About
Welcome
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MIT Architecture is shaped by MIT’s architecture. From our front door on Massachusetts Avenue, this architecture is imposing, classical, and apparently immutable. Yet the physical and intellectual innovations that MIT has produced — scientific frameworks and inventions, social and humanistic insights, new methods of thinking and making — course around the world and have remade it several times over. The resulting tension between speed and heaviness, and between lightness and gravity, is most beautifully captured in the ephemeral and enduring culture of hacking MIT’s own architecture: the illicit adornment of domes and towers with fire engines, Daleks, Lunar Landers, subway cars and Star Wars droids. While superficially vandalizing the Institute, they also serve as the best representation of its essential, improbable identity.
Below the roofline, MIT’s architecture is largely given over to labs and shops — places in which things are measured, charted, discovered, and optimized. But our discipline is also profoundly shaped by irrational creativity and inescapable political realities. Creativity, history, politics and technology are all present at MIT, but in this Department, they live, work, and invent together.
The organizational architecture of our department reflects this reality. Groups of faculty in the arts, design and urbanism, computation, building technology, and history and theory, are all amongst the very best of the world, and organize themselves into discipline groups to serve groups of advanced students. Our undergraduate and professional degrees connect these groups, as our faculty work together to model architecture’s unique integration of diverse modes of thinking and making.
Today, we are turning these tools to the contradictions inherent in MIT’s architecture and history. The Institute’s foundation and historic leadership are closely linked to the slave economy. MIT’s endowment was seeded, along with that of 52 other universities, with the proceeds from the sale of 79,461 parcels of indigenous land, the sale of which dispossessed members of nearly 250 tribes, bands and communities across the United States. Even today — at least until a current discussion on renaming is concluded —one of the Institute’s most public buildings memorializes Francis Amasa Walker, former MIT President and the architect of the American Indian Reservation System. In this context, and particularly in the last year, MIT Architecture has committed itself to building an anti-racist and inclusive institution in our hiring and admissions processes, in our teaching, and in the community we create in our classrooms, labs, and studios.
This commitment is particularly essential in the larger context of the climate crisis. Like our current pandemic, the effects of our accelerating climate emergency unevenly burden the least wealthy, least privileged, and most vulnerable members of our global community. Architecture has been complicit in many of the problems and decisions that have caused our climate crisis. It must play a central role in shared solutions as well.
As MIT reckons with its own history, and the challenge of creating a more inclusive and sustainable future, MIT Architecture is imagining new physical architecture of its own; working with colleagues across the School of Architecture and Planning, as well as architects Leers Weinzapfel and Diller, Scofidio + Renfro, we are re-imagining the former Metropolitan Storage Warehouse as a design hub for MIT. With community-focused spaces and public galleries, and adjacent and interconnected spaces for research and teaching, a new architecture for the department will frame our most essential, contemporary mission: connecting design, research, and creativity to diverse communities and the urgent issues of our time.
About the Department
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The Department of Architecture is one of five divisions within the MIT School of Architecture + Planning. The other divisions are: the Department of Urban Studies and Planing; the Media Lab and its Program in Media Arts and Sciences; the Program in Art, Culture, and Technology; the Center for Real Estate; and the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism.
The Department is structured in five discipline groups: Architecture + Urbanism; Building Technology; Computation; History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art; and the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture.
The Department houses thirty-seven permanent faculty, of whom three are under-represented minorities and fifteen are women. Across this past year, we were joined by another twenty-three visiting faculty, lecturers, and instructors across our curriculum. Twenty researchers help staff our labs and workshops.
In 2020, we house 186 Master’s Students across our MArch., SMArchS, and SMBT degrees, 43 PhD students, and many hundreds of undergraduates across our courses, including 36 Architecture Majors, 13 Art and Design Majors, and 51 Art and Design Minors.
Our population of 261 students is a balance of 50% US, and 50% international students, representing over 40 countries. Graduate students number 225, with 58% women and 40% men, and 2% non-binary. The undergraduate students number 36, with about 66% women and 33% men. 33% of our US-based graduate students and 82% of our US-based undergraduates identify as POC.
We are engaging this year in new actions to increase the diversity of our student population and to create an environment that welcomes, includes, and empowers all members of our community. These include new initiatives in outreach, admissions, mentorship, and equity within the Department. Details of these efforts, and our conversations about them, can be found in the News section of this website.
Sign Up for News and Updates
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Daily updates, news, and event announcements
Every day, we share news about Architecture faculty, students, and alumni via Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Visit MIT Connect for a full directory of social media accounts for other departments, programs, and schools.
Email updates from MIT Architecture
Sign up here to receive regular email updates from MIT Architecture with the latest on our news and events.
Weekly updates from SA+P
The weekly news digest, “Five from SA+P" is a quick, five-headline tour through what is happening each week with our faculty, students, and alumni across the School's department, centers, and programs. Sign up here.
Monthly updates from SA+P
The School of Architecture and Planning sends a monthly e-newsletter to all school alumni, via the MIT Alumni Association database. Not receiving this monthly email? Make sure your contact information is current at the Infinite Connection website.
The School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) provides a variety of ways to stay connected. Sign up to receive news and updates from SA+P. See also these sections on affinity groups and resources for alumni.
Have a question or need additional help? Reach out to us.
Student Organizations
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The Architecture Student Council (ASC), is the student organization of the Department of Architecture at MIT. They relay student concerns and input to the faculty and administration of this department. To accomplish this, ASC members are represented on various departmental committees in addition to conducting regular meetings with students to discuss issues of concern. Email ASC representatives Eytan Levi and Nare Filiposyan by emailing mit_asc@mit.edu (list is exclusively for MIT Architecture Students).
The MIT National Organization of Minority Architects Students (MIT NOMAS) is a student chapter of the National Organization of Minority Architects (NOMA). MIT NOMAS seeks to promote diversity and inclusion by, exposing architecture students to the history, culture, and practice of underrepresented minority architects, providing a place where issues of diversity are discussed, and addressing the concerns for minority architecture students. An annual NOMA conference is held each year giving students an opportunity to attend workshops, learn more about the impact of current issues in architecture and diversity, and meet and network with other students and professionals from across the country. A major conference event is the Barbara G. Laurie Annual Student Design Competition which provides architecture students, with an opportunity to showcase their talents to design industry professionals from across the nation. If you want to get involved or want more information on the MIT NOMAS, contact Christopher Moyer.
Queers in the Built Environment (QuBE), aims to highlight and create dialogue around the intersection of queer identity and the built environment though a variety of media including speakers, conferences, partnerships, publications, and social events. QuBE also serves to support and increase the visibility of queer students, faculty, and staff in the School of Architecture + Planning and the MIT community at large. More information can be found at http://qube.mit.edu or you can contact QuBE directly at qube_officers@mit.edu.
The American Institute of Architecture Students, or AIAS, is a national organization with local chapters at universities throughout the US. The AIAS is an organization dedicated to helping architecture students at MIT, in particular, the undergraduate community. The AIAS works to address issues affecting students, including studio culture, internships, the accreditation process, and the advancement of architecture itself.
MIT China SA+P (MIT CSAP) is a student-led organization that aims to serve MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and the school-wide community at large to establish bridges with the market, industry, and public in China on topics pertaining to the different areas of research and studies within the school: Architecture, Urban Studies and Planning, Art, Culture and Technology, Real Estate and Media Arts and Sciences. We hope to capitalize on SA+P’s expertise in design, visualization, curation, and communication to help expand MIT’s influence in China, whose massive, ongoing urbanization process craves technologically innovative designs and products.
Follow us on Instagram, Facebook and WeChat!
Contact email: chinasap.mit@gmail.com
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/MIT-China-SAP-Student-Association-1597379440405...
Instagram: mitchinasap
WeChat Official Account: MITCSAP
Giving to the Department
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Graduate Student Aid
Graduate student aid is the highest fund-raising priority of the Department of Architecture. Aid is crucial to attracting the best graduate students because few outside grant opportunities exist for master's and doctoral students in this field.
Department of Architecture Unrestricted
This fund allows the Department of Architecture the flexibility to invest as needed to create an optimal academic experience for students and faculty.
Lawrence B. Anderson '30 Fellowship Fund
This fund honors our beloved former dean who himself contributed immeasurably both to architecture and education.
Make a gift on-line
Contact
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Contact the Department of Architecture
MIT Department of Architecture
77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 7-337
Cambridge, MA 02139-4307
Phone: (617) 253-7791
Email: arch@mit.edu
Webmaster: Darren Bennett
Visit the Department of Architecture
The Department of Architecture is located in Buildings 3, 5, 7, 9, 10 and E15; the main entrance is through Lobby 7, Massachusetts Avenue. The headquarters of the Department of Architecture are located on the third floor of Building 7, which is located on the left side of the main entrance at 77 Massachusetts Avenue.
If you are coming from Kendall Square there are two ways:
- walk down Main St, turn left on Vassar St., turn left again on Mass Ave.
- walk through the MIT campus: cross through Building E23, keep walking west through the main open spaces until you enter Building 8. Walk down the "infinite corridor" until you reach the main hall in Building 7 (77 Mass Ave).
Public Transportation
The closest subway station to campus is Kendall Square on the Red Line, you may also want to consider going to Central Square (also on the Red Line) or taking the #1 or CT1 bus across the Charles River from Back Bay. Public transportation fares and schedules may be found at the MBTA website.
Driving to MIT
The campus map has directions for getting to MIT from the airport, via public transportation, and by car or Hood blimp.
Parking at MIT
Parking in Cambridge and Boston can be expensive and hard to find. Whenever possible, use public transportation to get to the MIT campus. If you must drive to the campus, on- and off-street parking is available for a fee, but most public parking is not very close to the center of the MIT campus. Visiting prospective students may park in designated areas on a first-come, first-served basis. More parking information is available at the campus map website.