Subject canceled for Fall 2025.
How can you build a creative practice that is adaptive, impactful, and future-ready?
This lecture-and-lab course equips students in design, arts, and cultural fields with tools and strategies for viable professional practice. You will engage with cultural economics and management, international frameworks, and practical tools such as business models, market positioning, branding, and intellectual property protection, applying them to your own work through structured exercises. Labs explore crossovers—ways creative practice can generate value and drive innovation in society and industry—developing experimental propositions for real-world applications.
You may enter with a professional direction in mind, although it is not required. The labs are designed to allow new directions and value propositions to emerge. The course fosters reflection and equips students to create professional offerings through a value-based understanding of cultural and creative production while identifying market opportunities with positive human impact. Final presentations consolidate learning into professional outputs with potential for incubation.
How do you go from a moment of obligation to starting or accelerating a movement?
This course explores the difference between innovation, social innovation, and systems change for social impact. Students interested in navigating complex environmental and social problems will explore frameworks and case studies from real systems change innovators to develop a more comprehensive view of complex problems and the systems they are part of —systems that often keep those problems in place.
In the course, you will apply experiential tools and methods to interrogate your own call to action, strengths, and gaps to address complex problems or needs. You will gain an understanding of the importance of understanding problems from the impact target’s perspective and explore innovative ways to create a scalable movement that ultimately can change a system. The final deliverable from the course is writing a case study on system change based on detailed actor mapping and interviews where you share your deeper understanding of a system you care about.
4.341 U / 4.342 G
Introduces history and contemporary practices in artistic photography through projects, lectures, artist visits, group discussions, readings, and field trips. Fosters visual literacy and aesthetic appreciation of photography/digital imaging, as well as critical awareness of how images in our culture are produced and constructed. Provides instruction in the fundamentals of different camera formats, film exposure and development, lighting, black and white darkroom printing, and digital imaging. Assignments allow for incorporation of a range of traditional and experimental techniques, development of technical skills, and personal exploration. Throughout the term, present and discuss projects in a critical forum.
Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.
This interdisciplinary course fosters collaboration across art, science, and engineering, exploring the intersections of creative practice and research in science and technology. In partnership with MIT.nano and associated laboratories, students are introduced to advanced research environments and work alongside graduate mentors to develop projects that merge artistic vision with scientific methods and tools.
Emphasizing artistic practice as a form of critical inquiry, the course supports experimental research, interdisciplinary collaboration, and the development of both individual and collective projects. Students engage with the social, cultural, and ecological dimensions of technology, challenging traditional disciplinary boundaries to create new frameworks for transdisciplinary exploration and innovation.
Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.
This subject has been canceled for the Fall 2025 term
Considers the multiple trade-offs at various abstraction levels and scales when designing complex, multi-component systems. Covers topics from foundational principles to advanced applications, emphasizing the role of compositional thinking in engineering. Introduces category theory as a mathematical framework for abstraction and composition, enabling a unified and modular approach to modeling, analyzing, and designing interconnected systems. Showcases successful applications in areas such as dynamical systems and automated system design optimization, with a focus on autonomous robotics and mobility. Offers students the opportunity to work on their own application through a dedicated project in the second half of the term.
Students taking graduate version complete additional assignments.
UG: 4.378 | G: 4.379
In an era shaped by AI, digital fabrication, and mass production, this course explores the embodied knowledge of the traditional crafts as a radical frontier of design. We will examine how endangered textile techniques can be reimagined to create new cultural and economic value. From Bengali jamdaani weaving to American quilting and Egyptian khayamiya appliqué, students investigate how textile crafts connect art with innovative models of sustainability, material experimentation, and ethical production beyond fast fashion and industrial systems.
Through research-creation and collaboration with master craftspeople and contemporary designers, students will translate historical textile traditions into experimental fabric applications, from fashion prototypes to installations. The course emphasizes hands-on workshops, process documentation, and iterative prototyping, culminating in two final projects that integrate weaving, screen printing, and reverse appliqué techniques to envision future applications of crafts in design. Readings and guest lectures complement hands-on practice.
Additional work required of students taking the graduate version.
assemblies for collective life & work
in Argentina’s rural landscape
The Argentinian Pampas is a vast territory, widely known for its agricultural fields and productive infrastructures. This huge portion of the country is populated by hundreds of small towns—once vibrant centers of collective life that blossomed in the late 19th century and became home to many migrants.
Today, many of these towns are facing a slow but persistent exodus, leaving behind a hybrid landscape of tiny villages suspended in the middle of expansive crop fields.
What does it mean to inhabit this rural landscape in contemporary times? Are there possibilities for new collective forms of work and life in this extraordinary ecosystem of farms, ponds, rivers, migrant workers’ heritage, warehouses, and factories—all coexisting under the presence of an infinite horizon?
Learning from La Pampa is an invitation to discover this land located in the south of Córdoba, and to propose subtle architectural interventions aimed at rethinking the role of the Argentine countryside and the social and economic life of its historic towns.
The studio will be structured around two design exercises: a small rural infrastructure, or “a shadow,” and a cooperative with collective housing.
A Small Rural Infrastructure
Or, a shadow on the fields.
This first exercise is an approximation to the territory. It has the intention to understand the technological landscape of the countryside and the artifacts that populate the fields.
We will approach the exercise through a curated selection of remarkable Argentine films, literary texts, and photographs that reflect our rural culture and history, allowing us to explore together the beauty and complexity of the site.
Students will analyse a series of popular and local architectures that can be found when driving or walking in the campo (field) and propose an architectural intervention that could establish some dialogue with one or some of them.
The space will not have a specific program and has no prescribed size; it could be very small or extend up to 100 meters. Its scale will be determined by the idea and logics of the project. The technology, details, and structure of this infrastructure will emerge from a close study of the existing elements on the site: windmills, water ponds, silos, billboards, factories, and more.
The shadow will be conceived as a place to rest within the vastness of the rural landscape. It could be nothing more than a simple roof or remain entirely outdoors. It could also include an interior—a room, a place to spend a night while traveling, perhaps a small bathroom, or a space to store a few belongings, the essentials one might wish to have when finding oneself in the “middle of nowhere.”
For this project students will produce a ¼ scale model, plans, sections, elevations, axonomtrics, collages and a 300-word text.
A Cooperative & Housing for the town
Or, a second chance to live & work in the countryside.
Cooperatives have long been and continue to be key to life in Argentina. In the late 19th century, small neighborhood cooperatives emerged in areas where the State did not reach, enabling the construction of essential infrastructure such as electricity, telephone lines, potable water, and local employment.
Housing cooperatives helped families build homes collectively. Agricultural cooperatives allowed small farmers to store and sell crops and purchase supplies at fair prices. Educational and cultural cooperatives created schools, libraries, and community centers that became hubs of learning and social life.
n rural towns, cooperatives were especially crucial, fostering solidarity, community participation, and social cohesion while providing basic services and meeting spaces.
During the 2001 economic crisis, many companies went bankrupt or were abandoned by their owners. To save their jobs, workers took control of these businesses, turning them into worker-run cooperatives or recovered factories, where employees collectively manage operations and share profits. This model preserved jobs, sustained local economies, and promoted self-management.
Today, Argentina has approximately 30,000 active cooperatives across a wide range of sectors.
This second and final exercise of the studio will focus on the design of a cooperative in one of the rural towns located in the south of Córdoba, along provincial routes 4, 6, 11, and 8. Each student will select a town and place their project on a vacant lot, on the edge of the village, or in the surrounding rural fields.
The purpose of each cooperative will vary: some will be linked to the region’s agricultural production, others will be educational, cultural, or sports-oriented, and some may promote new productive activities that could benefit the people that live in the town. The specific program will be proposed and defined by each student.
As part of the proposal, each cooperative will include collective housing for its members, most likely those working within the cooperative itself. This introduces the dimension of living and working together, and invites a rethinking of how communal life in the Argentine countryside might be imagined today.
All cooperatives will be owned by the town’s neighbors and envisioned as spaces that strengthen community life, foster social ties, and contribute to the growth of these small urban centers.
The projects should be both rigorous architectural proposals and strong utopian visions, capable of resignifying the beauty of collective living in the Pampas.
Students will produce models at different scales, plans, sections, elevations, axonometrics, collages, and a 500-word text.
As a collective outcome, the studio will develop a small publication in the form of a book and host an exhibition for the final review at the Long Lounge.
Learning from La Pampa is an opportunity to enjoy architectu-re through a sensitive and slow understanding of the site and the culture of the rural Argentinian landscape. It is an invita-tion to look closely, to value the knowledge embedded in simple things, and to find pleasure in designing places that can intro-duce subtle, yet meaningful, changes in the lives of those who live here and those who may come.
Mandatory lottery process.
“Nada es inventado, pues está escrito en la naturaleza primero” - Antoni Gaudí
("Nothing is invented, for it is written in nature first.")
“La arquitectura es la expresión de una época, de un lugar y de un momento, pero debe aspirar a la atemporalidad” - Rafael Moneo
(Architecture is the expression of an era, of a place, and of a moment, but it must aspire to timelessness.)
Architecture of the Earth explores a philosophy that treats the building not as an object placed upon the landscape, but as an extension of the earth itself. The course will challenge students to design a new structure near a site of historical and geological significance, where they will explore how architecture can emerge from the raw materials and ancient memory of the land.
The project is a deep dive into an approach where natural landforms are the primary sources of architectural language. Students will investigate how the built form can blur its boundaries with the natural environment, creating a new layer in the timeless dialogue between human creation and the earth. The goal is to create a space that respects its past while embodying a future where culture and nature are inseparably linked.
Research Methodology:
This course employs an immersive, research-driven methodology to explore a new architectural language. The process begins with a departure from sensitive design, encouraging the generation of spatial ideas and innovative techniques that are unconventional and
context-specific. A key part of this approach is a deep engagement with the local environment, investigating indigenous materials and production methods to create a symbiotic relationship between the building and the landscape.
The design process is iterative, moving fluidly between digital and physical realms. Students will develop prototypes and physical models to test their concepts, using digital scanning and other audiovisual tools to document their evolution. This blend of hands-on and digital methods is formalized through the creation of instruction manuals, which document the process and provide a framework for future application. A central concern throughout is the project's environmental impact, with a focus on sustainable, low-impact construction that honors the site's natural and historical integrity.
Castillo de San Felipe, Menorca, Spain (St. Philip’s Castle / Fort)
Architecture of the Earth is a development of the On/Off hybrid studio, situated between Hands-On models sessions and online classes, in which students will integrate research, fabrication, and design. This studio will focus on imagining and designing a Theater Space in Castillo de San Felipe, Menorca, Spain. Site Location Link
The Castillo de San Felipe, situated at the entrance of Mahón's natural port in Menorca, stands as a formidable testament to centuries of strategic importance and turbulent history. Originally conceived in the mid-16th century following a devastating Ottoman raid in 1558, its construction and subsequent expansions transformed it into one of the Mediterranean's most significant defensive fortresses.
Its strategic location made it a coveted prize for various European powers, particularly the British and French, leading to multiple sieges and changes of control throughout the 18th century. Each conflict further underscored the port's critical role in naval dominance. Ultimately, its demolition by the Spanish in the early 19th century symbolized an end to an era of intense foreign intervention. Today, its extensive underground ruins offer a poignant glimpse into Menorca's past, embodying the island's enduring resilience and the perpetual interplay between human ambition and the powerful forces of its landscape.
Student Learning Outcome Objectives:
This course is structured around a hands-on-line studio that emphasizes collaboration and shared learning. Students will work together to challenge preconceived notions and explore the unknown through a research-driven, iterative process. The primary goal is to empower students to generate original spatial ideas and techniques that diverge from conventional standards. True innovation lies in the ability to break free from established norms and find new ways of understanding and engaging with the built environment.
The learning journey integrates theoretical understanding with practical application. Students will engage in in-depth research through a series of case studies, analyzing the models, drawings, engineering, and construction of exemplary projects. This research will inform a series of iterative model studies and prototypes, which will form the core of the design process. The hands-on exploration of materials and form is central to our methodology.
To support this workflow, the course will introduce students to advanced 3D scan techniques, including the relevant hardware and software. They will learn to apply these skills through post-processing of the data, enabling them to create 3D printed models, test structural reinforcements, and experiment with concrete casting. This blend of digital and physical methods is designed to provide a comprehensive understanding of how concepts can be translated into tangible form.
The entire process will be meticulously documented using the Google Suite platform, which will serve as a class diary to track the evolution of each project. This shared digital space will foster an environment of continuous feedback and shared knowledge. Additionally, students will participate in seminars designed to expand their technical skills and prepare them for the hands-on fabrication and prototyping phases. The final deliverable will be a comprehensive portfolio of models, drawings, and digital documentation that demonstrates a deep understanding of the course's principles, from initial research to final fabrication. This holistic approach ensures students are well-equipped to not only design but also realize their architectural visions.
Mandatory lottery process.
