H1 Half Term subject

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.

Also open to undergraduates.

This course is the first of a series of workshops looking into material practices that see architecture as an assemblage of parts to sponsor life’s activities. While this course will focus heavily on diy material cultures, our subjects of study will range from the living structures of Ken Isaacs to the ready to assemble online warehouse kits to the itinerant designs of Sam Chermayeff to community-based barn raising to temporary vendor kiosks and many other parts-based and nomadic architectural references. We will study each of their technical particularities, through the tools and documents that aid these building cultures: manuals, catalogs, inventories and drop down menus, while also interrogating the larger themes they bring to focus: products, collectivity, material circulation, temporality and activity.

In this first edition, the course will specifically focus on architectural assemblages that sponsor cultural production and enjoyment. We will be looking at pop up raves, outdoor movie rigs, festival rental gear, speaker systems and performance infrastructures.

We will be hearing from our friends at QNCC (Queer Nightlife Community Center) in Brooklyn and we will go on a daytrip to visit the Sonic Warehouse at Dartmouth College where we will attend a small digital sound production workshop.

Master/Piece Wordshop is an exploration of 3 pioneering and creative practices that are considered influential in contemporary architecture, and are crucial in shaping the landscape of architectural thinking today. The discussion will revolve around some key works of these practices and the processes and thinking methods that have shaped their projects. We will then study the impact of these chains of thought and focus on constructive ideas that will be discussed with the masters who will join the class to culminate the analysis and conversation.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the Department.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the department. Students who wish a letter grade option for their work must register for 4.URG.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the department. Students who wish a letter grade option for their work must register for 4.URG.

Research and project activities, which cover the range represented by the various research interests and projects in the Department.

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.

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.