This one-week IAP workshop invites a small, dedicated cohort of MIT students to advance the design of a root cellar for Hannan Healthy Foods (HHF) farm in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Conceived as a community-oriented food preservation resource, the project supports capacity building on the farm while engaging broader questions of equitable food access, agricultural resilience, and sustainable land stewardship. The workshop includes a site visit and direct conversations with the farmer, local community members, and experts in natural building. 

Participants will iterate design concepts, test material and structural strategies, and explore natural building systems specific to the climatic and geological conditions of the Greater Boston region. Hands-on exploration with natural materials will be part of the week; however, given the short timeframe, the primary focus will be on research-driven investigation and small-scale testing rather than full prototyping. Students will also visit potential sourcing sites, including those offering surplus or reclaimed resources. A detailed program of requirements for the root cellar, including size, capacity, food storage types, ventilation needs, and environmental performance criteria, will be a key deliverable. 

Throughout the week, the cohort will play an active role in shaping the workshop’s direction. Together, participants will develop a robust design proposal that advances the performance and spatial intent of the root cellar while strengthening its role as a long-lasting shared asset for the farm and surrounding community. This proposal will lay essential groundwork for continued development leading toward construction in summer 2026. 

Interested students should email Aleks Banas (aleksb@mit.edu) and Zachary Rapaport (zrap@mit.edu) with a short (2-4 sentence) summary of their interests by December 20.

This workshop will be open to both undergraduate and graduate students who have design work that is documented or documentable, from all design-related classes or activities. Collected and documented design work will be utilized in the process of conceptualizing and assembling a design portfolio.

Week one will introduce skills for developing a complex graphic design project while prompting critical questions about how pages function as sites of organization and meaning. Students will examine principles of structure and composition as they begin shaping a framework to support the presentation of their design work. Alongside this, we will consider broader inquiries such as: What can a page be? How do designers construct relationships between text and image?

Week Two extends these inquiries to the scale of the portfolio. Students will explore what a portfolio can be while working on sequencing projects and combining text and image to communicate ideas.
Students have the choice to participate in Week 1, Week 2, or both weeks.

Software: Indesign
Students should bring laptops to all sessions.
Contact:  paulpett@mit.edu or jlobdell@mit.edu

Simply printing drawing from rhino may prompt a journey across three software platforms, two licensing pools, a handful of file formats, a user authentication, a deposit of $1.50, and a toolpath actuation which transcribes the data onto a sheet of paper as six hundred discrete droplets of ink per square inch. 

A large network of operations stretch across this relatively mundane action of labor, greased by the accommodations of our many software infrastructures. While many design softwares are envisaged as open “sandbox” environments, their being a conduit to labor often has users using software as a means to an end, while common use-cases ultimately direct the attention of future developments. The well-worn cartography gets vertically integrated with telescopic functionalities, while vast territories of potential intersection remain unrepresented and illegible. 

This course views the experimental technique and unsuspected intersection as a site for new artistic and political potentials. Rather than reverse engineering a desired outcome to a sequence of software protocols, we are proposing to consider new software protocols first and to discover what they produce. This approach is designed to complicate standard user-profiling while expanding our notions of what software-mediated design can look like. 

In an effort to deprioritize content and prioritize process, we will be centering the class around an archive of flower photographs. The method is as follows: Every participant will choose an image of a flower from the archive. Each image will be subject to a digital transformation of one’s choosing. The network cartography of each technique will be diagrammed. We will meet to see everybody’s flowers and discuss their techniques. The manipulated flower will then be exchanged for another’s, where 2,3, & 4 will be repeated. 

This class will be held as a joint project between the GSD J-Term and MIT IEP, facilitated by Zachary Slonsky (GSD MArch) and Aisha Cheema (MIT MArch). In the first meeting, we will walk through an example of this process being carried out between us two. Each image and diagram pair will be formatted to the page of a recipe book. At the end, these pages will be compiled, printed, and bound. The collective result will form an archive of deviant network practices, experimental techniques, and pretty flowers. Each participant will receive a physical copy. We hope to see you there!

This design-build workshop challenges anthropocentric paradigms in architecture by focusing on rural revitalization through multispecies cohabitation in Jingdezhen, China.
What does architecture look like when humans, animals and plants occupy the same space?

What design opportunities can be identified within the rural villages? And how can we incorporate technology and innovation within these places ?

The workshop will fund students to travel to China: to Nanjing, Jingdezhen, and Suzhou -  Shanghai, visiting, studying and working toward the re-design of a depopulated village near Jingdezhen as a demonstration site for a re-vitalized 21st Century farming village for research, education and production.

Provides the material system knowledge and fabrication process skills to successfully engage with all areas of the shop, from precision handwork to multi-axis computer numerically controlled (CNC) machining. Progresses through a series of basic exercises that introduce the material and workflow, concluding with more complex problems that explore opportunities and issues specific to architecture.

Introduces fundamental design principles as a way to demystify design and provide a basic introduction to all aspects of the process. Stimulates creativity, abstract thinking, representation, iteration, and design development. Equips students with skills to have more effective communication with designers, and develops their ability to apply the foundations of design to any discipline.

In this multi-day workshop participants will learn about the basics of rope splicing and the role of this craft method in the work of artist Janet Echelman. The workshop will begin with a talk from artist Janet Echelman followed by a tutorial on rope splicing techniques. The remainder of the workshop will be focused on constructing a full-scale prototype of a fragment of a site-specific sculpture that is scheduled to be installed in the MIT Museum in the fall of 2025. The workshop will end with a test fit of the fragment on site in the MIT Museum.

As cities, industries, and manufacturing systems have formed over centuries, their waste streams are producing an ever-growing accumulation of matter, a material stockpile that can be mined. In the present time of climate crisis, when resourcefulness and critical, creative practices are becoming imperative, the agency of the designer shifts to appreciate scavenged, processed, & off-cut materials, and hone new ways of imagining what they can produce.

For the OFFCUT/CUTOFF IAP Workshop, we will immerse ourselves in the environment of metal parts manufacturing that underpins the Bahrain’s HVAC and air conditioning industries. We will study, analyze, and map the Awal Group’s operations, material sources and waste streams. Offcuts from the manufacturing of ducts and HVAC systems will form a palette of materials that we will upcycle through a series of fabrication exercises and design prototypes. Students will explore techniques including but not be limited to metal rolling, bending, casting, and punching. Digital algorithmic inventory matching tools, developed in the MIT ODDS & MODS material circularity curriculum, will help us design with the irregular archive of offcut materials and guide the fabrication process.

The results of the workshop will be showcased along the Pearling Path in Muharraq. During our time on the island, we will be engaging with local metal smelters and design studios, including Bahraini-Danish, Civil Architecture and Studio Anne Holtrop.

Design is a process to reach consensus. In this hybrid workshop-seminar, we will explore the core mindsets and techniques for modeling, simulating, and analyzing collaborative decision-making in conceptual or real-world design challenges. Students are encouraged to bring their own case studies and perspectives on any design topic. We will introduce a mindset of modeling and simulation, cover beginner-friendly technical topics including operation research, (algorithmic) game theory, system dynamics, and multi-AI agent learning. We will be focusing on leveraging your designer mindset, not jargon, so no prior technical experience is required.

Hybrid class, in-person attendance is welcomed! Students should bring laptop. Time negotiable under survey.

Advance sign-up required by 1/15/2025

Sites are often represented as static, empty plots of land. In reality, every site is an environment—an interconnected system shaped by ecological, cultural, and material relationships. These environments extend vertically into the sky, horizontally through soil and ecosystems, and inward to unseen processes such as microorganisms and material histories. How can experimental drawing and representation techniques reveal these complexities and reshape the way we design? 

This workshop invites participants to reimagine sites as living systems and engage in collaborative design practices. Focusing on a local, seemingly vacant lot, we will investigate the site’s temporal and spatial dynamics—tracing its layers of interaction and exploring how elements and materials influence its identity. By reframing traditional notions of scale and boundaries, we will uncover the opportunities of co-authorship amongst the environments, forces and creatures. 

The Wiesner Gallery will act as a hub for both a workshop and exhibition space. Each day, participants will gather in the gallery to experiment with prototypes, drawings, and multimedia techniques. Collaboration and play will guide the approach, creating an open and exploratory environment where games facilitate dialogue and negotiation. This collective exploration will reveal the site’s interconnected urban and architectural layers from the perspectives of diverse actors. The workshop will culminate in a public exhibition at the end of January, showcasing our collective discoveries.

The workshop will take place daily at the Wiesner Gallery at MIT. It will culminate in an exhibition, likely Jan-31-Feb 2. Students should bring their laptops to all sessions.