In late 1862, a curator from London’s Patent Museum named Francis Pettit Smith traveled to Birmingham on a collecting mission. Seeking to acquire a prototype of James Watt’s steam engine from the Soho manufactory established by Matthew Boulton in the mid-1760s, Smith unearthed an unusual set of chemo-mechanical images. With these images, Smith made a daring intervention as much into the imagining of Enlightenment industrial history as to consolidating narratives of photography’s origins.
Lectures (archive)
Dec 4, 2018 - 6:00pm
7-429
Dec 18, 2018 - 11:00am
Long Lounge, Room 7-429
Dancing About Architecture: A Performance After Georges Perec’s Species of Spaces
December 18, 2018, 11 AM - Long Lounge – Room 7-429
Space/Dance is part of the Fall 2018 Experiments in Pedagogy organized on occasion of the 150th Anniversary of architecture education at MIT.
Feb 8, 2019 - 6:00pm
Room 7-429/Long Lounge
Join us for screenings of work from the Fall 2018 Fear and Wonder Workshop with Liam Young and the IAP 2019 Workshop The Sky Commodified with Maya Shopova.
Feb 11, 2019 - 6:00pm
ACT Cube (e15-001)
Eva and Franco Mattes are an artist duo originally from Italy, living in New York. They have continually made work that responds to and dissects the contemporary networked condition, always approaching the ethics and politics of life online with a darkly humorous edge.
Feb 12, 2019 - 6:00pm
Room 7-429/Long Lounge
Sophie Hochhäusl (Architectural History and Theory, University of Pennsylvania) with a commentary by Raphael Koenig (Comparative Literature, Harvard University) and Christianna Bonin (History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture + Art, MIT)
Feb 14, 2019 - 6:00pm
Room 7-429/Long Lounge
The exhibition Toward a Concrete Utopia: Architecture in Yugoslavia, 1948-1980 ended its six-month run at the Museum of Modern Art on January 15. What is there to learn from it in 2019? Is there any kind of operative knowledge to be gleaned from the exhibited material beyond the historiographic “discovery” of a hitherto unknown region? The talk will focus on a few Yugoslav case-studies to argue in favor of the former socialist world as a repository of neglected architectural knowledge that could be valuable in today’s practice.
Feb 15, 2019 - 6:00pm
Keller Gallery | Room 7-408
MIT Department of Architecture
Keller Gallery, Room 7-408
On view February 13-March 16, 2019
Open Monday-Saturday, 9 AM-6 PM
Opening reception February 15, 6 PM
Feb 21, 2019 - 6:00pm
Room 7-429/Long Lounge
Design as Protest explores the privilege and power structures that have defined injustice from America's inception. Like all institutions, Design imposes its power through policies, procedures, and practice and is subject to its own inherited biases. We look at the history of the design justice movement and how the theory of practice continually advocates for the dismantling of power ecosystems that use architecture and design to create injustice throughout the built environment.
Feb 25, 2019 - 6:00pm
3-133
In Iraq artifacts and monuments historically have been valued national resource, but conflict has upended current heritage management policies and challenged the traditional definition of national culture. Following past wars, the growing market for antiquities and the catastrophic destruction were considered the primary threats to Iraqi heritage, whereas more mundane and perpetual threats like economic development and decay were underfunded and overlooked.
Mar 7, 2019 - 6:00pm
7-429/Long Lounge
Sometimes blights are monuments and industries aren't considered natural or stuff is described as global or local or spaces are public or not. But why? This lecture will present projects that explore how design of Public Access Landscapes can create one or the other or both or all.
Mar 11, 2019 - 6:00pm
3-133
Contemporizing Traditional Water Architecture: Regeneration | Mainstreaming | Replication
Speaker: A. Mridul / Shilpa Mridul - Architect / Entrepreneur
Mar 14, 2019 - 6:00pm
7-429/Long Lounge
What is architecture in our age of the anthropocene, uncertainty, and polarization? What agency do we have to address big issues through design? As WORKac enters its fourth five-year plan, Dan Wood will discuss the merits of pop, whimsey and optimism as the firm gets real in in the scale and ambition of its work.
Mar 15, 2019 - 9:00am
Keller Gallery, Room 7-408
Rosalyne Shieh
Marion Mahony Fellowship Exhibition
Mar 19, 2019 - 6:00pm
7-429/Long Lounge
Responding to Michel Foucault's thesis that sometime between the mid-18th and 19th centuries "population" came to displace "territory" as the primary object of governance, this talk proposes that perhaps no displacement was necessary, given that the governance of population became a primary vehicle for territorial conquest and management, especially through the device of settler colonialism.
Apr 1, 2019 - 6:00pm
ACT Cube (E15-001)
Beth Stryker is Co-founder of CLUSTER (Cairo Lab for Urban Studies, Training and Environmental Research) a platform for urban research, architecture, art, and design initiatives based in Downtown Cairo.
Apr 13, 2019 - 9:00am
Media Lab/E14, 6th Floor
MIT President Rafael Reif described the "ubiquity of computing and the rise of AI" as a "turning point" that prompted the recent establishment of the new College of Computing at MIT. As MIT celebrates 150 years of architecture education and the School of Architecture and Planning plans its move to the MET Warehouse, we pause to reflect on the present and project futures for education, practice, and research at this critical juncture. Turning Points is an opportunity to reflect, individually and collectively, on the status and stakes of architecture, design, and research.
Apr 18, 2019 - 6:00pm
Lecture Hall 10-250
junya.ishigami+associates is an international architecture firm based in Tokyo, Japan. Established by Junya Ishigami in 2004, the firm gained international recognition following the completion of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology’s KAIT Workshop in 2007, which was awarded the Architectural Institute of Japan Prize in 2009. Similar success followed with exhibitions at Venice Architecture Biennales, the latter of which being awarded the Golden Lion for Best Project of the 12th Biennale in 2010.
Apr 23, 2019 - 6:00pm
Room 7-429/Long Lounge
Amanda Levete explores how both intuition and technical rigour come together to advance the debate in the work of AL_A, including the V&A Exhibition Road Quarter in London and the Museum of Art, Architecture & Technology in Lisbon.
Apr 25, 2019 - 6:00pm
10-250
Iwan Baan and Michael Maltzan
Ahmad Tehrani Symposium
Apr 29, 2019 - 6:00pm
10-390
Panel Discussion with Harvey Molotch and Davide Ponzini, co-authors of“The New Arab Urban: Gulf Cities of Wealth, Ambition, and Distress”
Harvey Molotch, Emeritus Professor, New York University
Davide Ponzini, Professor, Politecnico di Milano
Other panelists to be announced.
May 11, 2019 - 9:30am
6-120
This two-day symposium seeks to address the following questions: How do violence and conflict not only destroy but constitute, design, and organize the built environments and infrastructure? How do we understand the urbanization of warfare in relation to urban theory and reconstruction practices? Finally, participants will be asked to consider the recent warfare in the Middle East, with a special focus on Aleppo, in relation to the built environment and the extent to which reconstruction processes can be weaponized. Further information upcoming.