MIT Department of Architecture

This fall, the MIT Department of Architecture is hosting online information sessions to offer prospective graduate students an opportunity to learn about admissions, programs, school culture, and research at MIT. Our?Online Prospective Student Open House?for Fall 2024 is?TUESDAY, October 29, starting at 9AM EDT. This online web forum?will enable prospective Master of Architecture (MArch) and Master of Science (Architecture Studies, SMArchS; Building Technology, SMBT) students to ask questions and learn about studying in our department. See below for more information.?Register here to receive a link prior to the event: https://lnkd.in/gJbjGC4D ACT will hold two open house sessions via Zoom on?Wednesday, October 16 at 9am ET and/or Thursday, October 17 at 7pm ET Click here for more information about ACT's Open House and to register. Learn more here:?https://lnkd.in/gNyA9sYA Photo Credit: Chenyue “xdd44” Dai

MIT Architecture Lecture Series: Vivian Loftness *Balancing High Tech and Natural Tech for a Carbon Neutral Built Environment - Humans and Nature in the Loop* Presented with the Building Technology Group Thu Oct 17 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Long Lounge, 7-429, 02139 Registration link: https://lnkd.in/dBTteizS Vivian Loftness is University Professor, Paul Mellon Chair at Carnegie Mellon University and former Head of Carnegie Mellon Architecture. She is an internationally renowned researcher, author and educator with over 40 years of experience in building science research for industry and government. In addition to editing the 2013 and 2020 Springer Encyclopedia on Sustainable Built Environments, she has authored books, research reports and chapters on climate and regionalism in architecture, environmental design and sustainability, advanced building systems integration and design for performance in the workplace of the future to enhance productivity, health and the triple bottom line. Vivian has served on over 25 board of directors, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT), the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Federal Energy Management Advisory Committee (FEMAC), the National American Institute of Architects (AIA), International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) boards, as well as on 14 National Academy of Science (NAS) panels on sustainable built environments. Vivian has been recognized as one of 13 Stars of Building Science by the Building Research Establishment in the UK, received the Award of Distinction from AIA Pennsylvania and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA), and holds a National Educator Honor Award from the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) and a USGBC “Sacred Tree” Award. Vivian has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Architecture from MIT. Images courtesy of Vivian. Poster design by Omnivoreland #lectureseries #sustainability #buildingscience

MIT Architecture Lecture Series: Vivian Loftness *Balancing High Tech and Natural Tech for a Carbon Neutral Built Environment - Humans and Nature in the Loop* Presented with the Building Technology Group Thu Oct 17 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM Long Lounge, 7-429, 02139 Registration link: https://lnkd.in/dBTteizS Vivian Loftness is University Professor, Paul Mellon Chair at Carnegie Mellon University and former Head of Carnegie Mellon Architecture. She is an internationally renowned researcher, author and educator with over 40 years of experience in building science research for industry and government. In addition to editing the 2013 and 2020 Springer Encyclopedia on Sustainable Built Environments, she has authored books, research reports and chapters on climate and regionalism in architecture, environmental design and sustainability, advanced building systems integration and design for performance in the workplace of the future to enhance productivity, health and the triple bottom line. Vivian has served on over 25 board of directors, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)’s National Advisory Council for Environmental Policy and Technology (NACEPT), the Department of Energy (DOE)’s Federal Energy Management Advisory Committee (FEMAC), the National American Institute of Architects (AIA), International Living Future Institute (ILFI) and U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) boards, as well as on 14 National Academy of Science (NAS) panels on sustainable built environments. Vivian has been recognized as one of 13 Stars of Building Science by the Building Research Establishment in the UK, received the Award of Distinction from AIA Pennsylvania and the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA), and holds a National Educator Honor Award from the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) and a USGBC “Sacred Tree” Award. Vivian has a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Architecture from MIT. Images courtesy of Vivian. Poster design by Omnivoreland #lectureseries #sustainability #buildingscience

We are excited to showcase Dimitrios Moutafidis' (SMArchS AD '25) project: “SELENOGRAPHIES: Texturality as Tactile Mediation for Transcalar Pedagogies 4.S33 Art, Culture, and Technology — Intro to Screen Printing: Manifesting the Multiple. Instructor: Graham Yeager, Fall 2023 The project was exhibited in: “Unfiguring: Experiments in the Practice of Science and Art”, March 2024, Graduate Students Interdisciplinary Conference, Mahindra Humanities Center, Harvard University. ”An object of wonder and socio-political projection and embedded in mythic and supernatural networks, the moon has diachronically pluralized the imagination of humans while being mediated by physiological, technical and cultural energies. From the neuro-physiology of the eye and Galileo’s crystals to sensors scanning the lunar topography, in Selenographies I search for the moon’s materialities. While all these mediations materialized the moon as a visual trace of socio-political imaginaries ─ byproducts of the Western salience of visuality as a major epistemic virtue ─ here I explore the moon/ Earth inter-planetary ecologies. 3d-Screenprinting becomes an investigatory practice that mediates these ecologies texturally. Every repetitive printing motion, becomes a tide, a pulse, a rhythm; an ecological event of being re-entangled with the Earth/ moon ecosystem. The emerging patterns of the material stratification become textural indexes of a new embodied prehension of the cosmic relations. The selenographic maps are re-inscribed as cosmic lands. The haptic engagement with the fragility of the textural ornamentation of the printed artefacts becomes an agent of exposing the Earth/ moon eco-systemic fragility. The printed traces become ecological ornaments and coral-craters; tactile traces whose efficacy to mediate these ecologies make them sentient and cosmic. Sources: Schmidt, Johann Friedrich Julius. Charte der Gebirge des Mondes. Berlin: In Commission bei Dietrich Reimer, 1878. Based on Wilhelm Lohrmann’s research, and NASA’s lunar digital elevation data: LOLA Science Team, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), Moon LRO LOLA DEM 118m v1, USGS Astrogeology Science Center.” Images courtesy of Dimitrios. #moon #screenprinting #materiality #technolandscapes #pedagogy

‘CLUB KITS - a temporary club’ – by Xavi L. Aguirre, Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture and founder of the Disassembly Design Lab at MIT – is on view at MIT Architecture’s Keller Gallery through October 18, 2024 CLUB KITS is a temporary club. This installation is an invitation to celebrate fleeting pleasures. With references to gyms, queer clubs and locker rooms, it combines the spatial/material qualities of architectures that prioritize the social imperative of physical togetherness, of spaces ready for sweat, loudness, physical abandon and mutual enjoyment. CLUB KITS sets a setting that can be tested in real time. Complete with a sound system and a video projection set up, the installation invites students and other artists to use the space at their leisure and will be activated on a weekly basis. During gallery open hours, the installation displays a video production by Aguirre, showing a night-to-day cruise through a series of body-oriented architectures that reappropriate often-invisible architectural proofing layers in order to remix our material expectations of interiority and exteriority and includes an immersive soundtrack by composer Ash Fure. Using an architectural kit-of-parts, this space came together in 3 days. Built with lightweight aluminum strut, an easy and quick architectural assemblage system that matches the interim nature of the space. The kit is complete with off-the-shelf concrete modules, rubber mats salvaged from a relocated local gym and custom soundproofing panels developed by the Disassembly Design Lab that allow for sonic calibration of the space through fine-tuned modularity. Architecturally, the project is designed with its disassembly in mind. Move-in and move out day look pretty similar here. Using dry assembly techniques in an effort to maintain all materials unpunctured and preserve their perpetual reusability, this architecture is put together using nuts, bolts, clamps and friction fittings. No nails, glues or mutually destructive construction techniques were used. The project creates a user-ready space now while serving as a proposal for a change-ready, reversible approach to architecture as an alternative to current demolition-bound building practice. ——- About the author: Xavi [SHAH-bee] L. Aguirre is an Assistant Professor of Architecture, founder of the architectural design practice stock-a-studio and Director of MIT’s Disassembly Design Lab. Through a focus on architectural temporality/durability, they create large-scale cultural productions, develop change-ready material techniques and build architectures that consider our relationship to circular resources, aesthetics and supply systems. Design and Install Team: Aisha Nasr Cheema Mara Jovanovic Sarah Okayli Masaryk Leanah Sloan Aulgur Video production team: Boneless Pizza Productions Ian Erickson Zachary Slonsky Exhibit images: Chenyue “xdd” Dai

“Damp Skin: The Porous Urbanity and Individual” Exhibit by students just wrapped up at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Weisner Student Art Gallery 9.9.2024 – 9.29.2024 Curated by students Cheng-Hsin Chan (SMArchS ‘24), Ina Wu (MArch ‘25) & Ray Wang (SMArchS ‘25) Damp Skin is a collaborative project exploring the impact of East Asia’s climate on post-modernized cities, focusing on memories, body perception, and everyday cultural phenomena affected by humidity and heat. This exhibition, The Porous Urbanity and Individual, presents three works by MIT Taiwanese architects and design researchers. These works include a living archive and historical research of Taiwanese domesticity as it contends with dampness within urban housing, a sculpture series capturing emotional imprints of exhaling skin within Taiwan and Hong Kong’s urban environments, and digital representations of urban life’s permeable, living skin. Special thanks to the Council for the Arts at MIT for funding. Images by Cheng-Hsin Chan & Jaye Fan #studentwork #exhibit #mittaiwan

Over the past 3 years, Computation Phd Candidate Sandy Curth has worked on ways to use earth and 3D printing. His goal is to make extremely low-carbon buildings that meet today’s building codes, allowing additive manufacturing to have a direct impact on the way we build. Sandy, who heads the Programmable Mud Research Initiative at MIT and his team of MArch students, recently published their findings in a paper titled “EarthWorks: Zero waste 3D printed earthen formwork for shape-optimized, reinforced concrete construction.” EarthWorks is a system for directly recycling construction waste soils into formwork for shape-optimized concrete and earth-building that meet California’s rigorous building code requirements. The group explored multiple modalities, including cast-in-place hybrid earth/reinforced concrete walls, tilt-up, and pre-cast structural systems, all integrated with concrete-saving design optimization tools developed by the Digital Structures group. Using this novel method, complex, material-saving geometries can be fabricated quickly and for little material cost using earth 3d printing, opening up a wide range of both performance and aesthetic design opportunities. The research article describing the results of these experiments can be found at https://lnkd.in/d-Cj6CWf Team: Alexander (Sandy) Curth, Natalie Pearl, Tim Cousin, Emily Wissemann, Vincent Jackow, Latifa Alkhayat, Oliver Moldow, Keith J. Lee, Larry Sass, Mohamed Ismail, Caitlin Mueller Photographers: Sandy Curth, Oliver Moldow, Bruce Heavin, Jesse Gates #mud #3dprinting #formwork #carbon

Melodie Yashar and Julian Ocampo ICON and Large-scale Robotic Construction: The Future of Building on Earth and Other Worlds Part of the MIT Fall 2024 Architecture Lecture Series. Presented with the Architecture and Urbanism Group. This talk will discuss ICON's technology development efforts advancing large-scale additive manufacturing and revolutionizing the impact of 3D printing on homebuilding—both on Earth and in space. ICON's robotics, material optimization and logistics of construction demonstrate a renewed ability to deliver homes with speed and increased resiliency. ICON’s new suite of technologies are designed to further automate construction, in addition to giving a glimpse into the future of homebuilding on the Moon and Mars. Melodie is the Vice-President of Building Design and Performance at ICON. In 2020, Melodie joined ICON to establish and build the Architecture & Building Performance department. Disciplines under her management include: Construction Architecture, Architectural Technology, Structural Engineering, Building Science & Performance, and Regulatory Affairs. Melodie oversees the architectural direction of ICON’s built work as well as the performance of ICON’s building systems to deliver optimally-performing structures that shift the paradigm of homebuilding on Earth and beyond. Julian is the Senior Director of the Design+Build team at ICON, where he leads the design of the company’s innovative construction projects. In this role, he collaborates with a multidisciplinary team of architects, engineers, and designers to create cutting-edge structures using ICON’s proprietary 3D printing technology. Julian plays a key role in advancing ICON’s mission to address the global housing crisis by designing scalable, sustainable, and affordable housing solutions. His work integrates architectural design with advanced construction technologies to improve the speed, efficiency, and quality of building processes. This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and streamed online. Register here: https://lnkd.in/ezdY-f2m Poster design by Omnivore, Inc.

A JDVIV / IVJDV September 26, 2024, 6PM Part of the 2024 Fall Lecture Series Jan De Vylder and Inge Vinck are co-founders of jan de vylder architecten (JDV A – 2007 to 2010 ) and architecten de vylder vinck taillieu (A DVVT – 2010 to 2019) and recently of architecten jan de vylder inge vinck / inge vinck jan de vylder architecten (A JDVIV / IVJDV A – ETC since 2019). All with so much joy. ? A JDVIV / IVJDV A is a multi-disciplinary practice in which the making and the thinking are deeply imbedded. The baselines UNIVERSUM CARROUSEL JOURNEY as also FORM LIFE URGE do give image to that. Experiments like THAT IS DOES NOT LOOKS GOOD MAKES THAT IT LOOKES GOOD as movements from DO-IT-YOURSELF to DO-IT-TOGETHER give back-ground to projects like house ROT-ELLEN-BERG as the free space for psychiatric clinic CARITAS to the pr posal of strategy for the PALAIS DES EXPOS. And so much more. This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and streamed online. Register at https://lnkd.in/dnDWCcue? Poster design by Omnivoreland #publiclecture #experiments #multidisciplinary #studio

“Exoercising A Haunted City” A Thesis project by BRYAN WONG (SMArchS '24) advised by Arindam Dutta, Carrie Norman and Jaffer Kolb With the looming threat of cultural erasure posed by Hong Kong’s repatriation to China no later than 2047, rituals emerge as the last resource sustaining the collective identity of the city. This thesis documents, through the study of local Taoist-Buddhist practices, the choreographies of rituals as a reparative tool to resist the disappearance of local culture. It is linked to findings from everyday domestic offerings to ancestors, annual festive performances of traumatic cleansing, and the booming clientele businesses of precautionary rites, all of which demonstrate their spatial and temporal qualities as methods to resist modern state control. To retain the residue of pre-modern practices as a critique of socio-political turmoil, this thesis suggests an alternative design that preserves and promotes the annual ghost festival for public participation. By revising the festival’s pilgrimage route and ritual sheds, this thesis transforms the traditional nature of ephemeral scaffoldings into permanent poles and follies. Situated along the city’s most haunted public estate, these structures are programmed as public facilities for fitness training and children’s playscapes. During the festival, they will be activated into ritual sheds, demonstrating a formal and functional contrast between the everyday and the ritual—from form to formlessness, exposure to closure, and lightness to heaviness. Designed to evade institutional surveillance, these clandestine transformations preserve solidarity and identity not by emphasizing the significance of priests exorcising in rituals, but by highlighting the quotidian motor memories developed from locals exercising within. The duality of ritual and everyday movements shall exercise the ghosts of a haunted city. Images courtesy of Bryan #studentwork #thesis #urban #ritual #hongkong