4.542:

An advanced examination of the shape grammar formalism and its relationship to some key issues in a variety of other fields, including art and design, philosophy, history and philosophy of science, linguistics and psychology, literature and literary studies, logic and mathematics, and artificial intelligence. Student presentations and discussion of selected readings are encouraged. Topics vary from year to year.

4.582:

In-depth presentations of current research in design and computation.

Introduces critical theories and contemporary practices in the field of urbanism that challenge its paradigms and advance its future. Includes theoretical linkages between ideas about the cultures of urbanization, social and political processes of development, environmental tradeoffs of city making, and the potential of design disciplines to intervene to change the future of built forms. Events and lecture series co-organized by faculty and doctoral students further engage and inform research.

Goal: Understanding the Conceptual Elegance Carbon might offer Architecture

A broad range of carbo/composite specialists that contributed to DOE and ARPA-e CarbonHouse research will offer insight into the properties and usage of Carbon:

Prof Dag Olav Hessen (carbon cycle geo-biologist), Prof Matteo Pasquali (CNT chemist), Dr Nicola Ferralis (carbon material scientist), Dr Dave Gailus (carbon nanotube scientist), Dirk Kramers (America’s Cup composite structural Engineering), Dr Roger Avakian (polymer compounding), Jeff Kent @ Moore Bros, RI (composite fabrication), Stephan Vaast (CNC milling / composite production), Dr Gus Bosse (carbon research chemist), Doron Levin (carbon research chemist), Dr Steve Nolet (wind-turbine production manager).

Part 1  The History and Potential of Carbon 

Part 1 will engage Dag Olav Hessen’s rueful, The Many Lives of Carbon, that explains the carbon cycle through eons of planetary history with a degree of foreboding. But we will diagram the majestic waltz of bio-systems in their temporal balancing of earth-/ocean-/atmospheric-carbon, with architectural sensibility, looking to capture the discordant breakdown of established biorhythms and its ominous portent with a speculative clarity that science seems to have failed to do.  

Part 2: Towards a Carbon Architecture

Part 2 will turn to use of Carbon as a polyfunctional material, already well-established in most other high-performance structural applications such as boats, planes, trains, wind turbine blades, etc via  fiber-based composites. The development of such materials and methods over the past 50 years has occurred hand-in-glove with emerging digital engineering and fabrication capability, with finite element will turn to use of Carbon as a polyfunctional material structural analysis essential to computing load-path in a zillion layered fibers. But it has equally been enabled by remarkable development of all manner of specialist materials such as cores, resins, adhesives, that testify to the polyvalence of Carbon, allowing order-of-magnitude advantage over mineral/metal structures – more akin to wood in its fibrous base-carbon morphology. The ability to orient fibers along non-isotropic stress-lines is more akin to biological systems than mechanical ones, as perhaps are the use of heat and atmospheric pressure to bind multi-material continuities.  

With leading engineers and fabricators based in Bristol, RI – a pioneering center of composite fabrication – we will consider how the widespread adoption of carbon composites might now be brought to bear on buildings, just as le Corbusier, say, brought forward steel and reinforced concrete by considering the boats and planes of the early 20th century (in Vers Une Architecture).  

Having absorbed the material, engineering, fabrication and environmental potentials this remarkable class of materials offers, students will be asked to envisage a small pavilion or a building component that conveys the tectonic (or anti-tectonic!) principles of such a Carbon  Architecture, looking to capture the brilliant formal and aesthetic qualities of a potentially electrothermal-structural new materiality. While this may speculate on emerging morphologies such as carbon nanotube or carbon foam (that hold promise of hydrogen as a corollary clean fuel, say) at issue will be to demonstrate realism in prescribing manufacturing methods with technical acuity. 

Design+ is a first-year undergraduate advising seminar made up of approximately 30 first-year undergraduate students, 4 faculty advisors, and 4 or more undergraduate associate advisors.

The academic program is flexible to account for diverse student interests within the field of design, and students work with advisors to select a mix of academic and experiential opportunities.

Design+ assists incoming first-year students in their exploration of possibilities in design across MIT. 

Design+ includes a dedicated study space, kitchen, lounge, and a variety of maker spaces which offer Design+ students a second campus home for making and braking.

Design+ introduces first year undergraduate students to opportunities 
Design+ around design such as internships, international travel, and 
Design+ UROPs with some of the most exciting design labs at MIT

For registration and other administrative questions contact The Office of the First Year.

Reading and discussion of texts broadly to the field of Design and Computation. Texts will focus on the history, theory, and practice of computation for design and explore questions of how humans and machines sense, represent, understand, think, and make. Discussions will be informed by texts from a variety of fields including architecture, anthropology, computer science, cognitive sciences, and philosophy. The goal is to serve as a space for students to step back from technical investigations and engage with underlying questions about what it means to employ computation in design.

While design is frequently deployed as a problem-solving instrument, it can unintentionally result in ethical dilemmas and unanticipated outcomes. This course uniquely combines the critical lens of art with the innovation framework of DesignX, promoting introspection and thoughtful deliberation before diving into design interventions. This transdisciplinary class initiates a collaboration between ACT and the Morningside Academy of Design through DesignX. Students design and present visual representations on the social impact area they choose to innovate and explore on. Undergraduates are welcome.

Also open to undergraduates.

This design studio and seminar explores translation as both a prompt and a method for publishing. Through readings, guest lectures, and site visits, students will examine the histories of typographic printing and the technological precedents for fixing forms of language. Students will work with and expand on various “translation” machines, starting with the printing press, to consider what tools can copy, transform, and reproduce texts and images. Students can expect to test these methods, build their own fonts, and learn how to bind their own books. By the end of the term, each student will have developed a printed and bound publication, grounded in a specific translation topic of their choosing.

Skill-building workshops and site visits will be arranged outside of the class time listed, in consultation with the group.

This Option Studio operates within The Deep Time Project, an ongoing research framework that examines architecture as a polytemporal assemblage: the convergence of multiple time trajectories across vastly different temporal scales: from geological and planetary time to human, cultural, and political time as well as event-time and duration-time.

Deep Time Architecture examines architecture as a planetary process, asking how architectural cycles operate alongside—and within—Earth’s cycles. Particular attention is given to the temporal implications of material choice, construction techniques, and environmental context, situating architectural design within broader ecological and geological systems.

Building as Material Event challenges the conventional understanding of buildings as static objects, proposing instead that architecture be understood as a material event shaped by a multitude of agentic forces, human and more-than-human.

Deep Time Architecture positions architecture not only as a cultural practice, but as a mode of planetary engagement, one that demands expanded time-literacy and a renewed ethical responsibility toward the future.

This Site Planning practicum coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina—a pivotal moment for New Orleans and for MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP). Over the past two decades, DUSP faculty, students, and alumni have supported the city’s recovery and resilience efforts through long-term partnerships and planning initiatives.

The studio will re-engage with New Orleans through the lens of corridor-scale resilience, focusing on how underrecognized neighborhood/commercial corridors can adapt to climate and social challenges such as heat, flooding, and energy vulnerability. Students will develop Corridor Resilience Action Plans for three areas, building on the 2016 New Orleans Main Street Resilience Plan, while exploring neighborhood connectivity and how urban design, equity, and identity intersect. 

Focuses on the synthesis of urban, mixed-use real estate projects, including the integration of physical design and programming with finance and marketing. Interdisciplinary student teams analyze how to maximize value across multiple dimensions in the process of preparing professional development proposals for sites in US cities and internationally. Reviews emerging real estate products and innovative developments to provide a foundation for studio work. Two major projects are interspersed with lectures and field trips. Integrates skills and knowledge in the MSRED program; also open to other students interested in real estate development by permission of the instructors.