MIT Department of Architecture

Rebecca Choi Presented with the HTC Forum Part of the MIT Spring 2025 Architecture Lecture Series. Thursday, March 6, 6pm EST. Lectures are free and open to the public and will be live streamed on our YouTube channel (https://lnkd.in/exKQMrG7) "Soul and T-Square": The Watts Urban Workshop and the Conditions of Black Spatial Agency By reconsidering the Watts Urban Workshop’s architectural proposals for funding from President Johnson’s Model Cities Program, part of his 1964 War on Poverty, this microhistory outlines feasible architectural visions of reparations in 1970s Watts, Los Angeles. While most histories of the War on Poverty consider Johnson’s concept of “maximum feasible participation” as a driving force of self-help programming for poor communities to be more of a gesture than a call, a consideration of the Watts Urban Workshop’s goals to teach self-determination and community participation shows how Black practitioners were thinking about reparative futures in ways that have not been registered by architecture, urban planning, or history. HTC Forum is made possible with the generous support of Thomas Beicher (PhD 2004, https://lnkd.in/ej-5P7Uc) Rebecca Choi is an Assistant Professor of architectural history at Tulane University. Her research considers how movements for racial justice have had a pivotal role in the making of urban America. By focusing on social activism and community organizing as they relate to housing rights, land ownership and the city, her work considers protests, boycotts, sit-ins, and rebellions to be insurgent “hacks” in the ever-changing codes of an anti-Black world. She is currently working on two book projects. The first, Black Architectures: Race, Pedagogy and Practice, puts oral histories into conversation with architectural archives and brings underexamined Black architectural producers to the surface of 20th-century history. The second, Swamp Life, examines how Black women have challenged the rigid categorization of space as habitable or uninhabitable by reclaiming swamplands as non-binary sites of survival across the Black Atlantic.

Winter Series: IAP Student Trips 2025 OFFCUT/CUT OFF ODDS & MODS, Latifa Alkhayat, Keith J. Lee, Maryam Aljomairi Over January IAP OFFCUT/CUT OFF was held in Bahrain in collaboration with ODDS & MODS. Taught by Maryam Al Jomairi, Latifa Alkhayat & Keith Lee, the class was held in the industrial setting of Awal Refrigeration and Air Conditioning. Projects were diverse and reflective of a design process driven by working with the eclectic range of scavenged materials. They challenge the pursuit of production with assumptions of infinite materials, instead, allowing material idiosyncrasies to guide design. Students were immersed in an environment of metal working, where they gained insights into large scale production. In addition, class visited local studios and Alba’s aluminium smelting campus to grasp the country’s production and design scene. This class was sponsored by the US Embassy Manama, alongside Amakin and the National Bank of Bahrain for local participants. 1- Blue Chan and Paris Bezanis 2- Shaima Shamsi and Lindsay Hu 3- Fatima Zayed and Zaynab Eltaib 4- Sima Akdurak, Bayan Hawachi, Mohammed Al Wahoush 5- May Abdulla and Jabari Canada 6- Bernardo Gonzalez and Mohamed Al Hajeri 7- Alaa Al Kooheji and Mohamed Madan 8-Sara Fathallah and Harrison White 9- Teaching team 10 - Participants Photo credits: Jabari Canada, Latifa Alkhayat and class students. This class was sponsored by the US Embassy Manama, alongside Amakin and the National Bank of Bahrain for local participants. #aluminum #offcut #waste #reuse #circulardesign #computation

Winter Series: IAP Student Trips 2025 Brick x Brick: Drawing A Particular Survey ???? Carrie Norman & Adriana Giorgis Over IAP, students in ‘Brick x Brick: Drawing a Particular Survey’ led by Carrie Norman and Adriana Giorgis, traveled to Tuskegee University to explore the legacy of Robert R. Taylor—the first accredited Black architect, MIT graduate, and designer of much of Tuskegee’s historic campus. The course explores the architectural survey as a tool for reflecting on material practices through the lenses of race, place, and preservation. Images: 1. Tuskegee University Archives 2-3. Ragland Clay Brick Plant 4-6. Students Surveying Wilcox 7. Ty Skeiky Field Sketches 8. A Lecture by Dr. Kwesi Daniels 9. Lifting the Veil, Booker T Washington Image Credit: Jabari Canada IAP Series 2/3 #BrickByBrick #Tuskegee #RobertRTaylor

Winter Series: IAP Student Trips 2025 'ECOMPOSITES' PROTOTYPING Anton Garcia-Abril The IAP workshop focused on developing a prototype at scale with an architectonic material “ecomposite - (ecological composites)” to push the capabilities of different materials and understand their combined behavior to produce new meanings. The students engaged in the creation of fluid forms in physical space with the use of recycled materials sourced from the vicinity of the testing grounds at a lab in Madrid to foster cohesive creations. Following?#datatoprototype?methodologies, the students conducted collaborative analysis and discussions, while exploring the union of these various materials to develop different prototypes, testing their material robustness alongside other assembly types. The 5-day workshop allowed the students to setup, cast, de-mold, and capture a 3d scan of their complete pieces to critically examine their process and outcomes. Series 1/3 Images courtesy of Antón García-Abril #testing?#ground?#prototypes?#composites

Mexico Studio/Practicum IAP Trip DUSP (MCP) + MIT Architecture (SMArchS Urbanism) Professors: eran ben joseph, Mary Anne Ocampo, Alberto Meouchi; Teacher Assistant: Daniela Martínez Chapa ”Trash to Treasure: Landscape, Planning, Design and Development at Bordo Poniente” was a recent studio trip to Mexico City for the Site and Environmental Systems Planning Practicum. This semester-long collaboration between MIT and UNAM focuses on Bordo Poniente, Latin America’s largest urban waste landfill, as the site for innovative site planning, urban design, energy transition, and/or landscape restoration. Over winter break MIT students collaborated with UNAM architecture students to frame the challenges and opportunities ahead. The visit provided valuable information for the research and design strategies we will develop throughout the semester. Students: Anna Morgan, Anna Savino, Virginia Sun, Tatiana Jiménez, Wing Man Chan, Eunice Ngai, Sam Owen, Oz Fishman, Takumi Kitamura, Thomas Hyo-min King, S M Kaikobad, Ami Kurosaki, Daniela Martinez Chapa #studiotrip #archiurbanism #mexico #trashtotreasure

"Soft Systems of Support" 4.021 How to Design, Fall 2024 Taught by Associate Professor Skylar Tibbits & Teaching Fellow Adriana Giorgis ‘How to Design’ introduces undergraduates to fundamental design principles and processes. In this second exercise, students explored the creation of soft systems of support for people or objects. They focused on elements that bear, prop, sustain, frame, and protect within our environments and daily lives, working in teams of three to design using a specific mode of fabrication: inflatables. The exercise challenged students to bring attention to everyday support structures that are typically engineered to be hidden. By working with inflatables, students confronted the limitations and possibilities of pneuma—or breath—infusing each project with a sense of life, temporality, and the need for regular maintenance. Students began by identifying sites on the MIT campus where hidden elements of support existed or where interventions were needed. These sites included missing chairs at the tops of stairwells, screens to shield overly exposed windows, and unlit paths that needed illumination. The goal was to design interventions that not only served functional purposes but also provoked new ways of seeing the infrastructures that support our everyday lives. Image Credits: (1-3) Sylvie Seo, Abby Suk, Shinyoung Kang (4-6) River Adkins, Nicole Bunyatov, Remington Kim (7-9) Krystal Jiang, Kortni Foreman, Lucinda Sun, Chenyue 'xdd44' Dai #howtodesign #inflatables #course #frame #prop

S M Kaikobad (SMArchS '26) Stilt - (inter) cultural dialogue between inclusion and identity 4.154 Architecture Design Option Studio The Amazonia Studio, 2024 Taught by: Angelo Bucci, TA: Nasibe Nur Dündar Manaus centers on the promotion of cultural exchange and the creation of spaces dedicated to supporting artists. Anchored in the context of Sete de Setembro Avenue, the studio emphasizes artistic manifestations as a medium for fostering dialogue and creativity. Given the scarcity of empty plots in this urban corridor, the projects are conceived as interventions integrated with existing structures. A key focal point is the Clube de Madrugada, a historically significant plaza tied to the 1960s cultural movement, serving as a symbolic site to celebrate and nurture artistic expression. The proposals aim to utilize underutilized spaces to create inclusive community venues for artists across diverse age groups, socioeconomic backgrounds, and disciplines while reflecting the tropical architectural identity of the Amazon region. Public plazas inspired by the floating houses of Manaus are envisioned in the spaces between solid architectural elements, fostering engagement and accessibility. This strategy not only enhances public interaction but also contributes to revenue regeneration for long-standing residents, ensuring a sustainable approach to urban revitalization. Within the dense urban fabric, the design approach prioritizes the adaptive reuse of rooftop spaces, addressing the visible spatial limitations of the cityscape. The projects propose modular, replicable systems that integrate seamlessly with existing buildings, incorporating vertical circulation within the voids between structures and horizontal platforms for multifunctional use. #studentwork #amazonia #brazil #manaus

Ya Gao (MArch ‘28) "PATH" Architecture Core I Instructors: Liam O’Brien, Carrie Norman, Jaffer Kolb PATH is a response to the famous Core I riddle, "a stair to there, and a stair to nowhere" - a riddle starts the core sequence for all MIT MArch students. This conceptual piece is composed of four distinct stair components, each extracted from the same vertical cube and then reconfigured into a new form. PATH can be oriented in multiple directions, yet each configuration retains the essence of stairs. Each step, in its transformation, leads you somewhere — toward specific, defined directions. However, despite its outward functionality, PATH is also, paradoxically, a stair to nowhere. It is constructed from only tape on the inside and a soft plastic sheet, materials too delicate to support any weight. It is a ghost stair that can only be perceived through its white outline. The pink edges add another layer of meaning. They intentionally frame an interior space that is visible to the audience, yet entirely inaccessible. This space exists in full view but remains forever out of reach, reinforcing the idea of an impossible journey — a path that leads to a destination you can see but never touch. #studentwork #coreI #stair #paradox

Congratulations to Richa Gupta (SMArchS Computation ‘25), Alexander Htet Kyaw (SMArchS Computation '25), Michael Wong (UG '25 EECS), Bradley Bunch (UG '25 EECS), Nidhish Sagar (SM EECS'25) who won 1st Place at the MIT Generative AI Hackathon. The team presented Curator AI, an AI-driven platform that leverages large vision-language models and augmented reality to provide contextual product recommendations for E-Commerce. The project was awarded with $26,000 in prizes, including cash and OpenAI credits. See their demo here: https://lnkd.in/d6APF6E5 And Forbes’ mention of their project: https://lnkd.in/eSSu7Ayh #GenAI #hackathon #win

Shengtao Shen (MArch '28) ”Veiled” 4.151 Architecture Design Core Studio I How do we describe an occupied space? People walk in and out, sit down in the long lounge, stand up, and talk with friends. We gain temporary "ownership" of this space. "Veiled" is a state, a discussion about the ambiguity of architectural space. The new long lounge has become a new display window for MIT Building 7, and the building has become a stage for performances. The transformation of the interior space and the movement of people form fleeting images. "Veiled" is a vague way of communicating inside and outside. The two moving walls create different usage scenarios according to people's different needs, aiming to discuss how we create, occupy, and influence the space we use. Through translucent window, "Veiled" communicates this narrative to the world beyond MIT—to passersby, visitors, and the curious alike. #studentwork #performance #mitlonglounge #movingspaces