Research is cultivated across labs, centers, and other environments for inquiry, each with its own methods, questions, and ways of working.
Labs & Centers
Architecture Labs
The Department of Architecture labs and shops connect studio practice with rigorous technical investigation, creating spaces where research in the arts, design and urbanism, computation, building technology, and history and theory can be tested through making and application.
![The “New World of Weather” project, one of MIT’s five Climate Grand Challenges announced in 2022, is “advancing the science, technologies, and practical strategies needed to help communities anticipate [extreme weather] and build greater resilience,” says MIT Vice President for Energy and Climate Evelyn Wang.](/sites/default/files/mit-news/mit-climate-cyclone.jpg)
MIT Center for Real Estate
MIT’s Center for Real Estate (CRE) investigates real estate practice and transactions from initial concept to market realization. Its work advances real estate investment and the built environment through development and research centered on financial, social, and environmental performance and responsibility.
The Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism
Urbanism constitutes one of the most complex societal challenges of today’s world. MIT's Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU) is motivated by the radical changes in our urbanizing environment, and focuses on the design and planning of large-scale, complex, metropolitan environments.
MIT Morningside Academy for Design
The MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) brings design into conversation with disciplines across MIT, from engineering and science to architecture, planning, the humanities, and business. Through learning, research, making, and entrepreneurship, MAD expands who engages in design and how design is used to explore and respond to complex challenges.
MIT Media Lab
The MIT Media Lab is a dynamic, interdisciplinary creative sandbox firmly grounded in academic excellence. Here, innovation thrives through the collaboration of dozens of research groups, initiatives, programs, and centers with their consortium members. They focuse not only on creating and commercializing transformational future technologies, but also on their potential to impact society for good.
Urban Studies & Planning Labs
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) combines academic study with the active practice of place-making to understand and solve pressing problems that cities face across the globe; its labs bridge together research on housing, mobility, climate, governance, and community development to real-world planning and policy.
