planner named Edmund Bacon once wrote, adding that any urban designer’s job was to “conceive an idea, implant it, and nurture its growth in the collective minds of the community.”
New Real Estate Price Dynamics Research Platform from the MIT Center for Real Estate offers predictive power to investors.
Computational method improves the resolution of time-of-flight depth sensors 1,000-fold.
Platform analyzes big data to answer plain-language business queries in minutes instead of months.
Companies often employ number-crunching data scientists to gather insights such as which customers want certain services or where to open new stores and stock products. Analyzing the data to answer one or two of those queries, however, can take weeks or even months.
MIT’s Janelle Knox-Hayes studies the cultural issues behind climate policy.
We have one planet, and many plans to keep it from getting too hot. Consider: There are more than 60 different greenhouse gas emissions pricing systems being used by countries and regions around the world, all intended to reduce the climate impact of burning fossil fuels.
MIT event invites DUSP alumni, alumnae, and faculty to share their work
On Wednesday, Nov. 8th, nearly two hundred DUSP alumni/ae, faculty, and students gathered for an evening of sharing their work and ideas. “DUSPx: MIT Connections” was the fifth in a series of annual “DUSPx” events aimed at promoting connections both among alumni and also between alumni/ae and current faculty and students.
Online game uses hypothetical choices and real cash prizes to educate people on how to make their most of their generosity.
It’s the holiday season, which to many people means a season of giving — to loved ones, colleagues, public radio and television, or to any number of the countless charities seeking support. Nearly a third of all annual charitable giving occurs in December, and many nonprofits raise as much as half of their annual funds from this year-end burst of giving.
Photo: Johanna Lobdell
Ghost stories and digital technologies meet in the work of Rome Prize winner Brandon Clifford.
Architecture's Sheila Kennedy was awarded a 2017 Bose Grant for a joint project using nanotechnology to build plants that provide lighting for buildings and cities.
Since 2014, the Professor Amar G. Bose Research Grant has supported MIT faculty with innovative and potentially paradigm-shifting research ideas, and this year is no exception: With Bose funding, six research teams composed of nine MIT faculty members will pursue projects ranging from nanoengineering a light-emitting plant to developing solid-state atmospheric propulsion technology for aircraft.
Photo Credit: Manchester University Press.
"Modernism and the Making of the Soviet New Man"
A new book from Architecture alumna Tijana Vujosevic, PhD ’10, explores the nexus between aesthetics and politics in interwar Soviet Culture.
MIT-designed tool lets people test realistic changes to local transit networks.
Pictured L-R: Little Bits, Talkie, Nervous System jewelry.
The 2017 Slice Holiday Gift Roundup
Holiday shopping season has officially begun. Whether you’re almost done or haven’t even started, you may want to consider adding some of these unique gift ideas, crafted by MIT alumni including Ayah Bdeir SM ’06 (MAS) of Little Bits, Gauri Nanda SM ’05 (MAS) of Toymail, Jessica Rosenkrantz ’05 (dual degree, biology/architecture) of Nervous System, and Zahir Dossa ’08 MNG ’10 PhD ’13 (DUSP) of Function of Beauty. Slice of MIT.
Installation view of Judith Barry’s "Cairo Stories, 2011," with photographs (left) and videos (right), at Galerie Karin Sachs.
Judith Barry has been appointed professor in Art, Culture and Technology in the Department of Architecture in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Barry will join the faculty on January 1, 2018.
Andy Altman
Andrew Altman has joined the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) as Senior Advisor and Director of Global Partnerships.
"Windows of History," installation view. Photo: Scott Hahn
“Windows of History” at Haas-Lilienthal House
Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT
Startup’s system captures particle matter from diesel exhaust and turns it into inks and paints.
On a break from his studies in the MIT Media Lab, Anirudh Sharma SM ’14 traveled home to Mumbai, India. While there, he noticed that throughout the day his T-shirts were gradually accumulating something that resembled dirt.
MIT Associate Provost Richard Lester, center left; MIT associate professor Siqi Zheng, center right; along with MIT staff and researchers, at the lab's launch. Image: Bryce Vickmark
New urban studies program to spur research and innovation in China.
MIT has launched a unique new urban research and innovation program that looks to advance city life in China through an ambitious range of academic and entrepreneurial activities.
Photo: Sham Sthankiya.
Visiting Artist B. Stephen Carpenter II examines issues of access, privilege and the global water crisis.
In today’s social climate, which is often characterized by polarization and intolerance, visiting artist B. Stephen Carpenter II believes that art can enable people to have civil conversations about difficult topics such as race, segregation, and poverty in the U.S.
Martin Rein.
Expert in social policy and social reform, especially the welfare state and retirement policy, was a longtime MIT professor.
Martin Rein, professor in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning from 1970 until his retirement in 2011, died on Oct. 15 of complications from Alzheimer’s disease. He was 89.
Photo: CITE at MIT.
Study of solar pump technology use in India assesses technical performance and explores innovative business cases to increase user adoption.
In 2014, the government of India made an ambitious goal to replace 26 million groundwater pumps run on costly diesel, for more efficient and environmentally-friendly options such as solar pumps.
"Colorspace," Sosolimited.
An interactive sculpture that transforms your text messages
SA+P alumni Justin B Manor ’00, SM ’08 (MAS); John Rothenberg ’02, SM ’07 (Arch); and Eric Gunther ’00, MEng ’02 of Sosolimited have unveiled ‘Colorspace,’ an interactive sculpture that transforms any text message into a breathtaking animation of colored light. Installed in the mezzanine of 200 Clarendon Street in Boston, MA, the piece was commissioned by Boston Properties.
Photo: courtesy of the researchers.
Focused laser beam could help scientists map connections among neurons that underlie behavior.
Researchers at MIT and Paris Descartes University have developed a new optogenetic technique that sculpts light to target individual cells bearing engineered light-sensitive molecules, so that individual neurons can be precisely stimulated.
Photos: David Silverman Photography (Wood); Noah Kalina (Oxman); Chris Crisman (Herr).
Five join the SA+P faculty, while 10 are recognized for work in art, architecture, urbanism, and design.
The School of Architecture and Planning has announced that 10 faculty members have been recognized with promotions.
Photo: Maggie Dunne at the Obama summit on November 1, 2017.
When MIT graduate student Maggie Dunne was in high school, she witnessed the harsh realities of life for many Native American Nations in the US and she was compelled to act. The Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, home to the people of Oglala Lakota Nation, is considered by the UN human rights and poverty investigations to be one of the most historically wronged and marginalized groups in the world.
Mikey Siegel with his wife and occupants of the co-hack house engaged in virtual meditation. Photo: Gregg Segal.
Inside Silicon Valley's new non-religion
MIT Media Lab alum Mikey Siegel SM ’09 (MAS) is bringing engineering to enlightenment through Silicon Valley's consciousness-hacking movement. Wired.
Photo: Tom Gearty
Bruno Verdini leads a popular new class on negotiation skills.
Image: NYU Furman Center.
Health in the Segregated City
An essay from DUSP’s Mariana Arcaya MCP ’08 focuses on residential segregation and its impact on public health. Arcaya’s essay leads the NYU Furman Center’s latest discussion with insights on how segregation contributes to neighborhood health disparities, how it creates inequities in access to quality healthcare, and how disparities in health may also heighten segregation. The Dream Revisited.
With Shelley, the world’s first artificial intelligence-human horror story collaboration, MIT researchers aim for goosebumps.
Just in time for Halloween, a research team from the MIT Media Lab’s Scalable Cooperation group has introduced Shelley: the world’s first artificial intelligence-human horror story collaboration.
Energy-efficient construction is key to lowering urban emissions, study finds.
"Strange Weather." Photo: Mariana Ibañez and Simon Kim/I/K Studio
Projects by School of Architecture and Planning faculty, researchers, and alumni explore the exhibition's theme of “Imminent Commons.”
Photo: Deirdre Carson/MIT Energy Initiative
MIT Energy Initiative seminar examines the role of the humanities, design, and aesthetics in catalyzing a fairer, more diverse energy future.
What does energy have to do with art, literature, and happiness? In a recent MIT Energy Initiative (MITEI) seminar, Imre Szeman, a professor of communication and culture at the University of Waterloo, addressed this question and engaged in a discussion of what he calls “petroculture” with MIT faculty of architecture and humanities, arts, and social sciences.
High Desert Test Kitchen's October ingredient is California Buckweat. Photo: Sarah Witt.
High Desert Test Sites 2017
Image courtesy of Learning Machine.
Using Bitcoin's blockchain technology, the Institute has become one of the first universities to issue recipient-owned virtual credentials.
In 1868, the fledgling Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Boylston Street awarded its first diplomas to 14 graduates. Since then, it has issued paper credentials to more than 207,000 undergraduate and graduate students in much the same way.
Nesterly is an online marketplace that matches university students who need affordable housing with empty-nesters.
Ideas Global Challenge winner videos
Photo: Lily Bui.
Boston-area volunteers gather at MIT to help identify post-hurricane conditions in the territory
Hurricane Maria caused catastrophic damage across Puerto Rico when it made landfall on Sept. 20. As the second hurricane to hit the island in a two-week period, the powerful storm devastated the territory’s already-strained infrastructure and left behind a humanitarian crisis affecting the entire island.
Photo: Ariel Noyman/City Science group, MIT Media Lab.
Andorra funds MIT Media Lab technologies that, in turn, help improve the nation’s cities.
When you think of innovation hubs around the world, Andorra, a tiny country tucked between Spain and France, may not come to mind.
Ingestible devices could diagnose gastrointestinal slowdown or monitor food intake.
Researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital have built a flexible sensor that can be rolled up and swallowed. Upon ingestion, the sensor adheres to the stomach wall or intestinal lining, where it can measure the rhythmic contractions of the digestive tract.
Vision in Neuroscience and Art. Students conduct visual experiments. Photo: Seth Riskin.
Q&A with Seth Riskin
Why MIT’s Gediminas Urbonas helped produce a new book about art and public space.
Much of what we hear about public space comes via routine transactional politics, when officials tell us whether or not we can afford, say, parks, schools, and libraries.
But perhaps we should get more input about public space from artists.
MIT Media Lab's Ed Boyden ’99 MNG ’99 Synthetic Neurobiology and Kevin Esvelt are among 10 MIT researchers to receive National Institutes of Health (NIH) awards for high-risk, high-reward research.
Photo: StockSnap
Human Dynamics research group earns high marks in new scientific collaboration to improve the lives of disadvantaged American children.
Andrea Lamberti ’91 and Chan-Li Lin ’88, MArch ’90 were involved in the design and construction of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center. Courtesy of the MIT Alumni Association.
Alumni modernize Boston architecture
SA+P alumni have been at the forefront of the movement to make Boston a more modern, sustainable city, creating some of its most modern, integrated spaces. Explore a slideshow of alumni projects featured in Slice of MIT.
Photo: Tom Gearty
MIT Architecture program rated highly for research and overall excellence based on surveys of practitioners.
The professional master's of architecture program at MIT has again been ranked among the top five in the nation in the latest DesignIntelligence rankings. MIT's architecture program has consistently appeared among the top 10 in this annual assessment of nationally accredited graduate programs.
György Kepes in Chicago, ca. 1937-42. Photo courtesy of the MIT Museum. Used by permission of the Kepes Estate.
Fifty years after its founding, the vision of CAVS and founder György Kepes lives on in the Program in Art, Culture and Technology.
Volunteers and rescuers work at a collapsed building at Colonia Roma, Mexico City. Photo: ProtoplasmaKid/Wikimedia Commons
MIT team’s online platform links those who need aid with those who can help. (Este artículo está disponible en español.)
On Sept. 19, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake struck Mexico City and the surrounding region, demolishing buildings, killing hundreds, and trapping and injuring many more. More than 3,000 structures were damaged in Mexico City alone, according to news reports.
Photo: Lisa Abitbol
At a day-long event on global food and water security, DUSP's Erica James presented "Leverage Points," a J-WAFS-funded project to identify opportunities to increase food production and security in the developing world.
Future City Innovation Connector to support projects addressing rapid growth of Chinese cities.
MIT and Tsinghua University in China have signed an agreement establishing a new technology project, the Future City Innovation Connector (FCIC), which is designed to support research and startup teams applying ideas to China’s rapidly growing urban areas.
"Watch and learn, Mom." (Courtesy of Kimberly Smith)
Unplug and play: Kim Smith’s Learning Beautiful
Learning Beautiful from DesignX member Kim Smith SM ’17 (MAS) creates beautiful wooden toys to teach children the basics of coding. Quartz.
Beomki Lee, MArch ’15, Dean Hashim Sarkis, Lawrence Poster ‘71, Gensler NY. Photo: Kenneth Namkung, 2017.
Full house at breakfast event presenting MIT’s new accelerator for design innovation.
On September 13, 2017, the MIT Alumni Club of New York, MITArchA, the MIT Architecture Alumni Affinity Group, and the MIT Alumni Association, together with SA+P, hosted a breakfast to introduce alumni to DesignX–the venture accelerator for design innovation in the School of Architecture and Planning. The event was held at Gensler’s NY offices in Midtown Manhattan.
Schools of Architecture and Planning; Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, and several centers are home to the arts and humanities at MIT.
Research from MIT's CITE program leverages a procurement process to identify opportunities for improving food aid supply chains.
MIT Media Lab professor considers the trust gap between people and autonomous vehicles.
Photo: Nasa
Via social media, residents can contribute to public map that increases safety and helps response planning.
Photo: Ian MacLellan.
PhD student works at the intersection of urban planning and computer science.
While working for the global management consulting company Accenture, Gregory Falco discovered just how vulnerable the technologies underlying smart cities and the “internet of things” — everyday devices that are connected to the internet or a network — are to cyberterrorism attacks.
Photo: Lt. Zachary West/U.S. Army National Guard
Stranded in Houston by hurricane floodwaters, an MIT associate professor sees firsthand how design and policy decisions affected the storm’s impact.
BioBot Labs installs a sensor-laden robot in a sewer.
Elizabeth Close: "Minnesota’s midcentury pioneer"
As part of a series highlighting "often-forgotten regional architects," Curbed has profiled Elizabeth “Lisl” Scheu Close '35; the article also mentions her husband and partner Winston Close SM ’35. Read the profile.
Success rate is comparable to that of highly trained scientists performing the process manually.
Recording electrical signals from inside a neuron in the living brain can reveal a great deal of information about that neuron’s function and how it coordinates with other cells in the brain. However, performing this kind of recording is extremely difficult, so only a handful of neuroscience labs around the world do it.
MIT alumna is establishing a new research group aimed at harnessing space engineering to improve life on Earth.
System could save retailers billions lost through faulty inventory records.
Radio frequency ID tags were supposed to revolutionize supply chain management. The dirt-cheap, battery-free tags, which receive power wirelessly from scanners and then broadcast identifying numbers, enable warehouse managers to log inventory much more efficiently than they could by reading box numbers and recording them manually.
Transforming, robotic furniture from Media Lab spinoff Ori Systems makes smaller spaces feel larger
A Sneak Peek of the Bronx River House, the Future Home of the Bronx River Alliance
The Bronx River Alliance will soon move into a new home under the leadership of executive director and DUSP alumna Maggie Greenfield's MCP '03. See renderings of the new building and learn more at Untapped Cities.
Study: Commercial parks have boosted growth, created new urban centers.
China’s massive investment in industrial parks has paid economic dividends while reshaping the urban areas where they are located, according to a newly published study co-authored by an MIT expert on urban economics.
Successful programs aren’t limited to well-off towns with strong environmental movements.
Food scraps. Okay, those aren’t the first words that come to mind when you think about the environment. But 22 percent of the municipal solid waste dropped into landfills or incincerators in the U.S. is, in fact, food that could be put to better use through composting and soil enrichment.
The Lincoln House, designed by Mary Otis Stevens '56 and MIT professor Tom McNulty.
Mary Otis Stevens ’56: The flux of human life
In a recent reprint of a 2013 interview, architect Mary Otis Stevens ’56 talk about the stages of her life and her design, with MIT professor Tom McNulty, of the landmark Lincoln House. Read the interview at Domus.
Six from MIT, including HTC PhD candidates Jesse Feiman and Albert Lopez and MIT DUSP PhD candidate Jessica Gordon will spend the 2017-2018 academic year conducting research abroad.
WBUR recently aired a conversation featuring Vineet Gupta AR ’88 MCP ’88 on whether Boston should have more car-free zones. Photo from Pi.1415926535 via Wikimedia Commons.
Vineet Gupta on car-free zones for Boston
In the wake of snarled traffic due to the Commonwealth Avenue Bridge project, WBUR recently aired a conversation featuring Vineet Gupta AR ’88 MCP ’88, the director of policy and planning for the Boston Transportation Department, on whether Boston should have more car-free zones. Listen to the broadcast.
"Futurity Island Rendering," Gediminas Urbonas and Tobias Putrih, 2016.
ACT's Futurity Island project received an Art Works Grant from the National Endowment for the Arts! Futurity Island, a large-scale, land-based outdoor art installation, will be a major contribution to ACT’s upcoming year-long celebration of the 50th Anniversary of the Center for Advanced Visual Studies. Learn more.
Metropolis editors selected Boston as one of the top cities around the globe for progressive design and good living, calling out the academic community at MIT SA+P as a leader of innovation and experimentation. “I’ve always believed that the primary driver of design is industry,” SA+P Dean Hashim Sarkis tells Metropolis. “Here in Boston our biotech and high-tech industries are offering designers incredible opportunities to express their creativity. This is not just a place where design is happening.
Courtesy of SproutsIO Inc.
Smart, soil-free microgarden lets users optimize growing conditions while cutting water and resource use.
MIT Media Lab alumna Jennifer Broutin Farah SM ’13, CEO and co-founder of SproutsIO, has spent nearly a decade innovating in urban farming, designing small- and large-scale gardening systems that let anyone grow food, anywhere, at any time.
Students recognized for their leadership in fostering intergenerational connections within their communities.
Left to right: LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Media Lab Director Joi Ito joined Disobedience Award finalists Phyllis Young and LaDonna Brave Bull Allard; Betina Kaplan and Lorgia García-Peña; and James Hansen; along with winners Marc Edwards and Mona Hanna-Attisha. Photo: David Silverman Photography
MIT Media Lab summer event explores responsible dissent, embodied in its new Disobedience Award.
Graduate student Alpha Yacob Arsano wants to bring natural ventilation to the forefront of modern architecture.
SproutsIO—a venture launched by MIT Media Lab alumna Jennifer Broutin Farah SM ’13—is ramping up production and hitting the shelves in a few months.
Introducing a new feature from the School of Architecture and Planning: a brief, weekly list of media mentions of our alumni's contributions to making a better world. These items will feature posts, articles, and videos from MIT channels and outside media outlets covering the work of our alumni. Visit the SA+P News feed each Monday to see the previous week's selections.
Courtesy of Twine Health.
New app lets patients work alone or with others to prevent, monitor, and reverse chronic disease.
Lack of patient adherence to treatment plans is a lingering, costly problem in the United States. But MIT Media Lab spinout Twine Health is proving that regular interventions from a patient’s community of supporters can greatly improve adherence, leading to improved health outcomes and savings.
Volunteer extraordinaire Hyun-A Park ’83, MCP ’85, begins year as Association president.
DUSP alum transitions to alumni association president
New president of the MIT Alumni Association Hyun-A Park ’83, MCP ’85 has always been an exceptional volunteer for MIT alumni. From her time as class president to her service on the MIT corporation to her mentoring of MIT students, read about her life and career at Slice of MIT.
Photo: Jimmy Day/MIT Media Lab
Expanding tissue samples before imaging offers detailed information about disease.
MIT and Harvard Medical School researchers have devised a way to image biopsy samples with much higher resolution — an advance that could help doctors develop more accurate and inexpensive diagnostic tests.
Image: Jose-Luis Olivares/MIT
Technique could lead to cameras that can handle light of any intensity, audio that doesn’t skip or pop.
Virtually any modern information-capture device — such as a camera, audio recorder, or telephone — has an analog-to-digital converter in it, a circuit that converts the fluctuating voltages of analog signals into strings of ones and zeroes.
At the reopening of the Thomas Hughes Children's Library in downtown Chicago, Mayor Rahm Emanuel talks to children playing with toys from Learning Beautiful, a company co-founded by Kim Smith SM '17.
Adam Savage’s ‘Tested’ visits the Center for Bits and Atoms
Adam Savage, the former host of ‘Mythbusters,’ took a tour of the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms for his website, Tested. He was guided by CBA founder Neil Gershenfeld and Media Lab alum and current post-doc Nadya Peek SM ’10 PhD ’16. See a video of the tour.
Image courtesy of mPath.
Startup’s stress sensor tracks users’ unconscious responses to products and experiences.
Photo: Billy Ndengeyingoma
A novel thesis in the form of a podcast gives voice to issues of security and identity in New York and Paris.
Photo: Christopher Harting
Study: Being near colleagues helps cross-disciplinary research on papers and patents.
Want to boost collaboration among researchers? Even in an age of easy virtual communication, physical proximity increases collaborative activity among academic scholars, according to a new study examining a decade’s worth of MIT-based papers and patents.
Density of highly educated residents, rather than income or ethnic composition, predicts revitalization.
Four years ago, researchers at MIT’s Media Lab developed a computer vision system that can analyze street-level photos taken in urban neighborhoods in order to gauge how safe the neighborhoods would appear to human observers.
Assistant professor of urban studies and planning argues immigration is good for the U.S. and that President Trump's executive order threatens national security.
Holobiont, the latest issue of the Journal of Design and Science, suggests that when we look at the connections — as opposed to what’s connected — a new structure of the world is revealed. For this issue, a small group of researchers, designers, and other practitioners were invited to contribute work that speaks to this idea of symbiotic exchange.
CITE Director Bishwapriya Sanyal discusses CITE’s mission, big data, and the future of the program.
With the MIT Comprehensive Initiative for Technology Evaluation (CITE) entering its fifth year, I sat down with Ford International Professor of Urban Planning and CITE’s Director Bishwapriya Sanyal, to gather his thoughts on what the program has accomplished over its tenure, and what lessons one could learn about how to address developmental challenges drawing on CITE’s research
Daryl Carter aims to dispel myths about affordable housing
Daryl Carter MArch ’81 SM ’81, founder and CEO of Avanath Capital Management, talks to Forbes about common misconceptions about people who live in affordable housing. Read more about his company, career, and ideas at Forbes.
This spring ACT graduate student Angel Chen SMVisS ’17 set off in search of a space under construction to stage an art installation, and was drawn to Building 18’s 4th floor lab renovation.
Involving local farmers in tackling a problem can provide long-lasting benefits.
As the old saying goes, teaching someone to fish is far more helpful than just giving them a fish. Now, research from WorldFish and MIT takes that adage a step further: Better yet, the study found, is working with the fishermen to help develop better fishing methods.
System with $150 worth of hardware offers alternative to 3-D scanners that cost 200 times as much.
Last year, a team of forensic dentists got authorization to perform a 3-D scan of the prized Tyrannosaurus rex skull at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, in an effort to try to explain some strange holes in the jawbone.
An interdisciplinary team of MIT graduate students, including SA+P's Alpha Arsano, Anran Li, and faculty advisor Caitlin Mueller, were recently honored at NASA's Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts-Academic Linkage Design Competition Forum. The challenge involved designing a commercially enabled habitable module for use in low Earth orbit that would be extensible for future use as a Mars transit vehicle. The team’s design won first place in the competition’s graduate division.
In Lebanon, DUSP alumna Zeina Saab's NGO helps young people develop their talent
Texting-based surveys from Architecture alum Kenfield Griffith PhD ’12 capture purchasing and behavior data from people living in remote areas.
While on location in remote areas of Kenya, researching automation and home manufacturing for his doctoral dissertation, Kenfield Griffith PhD ’12 encountered a significant lack of data.
Senseable City Lab visualizes 20 years of data to show how students, faculty, and scholars join MIT from all over the world.
Hilary Ballon, PhD ’85 in History, Theory, and Criticism, and a dear friend to the School, passed away on June 16, 2017, at age 61. Ballon was a university professor and professor of architecture and urbanism at New York University, and deputy vice chancellor of NYU Abu Dhabi, which she played an instrumental role in founding.
Fifty years after completing his Masters in Architecture and Planning at MIT, Jeffrey Heller ’64 ’67 FAIA has been honored with the MITArcha Alumni Achievement Award. Heller received the honor at an event in San Francisco in May, hosted by the MIT Architecture Alumni (MITArchA) group.
New open-source website features blueprints for lab-on-a-chip devices.
Apple CEO urges graduating class to “work toward something greater than yourself.”
Tim Cook, the renowned CEO of Apple, spoke to MIT’s Class of 2017 on a beautiful sunny morning in the Institute’s Killian Court, urging the graduates to search for a direction and purpose that extends beyond their own lives.
Innovative MIT research focuses on developing systems to perceive and identify objects in their environment and understand social interactions in traffic.
MIT professor wants public health advocates to think big about future trends.
Venture accelerator DesignX unleashes entrepreneurs’ ideas to transform the built environment.
What do portable desks for children in developing countries, 3-D models of underutilized Boston real estate, and devices that track opioids in city sewers have in common? They are among the products or services developed by the first cohort of teams participating in DesignX, MIT’s newest innovation accelerator.
Electrodes placed on the scalp could help patients with brain diseases.
Delivering an electrical current to a part of the brain involved in movement control has proven successful in treating many Parkinson’s disease patients. This approach, known as deep brain stimulation, requires implanting electrodes in the brain — a complex procedure that carries some risk to the patient.
Muscle grafts could help amputees sense and control artificial limbs.
A new surgical technique devised by MIT researchers could allow prosthetic limbs to feel much more like natural limbs. Through coordination of the patient’s prosthetic limb, existing nerves, and muscle grafts, amputees would be able to sense where their limbs are in space and to feel how much force is being applied to them.
Nine new Director’s Fellows bring their diverse experiences to a global network empowered by technology created at the MIT Media Lab.
Press' first major digitization endeavor ushers in a new era of access.
The Graham Foundation has announced over $560,000 in new grants to individuals around the world that engage original ideas in architecture. Five of this year's seventy-two funded projects were from members of the SA+P community including: Architecture's Rania Ghosn and El Hadi Jazairy; DUSP PhD candidate Suzanne Harris-Brandts; Caitlin Berrigan SMVisS ’09; Daniel Cardoso Llach SMArchS ’07, PhD ’12; and Nathan Friedman SMArchS ’15.
Five SA+P students received Harold and Arlene Schnitzer awards in the visual arts for excellence in a body of artistic work.
Sheets of gelatin transform into 3-D shapes when dunked in water; could save food shipping costs.
“Don’t play with your food” is a saying that MIT researchers are taking with a grain or two of salt. The team is finding ways to make the dining experience interactive and fun, with food that can transform its shape when water is added.
New York City event invites DUSP alumni and alumnae to reconnect and share their work.
On Sunday, May 7, nearly 100 DUSP alumni and alumnae gathered at Affirmation Arts in New York City to reconnect and to share their work and ideas. Coinciding with the APA national planning conference, “DUSPx: Connections” was attended by DUSP graduates from across the country and from the New York City area, together with current and prospective DUSP students.
Ventilating flaps lined with live cells open and close in response to an athlete’s sweat.
A team of MIT researchers has designed a breathable workout suit with ventilating flaps that open and close in response to an athlete’s body heat and sweat. These flaps, which range from thumbnail- to finger-sized, are lined with live microbial cells that shrink and expand in response to changes in humidity. The cells act as tiny sensors and actuators, driving the flaps to open when an athlete works up a sweat, and pulling them closed when the body has cooled off.
Author of “Blue Skies over Beijing” links Chinese air quality and urban development.
DUSP PhD student Rebecca Hui and her Roots Studio team win top prize for the most promising arts-focused startup at the Institute.
SA+P recognizes staff that have made exceptional contributions to their academic units, the school, and the Institute.
On Thursday, May 11th, three exceptional staff members of the MIT community were honored with Infinite Mile Awards. The awards were presented at a celebratory luncheon to John F. Kennedy from the MIT Center for Real Estate, Ellen Rushman, DUSP's Academic Programs Coordinator, and Amanda Stoll from the MIT Media Lab.
Student teams develop technology-based tools to address racism and bias.
Scratch Day @ MIT was one of more than 800 global events during May to celebrate the kids’ programming language and online community on its 10th anniversary.
Many of the children taking part in Scratch Day 2017 at the MIT Media Lab on May 6 were not even born when the Scratch programming language was released in 2007.
DUSP's Bish Sanyal is among 10 principal investigators from MIT to receive grants of up to $200,000 per year for two years, overhead free, for innovative research on food and water challenges.
Brandon Clifford, assistant professor in the Department of Architecture, has been awarded The Founders Rome Prize fellowship for 2017-2018 from the American Academy in Rome. Open to U.S. citizens, the Rome Prize is awarded each year to approximately 30 scholars, artists, writers, and composers.
The Center for Real Estate’s Albert Saiz talks about worldwide trends affecting housing, commercial real estate, and investment in the built environment.
Five teams from SA+P are among the winners of this year's IDEAS Global Challenge. Congratulations Nesterly, Kumej, BioBot Labs, JORO, and Pukuni Community House!
DUSP grad student John Arroyo honored for his service to the community; six high school and college students awarded $1,000 Memorial Scholarships.
Junior faculty members from Masdar Institute reflect on working with MIT professors, including DUSP's Alan Berger and Media Lab's César Hidalgo.
Several graduate students from SA+P were recently honored at the 2017 Graduate Women of Excellence Reception. Each honoree was nominated by a member of the MIT Community in recognition of her leadership and service, dedication to mentorship and drive to improve the student experience.
Technology developed at the MIT Media Lab could enable faster, cheaper, more adaptable building construction.
The list of materials that can be produced by 3-D printing has grown to include not just plastics but also metal, glass, and even food. Now, MIT researchers are expanding the list further, with the design of a system that can 3-D print the basic structure of an entire building.
In talk at MIT, Chicago mayor argues that major cities can lead on policy progress.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel laid out a case for bold action at the city level to make progress on education, inequality, climate change, and technology, in a wide-ranging talk at MIT on Friday afternoon.
When some 45 MIT alumni and friends met April 2 for a private tour of the newly renovated East Wing of the National Gallery in Washington, they were doing more than celebrating the 100th birthday of I.M. Pei. ’40. True, Pei remains one of the world’s most influential architects and the building is one of his masterpieces.
MIT Media Lab's Joi Ito and Ed Boyden are among 11 from MIT elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences for 2017.
An entrepreneur who co-founded Wise Systems, Layla Shaikley SMArchS ’13 may be better known for her viral video created to combat media stereotypes of Muslim women.
Both fans and foes of reality TV can get behind this reality video series—In My Shoeswas created by César Hidalgo, associate professor and director of the Media Lab’s Collective Learning group, in an effort to show future scientists what the life of an academic looks like.
View the video series at www.inmyshoes.info.
New supplement for Domus curated by DUSP Professor Carlo Ratti explores architectural innovation today. Read the issue, featuring interviews and work from faculty and researchers from across our School.
MIT's Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation announces its latest product evaluations and global partnerships.
The Comprehensive Initiative on Technology Evaluation (CITE) at MIT has announced its 2017 product evaluations.
MIT’s Kristel Smentek studies art, collectors, and commerce in new ways.
Advisor to $1.4 billion state plan sees health care as foundation for “Vital Brooklyn.”
New technique greatly reduces the number of exposures necessary for “lensless imaging.”
Compressed sensing is an exciting new computational technique for extracting large amounts of information from a signal. In one high-profile demonstration, for instance, researchers at Rice University built a camera that could produce 2-D images using only a single light sensor rather than the millions of light sensors found in a commodity camera.
Scholars at MIT and in Mexico collaborate on projects spanning design, technology, and art.
MIT faculty, students, and alumni consistently find creative ways to apply their knowledge to local contexts, collaborating with partners around the globe to make the world a better place. Arguably, no MIT exchange is more fertile than the one the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) enjoys with Mexico.
MIT Media Lab event, Beyond the Cradle, launches a new initiative to explore the final frontier
QS World University Rankings place MIT No. 1 in 12 of 46 subject areas
MIT Media Lab supports new ways of harnessing responsible, ethical Disobedience aimed at challenging our norms, rules, or laws to benefit society with a $250K prize. Learn more and explore a brief history of disobedient role models through the ages. Nominate a person or group engaged in extraordinary acts of disobedience for public good.
DUSP's Eran Ben-Joseph to become co-director of MISTI’s Israel program.
We are pleased to announce the launch of a new platform for sharing faculty, student, and alumni perspectives on innovative design research, teaching, and practice. On Medium we will post illustrated stories that encompass news, first-person narratives, publication extracts, and reviews of exhibitions, books, and projects—from all parts of our diverse School. More at Medium.
Very different cities have similar potential for ride sharing, study finds.
A newly published study co-authored by MIT researchers suggests that urban ride-sharing is feasible in a wide variety of cities around the globe — and indeed that the potential “shareability” of autos in those places is more similar, from place to place, than previously expected.
Architecture lecturer Jessica Rosenkrantz writes programs mimicking processes in nature to "grow" objects that can be digitally fabricated.
School of Architecture and Planning lecturer Jessica Rosenkrantz’s career in design began somewhat as an accident and was sparked by a random comment by a graduate classmate at the Harvard University School of Design.
Gallery Walk showcases exhibitions in art, architecture, and design.
Building 7 is most known for the soaring four-story lobby that greets visitors who enter the campus from Massachusetts Avenue. Not as widely recognized is that the building is home to four galleries that feature regular exhibitions of art, architecture, and design.
Study of post-harvest storage technology use in Uganda assesses potential for farmer adoption, identifies supply chain challenges and solutions.
According to the World Food Program (WFP), nearly one-third of food produced for human consumption is lost or wasted, and over half of that food waste happens during production, post-harvest handling, and storage.
The mix of products that countries export is a good predictor of income distribution, study finds.
For his MIT residency, the Grammy-winning artist collaborates with over 150 student musicians to stage the monumental concert, "Imagination Off the Charts."
Co-founded by DUSP PhD student Gregory Falco, the IoT cybersecurity startup, NeuroMesh placed second in MIT's 100K Accelerate competition.
The Winter 2017 issue of MIT Spectrum magazine features a broad range of stories from the SA+P community.
Read the issue online.
On January 31st, 2017, the MIT Club of New York and the MIT Architecture Affinity Group (MITArchA) hosted a Course IV Alumni Social event in New York City. The event was held at WeWork Charging Bull, located in New York’s Financial District, and was hosted by Melissa Marsh, M.Arch ’04, MITArchA’s Vice President of Membership.
Professor in architecture and engineering will serve three-year term
Urban Planning Alums Establish Fund for Doctoral Student Research
A new fund will provide vital financial support to doctoral candidates in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Established by and named in honor of two of the department's alumni, the “Lynne Sagalyn and Gary Hack DUSP Fund” will provide grants up to $20,000 per student to enable research leading to doctoral dissertations; funds may be used for travel, data acquisition, student stipends, and other research expenses.
DUSP practicum proposes new approaches to mobility and housing in urban neighborhoods.
More than 20 million people live in metropolitan Mexico City, and most spend upwards of three hours a day riding to and from work, stuck in traffic jams.
Startup brings solar-powered, phone-charging park benches and digital signs to cities worldwide.
Equipped with high-tech versions of common city fixtures — namely, smart benches and digital information signs — and fueled by a “deploy or die” attitude, MIT Media Lab spinout Changing Environments is hoping to accelerate the development of “smart” cities that use technology to solve urban challenges.
MIT graduate students in energy fields gain skills and advance knowledge while helping to move toward a low-carbon future.
MIT graduate students working in energy conduct widely varied research projects — from experiments in fundamental chemistry to surveys of human behavior — but they share the common benefit of gaining hands-on work experience while helping to move the needle toward a low-carbon future.
Announcing the first Building 7 Block Party and Gallery Walk!
Start the spring semester with an evening of art, conversation, and community in the first-ever Building 7 Block Party and Gallery Walk on Thursday, Feb. 16, from 5 – 7 PM.
New graduate student fellowship program announced at Media Lab event celebrating the life and work of Seymour Papert.
“City Digits: Local Lotto” teaches Brooklyn high school students how to work with data by analyzing lottery spending patterns.
What can we learn from where people buy their lottery tickets — and how much they spend?
Pritzker Prize-winning architect Alejandro Aravena will speak at MIT on January 26, 2017, in a lecture that is free and open to the public. Watch the live webcast starting at 6:30 pm.
MIT researchers are helping architects optimize both design and energy efficiency.
Freshman seminar inspires students to see the world with fresh eyes.
On a crisp afternoon in early September, seven MIT freshmen set out on a campus tour with their faculty advisor, John Ochsendorf, the Class of 1942 Professor in Architecture and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Their first stop was “The Big Sail,” the 33-ton steel sculpture by Alexander Calder that stands in McDermott Court.
Media Lab graduate student selected from over 7,300 entrants, awarded $50,000 scholarship in contest inspired by the film "Hidden Figures."
Research shows how rebuilding Britain’s Houses of Parliament in the 1800s helped create clean-air laws.
Britain’s dazzling Houses of Parliament building, constructed from 1840 until 1870, is an international icon. But the building’s greatest legacy may be something politicians and tourists don’t think about much: the clean air around it.
“The Food Lab” is the Twitter handle of J. Kenji López-Alt ’02 as well as the title of his new book. But there was a time when it hardly seemed likely that López-Alt would be closely associated with lab work.
As an MIT student, he swore off labs for good, switching his major from biology to architecture. “I spent my summers in high school and the summer after my freshman year working in labs. I got disillusioned with it,” he says. That’s how he ended up in the kitchen.
Fund establishes a global initiative to advance artificial intelligence research for the public good.
The MIT Media Lab and the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University will serve as the founding anchor institutions for a new initiative aimed at bridging the gap between the humanities, the social sciences, and computing by addressing the global challenges of artificial intelligence (AI) from a multidisciplinary perspective.
Introducing DesignX, MIT's newest entrepreneurship accelerator. DesignX is an entrepreneurial accelerator for student ventures that aims to transform the built environment, media, and design.
Large-scale tests compare damage from insects and moisture using a variety of containers.
Among the students, faculty, staff, and alumni honored in "the most definitive gathering of today’s leading young change-makers and innovators," is Hasier Larrea SM ’15 (MAS), foudner of Ori. “[Ori] allows for a number of configurations, from bedroom to office to living room, and back again, all controlled from one control panel.”
Read the full article at MIT News.
Initiative links MIT with São Paulo research centers to study affordability and accessibility.
The School of Architecture and Planning and the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) at MIT have established a long-term initiative to rethink the future of affordable housing in Brazil, which faces an estimated shortage of 7 million units.
A look back at 2016 from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning.
This video features a selection of our most prominent stories from the MIT home page. From innovative startups, to groundbreaking research, to pushing the frontiers of architecture and design, it's been another remarkable year of work from our faculty, students, and alumni.
The former MIT Media Lab faculty member explored the intersections of play, learning, design, and technology.
Edith Ackermann, who was a professor at the MIT Media Lab from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s, died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on Dec. 24. She was 70.
The STL Lab celebrates the first 2 years of its mission to create a new generation of socially responsible entrepreneurs and academics in the fields of architecture, planning, and real estate.
MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito reflects on the Lab's discoveries and milestones of 2016 in response to critical global challenges.
We’ve all been witness to some trying times over the past 12 months, both in the United States and across the world. In sharing some of the highlights of the past year, we are fully cognizant of the challenges ahead, of the importance of academic freedom, and of ways we can best address some of the most critical global needs.
The Global Grid, a service focused on delivering daily news on “localized and unique architecture, engineering, landscape architecture, urban planning,” has named Archnet one of the Top 20 Architecture Websites for 2016.
The green canopy is an important and integral part of urban life. Trees help mitigate extreme temperatures, provide a natural respite from traffic, noise, and congestion, and improve the quality of life for those living in urban environments. However, the average citizen is often removed from understanding the individual features of their unique environmental habitats. How, then, can citizens be better engaged in this process so that they can play a more integral role in helping to shape the green canopies in their neighborhoods?
Fifth annual MIT Water Summit brings together interdisciplinary panelists to give multiple perspectives on major issues surrounding the water sector.
Veterans of civil rights movement urge students to join ongoing battle against injustice.
Eight student teams join MIT’s newest entrepreneurship accelerator.
Eight student-led teams hoping to launch ventures ranging from real estate development, to urban diagnostics, to novel design solutions for schoolchildren have been selected as the inaugural cohort for DesignX, the new entrepreneurship accelerator from MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P).
Awards recognize exemplary student research and writing by master's degree candidates.
Noninvasive technique reduces beta amyloid plaques in mouse models of Alzheimer’s disease.
Using LED lights flickering at a specific frequency, MIT researchers have shown that they can substantially reduce the beta amyloid plaques seen in Alzheimer’s disease, in the visual cortex of mice.
This treatment appears to work by inducing brain waves known as gamma oscillations, which the researchers discovered help the brain suppress beta amyloid production and invigorate cells responsible for destroying the plaques.
Grant continues support for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) a $1.5 million grant in continued support for the Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative (GAHTC).
Inaugural exhibition in the newly renovated space features work from 20 MIT Arts Scholars.
MIT professor explains how “productive neighborhoods” can remake cities.
At UN Climate Change Conference, MIT researchers share insights on implementing climate commitments.
Retrospective documents 15 years of Aga Khan Program
A retrospective of posters for the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at MIT, designed by José Luis Argüello, is on display now in Rotch Library.
Encapsulating molecular components in artificial membranes offers more flexibility in designing circuits.
MIT and Uber team up to study the potential for shared rides and vehicles to reshape urban mobility.
The Senseable City Lab and the transportation company Uber are launching a research initiative to explore how car- and ride-sharing networks could reshape the future of urban mobility. This initiative will explore new mobility paradigms for the 21st century, building on both parties’ data and analytics strengths.
Samuel Tak Lee Graduate Fellow Zixiao Yin plans to serve communities back home in Inner Mongolia.
Hong Kong will be the next stop on MIT's Better World global tour.
Real Estate Innovation Lab to promote the future of urban development by showing investors how it can work.
A new lab in the MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE) will link the creation of the built environment to economic impact, seeking to identify innovations in design and technology that will determine the future of communities and cities.
“Morphing” wing could enable more efficient plane manufacturing and flight.
Four join the SA+P faculty, while seven are recognized for work in art, architecture, and urbanism.
The School of Architecture and Planning has announced that seven faculty members have been recognized by being promoted, granted tenure, or given significant new roles.
The Engine will provide funding, space, and expertise — powering a network of innovation networks.
Today MIT President L. Rafael Reif announced the creation of The Engine, a new kind of enterprise designed to support startup companies working on scientific and technological innovation with the potential for transformative societal impact.
President Reif made the announcement at an evening event at The Engine’s Central Square, Cambridge, Massachusetts, headquarters attended by entrepreneurs, business leaders, investors, and members of the MIT community.
"SCIENTIA" is the newest addition to MIT's Public Art Collection.
MIT team awarded U.S. Department of Energy grant to investigate cost reductions in solar energy systems.
MIT researchers have been awarded a grant of nearly $1.3 million through the U.S. Department of Energy’s SunShot Initiative to study the reasons for solar energy’s rapid and sustained cost decline and how to continue reducing costs in the future.
San Francisco will be the next stop on MIT's Better World global tour.
On the evening of Oct. 20, more than 600 alumni and friends of MIT gathered at New York City’s Cipriani 25 Broadway to hear President L. Rafael Reif share his vision for the future of MIT.
New library proposals meant to enhance “meaningful access to knowledge.”
An MIT task force is releasing a preliminary report featuring a set of proposals aimed at steering MIT’s library system toward becoming an “open global platform” enabling the “discovery, use, and stewardship of information and knowledge” for future generations.
School of Architecture and Planning will develop curriculum, courses for Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation.
MIT and the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI) announced today a strategic collaboration in which faculty from the School of Architecture and Planning will help launch the new undergraduate educational institution in Dubai focused on design.
Combining cellphone data with perceptions of public spaces could help guide urban planning.
MIT professors take on problem formulation in thermal science: It can be taught, and their new book describes how.
New DesignX accelerator speeds innovation at the School of Architecture and Planning
The School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) has launched a new entrepreneurship accelerator, DesignX, to cultivate and assist students and faculty developing products, systems, and companies that focus on design and the built environment.
Study of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Uganda assesses scalability, identifies supply chain challenges.
The World Health Organization estimates that nearly half of the world’s population is at risk for malaria, a life-threatening, but ultimately curable and preventable disease spread by mosquitos.
PhD student Lily Bui works with communities around the world to gather data from the bottom up.
Lily Bui’s path to her PhD program in urban studies and planning at MIT has been a meandering one, yet along the way she has followed her passions while finding new ways to support communities at the grassroots level.
President Barack Obama and MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito discuss the challenges and opportunities facing us in bringing the technology of science fiction into the real world, from driverless cars to automated jobs with Scott Dadich in the November issue of WIRED.
Words from the editors
The editors of Experience: Culture, Cognition, and the Common Sense, Caroline Jones, David Mather and Rebecca Uchill, describe the unusual material features, artistic interventions and intellectual provocations that make this book object something more than a typical codex.
MIT researchers develop a decision-making tool for global classrooms looking to deploy educational technologies.
“Electome” project charts the national conversation in unique detail.
Grad student Billy Ndengeyingoma helps improve affordable-housing design in Africa.
Billy Ndengeyingoma’s time at MIT has been marked by transitions. He has moved from one continent to another, from an undergraduate program to a master’s, and from a civil engineering specialty to urban planning.
MIT architecture jumps to No. 2 spot in annual survey.
The professional master's of architecture program at MIT has tied for second in the nation in the latest DesignIntelligence rankings, a jump from fifth position last year. MIT's architecture program has consistently appeared among the top 10 in this annual assessment of nationally accredited graduate programs.
MIT, AMS Institute will collaborate to solve complex urban problems for Amsterdam with the development of autonomous "roboats."
Samuel Tak Lee Building filled with light and life after summer renovations.
Last year, the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) and the Center for Real Estate (CRE) gathered to give Building 9 a new name: the Samuel Tak Lee Building. This week, they came together again to celebrate the extensive summer renovations that have given the building a new look and rejuvenated spaces.
Professor of urban design and public policy Brent Ryan believes good architecture can help revive cities.
Most of us have looked at an ugly building and thought: I could do better than that. Brent Ryan turned that idea into a career.
Megan Smith ’86, SM ’88 and other thought leaders offer advice to students on how women in STEM fields can develop skills for navigating life and work.
New computational imaging method identifies letters printed on first nine pages of a stack of paper.
MIT researchers and their colleagues are designing an imaging system that can read closed books.
In the latest issue of Nature Communications, the researchers describe a prototype of the system, which they tested on a stack of papers, each with one letter printed on it. The system was able to correctly identify the letters on the top nine sheets.
MIT–Tsinghua collaboration grapples with urban issues in China.
This winter, China released its 13th “Five-Year Plan,” a socioeconomic blueprint for designing the country’s future. Alongside measures to improve per capita income, life expectancy, air and water quality, innovation, and other initiatives to build a healthier and more prosperous society, the plan also calls for “new-type urbanization.”
This summer, MIT professors, students, and staff are traveling across China to teach, learn from, and work with Chinese counterparts on a variety of projects. Numerous teams are associated with the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) and the MIT International Science and Technology Initiative (MISTI).
When an employee at Google’s Mexico City office takes a post-lunch plunge into the on-site ball pit, is she working or playing? And when an employee in one of Foxconn’s factory sites in China leaps from his eighth-floor dormitory, only to be cradled in recently installed “suicide” netting, is he fulfilling or transgressing the design of the workspace? What is the “work” that is supposed to happen in the workspace and how have transformations of the tools, economies, demographics, and technologies within the workspace shaped the notion of work?
MIT has launched a comprehensive fundraising initiative that aims to raise $5 billion to advance the Institute’s work on some of the world’s biggest challenges. Learn more about the SA+P community’s commitment to building a better world in a statement from Dean Hashim Sarkis.
Funding supports the development of a “virtual museum” from an archive of experimental works.
MIT has named its Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU) in honor of Norman B. Leventhal '38, a visionary developer and philanthropist at the center of Boston’s postwar revival. A life member emeritus of the MIT Corporation who died last year, Mr. Leventhal was a vital member of the MIT community for three-quarters of a century.
The center was officially named the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism today at a signing ceremony attended by Alan and Sherry Leventhal and other members of Norman Leventhal’s extended family.
A number of SA+P professors and researchers are offering short courses and digital programs through MIT Professional Education.
Learn more about SA+P faculty-led courses which include:
Advances in Imaging
Ramesh Raskar, Camera Culture, Media Lab
Architects, artists, and designers from the MIT community will constitute a robust presence at the 2016 Venice Architecture Biennale.
With ten full-time and visiting faculty, multiple alumni, and numerous contributing researchers and graduate students, the MIT community is deeply integrated into the extensive programming associated with the Biennale, including the main exhibition, national pavilions, and collateral locations across the historic city. In all, individuals from the MIT community are represented in many separate installations and exhibitions.
MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge 100 years ago. Alumni and friends of MIT and SA+P are invited to campus for an Open House on April 23 to celebrate the Centennial.
The Department of Architecture will launch a new Minor in Design (D-Minor) in Fall 2016. "Undergraduates across MIT are excited about design. They’re participating in increasing numbers in classes and research projects that engage challenging, multi-disciplinary design problems. We are delighted to now offer our very creative and talented undergrads a more structured opportunity to pursue their particular design interests," says Terry Knight, Professor of Design and Computation and Design Minor Advisor.
Hot off the presses, the latest publication from SA+P Press showcases over ten years worth of MIT/DUSP studios, practica, and workshops. In these 128-pages you can read about student work around the country and around the globe – from the neighborhoods of Boston to the streets of Beijing, from Maine to Manila, from the Salton Sea to Singapore.er of print copies as well if you need them.)
For the second year in a row, MIT has been named the top university in the world for architecture/built environment in the latest subject rankings from QS World University Rankings. In art and design, the Institute ranked No. 2 globally, a jump from fourth position in 2015. Ten other subject areas at MIT were ranked number one.
From Hashim Sarkis
Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning
Beauty, as Elaine Scarry explained, leaves us weak but gratified. It makes us want to extend the gratification longer by copying it. Curiously, this act of replication does not take away from the originality of the thing of beauty. To the contrary, it confirms its uniqueness and adds to its persona, its public role as the face of a value that is collectively upheld, distributed, and shared. If anything has persona, it is the architecture of Zaha Hadid.
Design & Computation graduate student Inés Ariza has been awarded a 2016 Quarra Matter fellowship for development of digital workflows in design and fabrication. http://news.mit.edu/2016/in%C3%A9s-ariza-named-2016-quarramatter-fellow-0308 Nathan Brown, a graduate student in Building Technology, received an SOM Foundation Fellowship to support travel related to the study of architectural performance issues.
Future of Suburbia [Conference] is introduced by Eric Bender in Moving Beyond Suburban Legends. The conference is designed to appeal broadly to professionals involved in urban planning and development, and will explore how suburbs and their metropolitan areas may be made more sustainable and livable through better design and planning. The gathering will build on a two-year research effort by CAU, which has sought to go beyond traditional analyses of urban lands
College campuses have long played a vital role in our society: as educators of future generations, incubators for innovation and economic development, and partners with the communities we serve.
SA+P invites you to join leaders in campus design and educational innovation at Then, Now, Next, a symposium on the future of college campuses. Academic and industry partners will share ideas on the past, present, and future, as well as explore MIT’s role as an innovative campus.
The following obituary was graciously provided to us by the family of Professor Myer:
John Randolph Myer, known as Jack to his friends and family, died of natural causes on February 17th, surrounded by his family. He was 89 years old. Mr. Myer was a prominent Boston architect, founder of Arrowstreet, Inc. and was department head of MIT’s Department of Architecture from 1982-1987. With Kevin Lynch, and others, Jack Myer was instrumental in the Downtown Waterfront Renewal Plan, the Boston Architectural Center, and the Massachusetts State Archives Building.
Architect Hashim Sarkis (http://www.hashimsarkis.com) became the dean of SA+P one year ago. A recent profile details his practice, why he came to MIT, and his thoughts on design and democracy. Learn more at MIT News. (http://news.mit.edu/2016/faculty-profile-hashim-sarkis-0208)
A team of four Architecture students – David Birge, Gabriel Kozlowski, Difei Xu (SMArchS Urbanism ’15) and Barry Beagan (M.Arch ’15) received Second Prize in the invited International Student Urban Design Competition for Shanghai Railway Station Area.
For more information on their project, please see the project proposal website.
Times Square Arts selected Collective—LOK as the winner of 2016 annual Times Square Valentine Heart Pavilion, curated by the Center for Architecture.
Heart of Hearts
Times Square, New York, NY
2016
Architecture Professor of the Practice Sheila Kennedy, Lecturer Ryan Murphy, and Professor J. Meejin Yoon received awards at the Boston Society of Architects 2016 Design Awards, held January 28, 2016.
Marvin Minsky, professor emeritus of the Media Lab, was known as the "father of artificial intelligence" through his work at MIT's CSAIL (Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory), which he co-founded in 1959. He died Sunday, January 24, of a cerebral hemorrhage, at 88 years of age.
His obituary is available on MIT News: Marvin Minsky, “father of artificial intelligence,” dies at 88
Professor Stanford Anderson, in the History, Theory and Criticism discipline group of the Department of Architecture, died on Jan. 5. He will be missed by many in the School, as well as those touched by his 50 years at MIT.
His obituary is available on the MIT News website.
A memorial service for Anderson will be held Feb. 26 in MIT's Kresge Chapel beginning at 3 p.m. A reception will follow. Donations in his memory can be made to MIT Department of Architecture.
The "Heart of Hearts” pavilion, designed by Collective—LOK, opened in Father Duffy Square in Times Square, NYC on February 9th, 2016. It will remain on view through March 6, 2016.
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Love for Times Square: MIT professor, PhD candidate design Valentine’s Day pavilion for New York City.
http://news.mit.edu/2015/love-for-times-square-art-installation-1228
Skylar Tibbits, Research Scientist and Director of the Self-Assembly Lab, was named the Innovator of the Year by R&D Magazine at the annual R&D 100 Awards. The award is presented each year to an “individual or team who has demonstrated leadership, creativity, entrepreneurial spirit and success in the pursuit of science and technology.” It is the magazine’s top individual award.
Caleb Harper, a research scientist in MIT's Media Lab, and his work with "CityFARM" are attracting the attention of media and industry alike, with coverage by numerous news outlets as well as a partnership with retailer, Target.
Archinect's Paul Petrunia and Amelia Taylor-Hochberg sat down with Dean Hashim Sarkis to hear his perspective in comparing architecture education and practice.
"Our interview revolves around the same questions we ask in our Deans List series – how architecture education and practice are changing, how to address student needs, MIT’s particular take on how to cultivate exceptional architects, and the culture of the school in a global urban context."
An architectural exploration into ancient building techniques led students to create a 2,000 pound monument in honor of classmate Carrie McKnelly's parents who were lost in a fire.
Last May, students in Brandon Clifford's Megalithic Robotics class each designed small-scale models, but decided to create McKnelly's sculpture in full size: http://architecture.mit.edu/architectural-design/project/mcknelly-megalith
The MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE), hosted a meeting of the Architectural and Engineering Council of the National Association of Real Estate Investment Managers (NAREIM), to help make connections between MIT researchers and developers in order to modernize construction practices.
“We have no choice but to challenge assumptions, understand potential future scenarios, and build better strategies," said Gunnar Branson, president and CEO of NAREIM.
A new method to help communities manage climate risks
Perhaps you have heard the adage “think globally, act locally.” A DUSP project taking that idea to heart has demonstrated a new method for getting local citizens and leaders to agree on the best ways of managing the immediate and long-term effects of climate change.
P. Christopher Zegras SM ’01, MCP ’01, PhD ’05 has been named the lead principal investigator for the Future of Urban Mobility Interdisciplinary Research Group at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART).
Professor of the Practice Sheila Kennedy and her team at Kennedy Voilich Architecture (KVA), designed an innovative entryway as part of their transformation of Harvard's Tozzer Building, which was recently awarded a Best in Class prize from the Brick Industry Association of America. The entryway evokes ancient monuments while harnessing state-of-the-art computational design.
Please join us in congratulating Architecture Professor John E. Fernandez, who was named the new leader of MIT's Environmental Solutions Initiative!
J. Meejin Yoon, a professor and head of the Department of Architecture, was honored this week with the 2015 New Generation Leader award at a ceremony held Oct. 6 by Architectural Record as part of the magazine’s second annual Women in Architecture Forum and Awards event.
Joining faculty from different discipline groups, the Cross-Studios are a new model of teaching studios in the Department of Architecture. The cross-studios allow students to experience novel and innovative research that bridges between design, history, and engineering.
The Samuel Tak Lee MIT Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab (STL Lab), in conjunction with the Center for Real Estate (CRE) and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP), has announced its first round of faculty research grants, awarding $1.5 million to 13 MIT researchers and their teams.
The MIT Architecture Alumni group—or MITArchA, pronounced "mit-ARK-ah", for short—was proposed and formed by alumni of the school, led by Jacob Kain MArch ’00. Official approval by the Alumni Association is pending, with a formal vote schedule for Sept. 24, 2015.
Two events will help launch MITArchA later this month:
A new film highlights the Course 4 Undergraduate Program in Architecture. Watch the video to see the work and hear from our current Course 4 students and recent alumni, here.
"The magical thing about Course 4 is it teaches you how to take your creativity and design ideas and translate them into physical realities that are spatial, occupiable, inhabitable and have a powerful cultural resonance," said Meejin Yoon, Professor and Department Head.
This fall, SA+P's Department of Urban Studies and Planning welcomes four new faculty to its ranks. Combining the tools of urban planning and design with expertise in complementary disciplines, the group adds considerable strength to the department in areas such as public health and healthcare, environmental policy and planning, energy and other infrastructure systems, and the intersection of property, land use, and civil rights law.
The four new professors are:
Assistant Professor Joel Lamere and his firm GLD, lecturer Cristina Parreño Alonso of Cristina Parreño Architecture, and Marie Law Adams MArch '06 with Landing Studio, designed three of four installations for the 2015 Design Biennial Boston.
The installations are on view on the Rose Kennedy Greenway in downtown Boston through Sept. 25, 2015.
The MIT Center for Real Estate announces the launch of the BuildZoom and Urban Economics Lab New Index: a new set of residential construction and remodeling indices. The Index shows that in contrast to the tepid recovery of new home construction, the remodeling of existing homes has surpassed its pre-crisis level.
For the full story go to: http://mitcre.mit.edu/news/new-eye-on-housing-and-the-economy
What can big data tell us about the predictability of medical conditions? A new study by MIT researchers published in the journal Scientific Reports digs into this question by looking at anonymous data from over 500,000 patients. Among the findings is that our electronic medical records contain data that is up to 90 percent predictable — although this level of predictability is only attainable in theory. However, it can guide algorithmic designers and practitioners on what is possible in principle.
MIT historian of technology discusses new work examining “digital citizenship.”
Two global trends — bigger cities and more data — converged last week at MIT, where an international conference on computing and urban studies showed how researchers are harnessing more and more information in an attempt to help cities grow, improve transportation, and prepare for a changing climate and potential disasters.
Last winter painfully highlighted the public transportation challenges facing the Greater Boston region, as the struggles of the T became the struggles of Bostonians and Massachusetts residents to get to work and manage their daily lives.
Professor Eric Klopfer, director of the Scheller Teacher Education Program, and Vijay Kumar, associate dean of digital learning, have secured funding from MIT's Office of Digital Learning and the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation for a new program to aid educators in using emerging technologies called the MIT PK12 Initiative.
The program is detailed in an article by MIT News.
Four from SA+P were recently named as two of National Geographic's 2015 Emerging Explorers. From Architecture, research scientist and lecturer Skylar Tibbits, and Caleb Harper, MA '14, were named, and from the Media Lab David Sengeh, SM '12, and Manu Prakash, SM '05, PhD '08. These four are among six from MIT honored as "young trailblazers," and
Celebrate Summer and Meet SA+P’s New Dean at the Haitian Embassy in DC!
Meet School of Architecture + Planning Dean Hashim Sarkis at an SA+P cocktail reception featuring hors d'oeuvres with a Caribbean flair.
The May edition of the international architecture magazine The Plan is featuring ORG's Fire Station in Asse.
ORG was selected and appointed for the design of a territorial urban vision for the future Metropolis of Aix-Marseille-Provence. The project is of a significant national importance in France, as Marseille is the second largest city of the country. The project is considered the Mediterranean equivalent of the Grand Paris project.
http://www.orgpermod.com/content/new-project-aix-marseille-provence
MIT was named the top university for architecture and the built environment by QS World University Rankings in 2015. Universities are scored in 36 different subject areas, on academic reputation, employer reputation and research impact.
The MIT Program in Science, Technology, and Society awarded the 2015 Benjamin Siegel prize to "CONTESTED LANDSCAPES: Staking Claims in Michigan’s Copper Country," by Elizabeth Yarina, a joint Masters student in Architecture and City Planning. They noted:
Situated on MIT’s campus in honor of Officer Sean Collier who was shot and killed on April 18th 2013, the Collier Memorial marks the site of tragedy with a timeless structure—translating the phrase "Collier Strong" into a space of remembrance through a form that embodies the concept of strength through unity. The memorial is composed of thirty-two solid blocks of granite that form a five-way stone vault. Each block supports the other to create a central, covered space for reflection.
The MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology (CAST) has received $1,500,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in support of the Center’s role as a catalyst for multidisciplinary creative experimentation and integration of the arts across all areas of MIT. The recent grant brings the Mellon Foundation’s total support for CAST to $3,000,000, among the largest gifts received by the Arts at MIT.
Elizabeth Yarina is a winner in the AIA Committee on the Environment/ACSA first annual AIA COTE Top Ten For Students Competition. The competition "recognizes ten exceptional studio projects that seamlessly integrate innovative, regenerative strategies within their broader design concepts.
The Department will host an informational open house for students to meet faculty, students and staff in the Department and ask questions about the major and other academic opportunities within the Department.
Friday, April 17, 2015 from 11 a.m. until 12 p.m. in the Long Lounge, Room 7-429.
A tour of the Department will follow.
Refreshments offered.
All freshmen are invited.
For more information, contact Renée Caso, 617-253-7792, yammie@mit.edu
The Market Street Prototyping Festival in San Francisco displays research that viewers decided should move from "prototype to reality." MIT's Urban RISK Lab was selected for its Emergency Preparedness Hub, on display on the corner of Market and Hayes Streets from April 9-11.
As an undergraduate, Leventhal studied civil engineering, becoming a naval architect during World War II. He founded the Beacon Construction Co. in 1946, along with his brother, Robert. He is known for several signature developments in Boston, as well as for being a "tireless benefactor."
“He had a great interest in art and architecture,” said Alan Leventhal, noting that his father’s intellectual interests were well served by his committee work at MIT. “He had an enthusiasm that never left him.”
The work of Gyorgy Kepes, from 1937 through 1947, is on display at Tate Liverpool in northern England. Kepes was the first artist on staff at MIT when he began to teach visual communication in 1944. Kepes founded the Center for Advanced Visual Studies, now part of the Program in Art, Culture and Technology.
SA+P MASTERCLASSES FOR THE UNENCUMBERED
Over the span of the next academic year, SA+P will invite artists and intellectuals of various stripes to host a one-day Master Class. No expertise is required to participate. In fact, just the opposite. Try something different, stretch your imagination, expand your lateral interests, or just have fun and get to know students from across the School. There are no grades, but bring your enthusiasm, intensity and collegiality.
As part of "Mapping Brooklyn," DUSP's Sarah Williams's digitized maps are presented alongside historic maps from the BHS collection.
On view at BRIC House, from February 26 to September 6, with an opening reception February 25, from 7 to 9 p.m.
The exhibit is featured in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle: http://www.brooklyneagle.com/articles/2015/1/30/new-exhibit-juxtapose-hi...
"Collective-LOK – a collaboration between Jon Lott (PARA-Project), William O'Brien Jr. (WOJR) and Michael Kubo (over,under) – designed the winning submission, selected from over 120 entries by 1000 public voters and an official competition jury."
Mapdwell’s web-based Solar System, developed by SA+P’s Sustainable Design Lab, helps users design at-home solar energy systems: it visualizes the costs and benefits of installing a solar roof by layering information about tax credits and carbon emissions savings onto a topographical map of roofs, and helps determine the most efficient spots for panels. Judges were smitten by its intuitive user interface, which crunches lots of data to become usable, business-forward, and most importantly, relevant to you.
SA+P’s Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU), in collaboration with others, has been named a winner of the Rebuild by Design competition, sponsored by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address the challenges faced by coastal communities in the wake of Hurricane Sandy. The state of New Jersey will receive $150M to implement CAU’s winning proposal.
SA+P is well represented at this year’s Venice Architecture Biennale, open now through November 23. The US Pavilion was co-curated by architecture professor Ana Miljacki; the Kuwait Pavilion was curated by alumna Alia Farid (SMVisS’08); an installation of new technology from the Senseable City Lab is a key component in the Central Pavilion; and the Biennale’s highest honor – the Golden Lion – went to the Korean Pavilion, co-curated by alumnus Hyung-Min Pai (PhD’93, Architecture).
In April, SA+P’s Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU) brought together more than 200 political leaders, infrastructural engineers, design professionals and academicians to explore the question of how to shape sustainable futures for cities around the world.
Nine MIT students and alumni have been awarded US Student Fulbright grants for the upcoming academic year, five of whom are from SA+P’s Department of Urban Studies + Planning. The 2014 recipients have proposed a range of projects in countries as varied as India, Mexico, Tanzania, Brazil, Germany, Spain, Brazil and Togo.
Return, revisit, reacquaint, remember, renew and reinvent with faculty, alumni, and current students. End the afternoon with a cocktail reception during which alumni are invited to present posters of their work, converse with faculty members, and network with participants.
Mark Jarzombek has been named Interim Dean of the School of Architecture + Planning, effective July 1; he succeeds Adèle Naudé Santos, who stepped down at the end of June.
In January, Adèle Naudé Santos, dean of SA+P since 2004, announced her decision to step down in June. She will stay on the faculty of both the architecture and planning departments and remain deeply involved with the new Center for Advanced Urbanism while continuing work with her prize-winning architectural practice, Santos-Prescott.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded MIT's School of Architecture + Planning a $1M grant to help create a Global Architectural History Teaching Collaborative.
