4.451 U / 4.450, 1.575 G

Research seminar focusing on emerging applications of computation for creative, early-stage structural design and optimization for architecture. Incorporates computational design fundamentals, including problem parameterization and formulation; design space exploration strategies, including interactive, heuristic, and gradient-based optimization; and computational structural analysis methods, including the finite element method, graphic statics, and approximation techniques. Programing experience and familiarity with structural mechanics necessary.

Additional work required of students taking graduate version. 

Note: This course was held in June 2022

Rebuilding the Edge is a summer workshop offered by the MIT Department of Architecture for MIT students that will be taking place during the month of June 2022 in the Italian region of Abruzzo. Through an on-site experience, the workshop invites students to think about the future of Italian inner and southern areas, as well as the relationship between regional infrastructure projects and small communities affected by them.

Rebuilding the Edge is the result of a partnership between Liminal A.P.S., MIT’s Urban Risk Lab, MISTI Italy and Fondazione Ferrovie dello Stato Italiane–the foundation of the Italian state railway system. The workshop focuses on the issues faced by small municipalities along the Sulmona–Carpinone rail line, where a public-private partnership is beginning to revive rail activity after decades of disinvestment. For two-and-a-half weeks, students have the opportunity to experience the territory traversed by the rail line, working out of a popup research outpost within the recently renovated station at Roccaraso.

Rebuilding the Edge will allow students to engage the particular circumstances along one rail line in the Italian Apennines, and take away larger lessons about methodologies of design research, and the degrees to which design can play a role in addressing issues of social consequence.

Welcome to MIT! If you are coming because you love building, let this seminar be your red carpet. You will be meeting once a week with two faculty, Profs. Steve Leeb (Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) and Les Norford (Architecture), who love building cool systems. We will learn about MIT together while we are understanding and building exciting systems that use and convert energy. We will drive an electric go-cart and compare it to a gasoline-powered vehicle. You will design and build your own set of stereo speakers and a power amplifier to audio system you can keep. We'll look at motors and circuits to control these devices. We will be working in an amazing new prototyping laboratory, and you will get to develop an energy experiment of your own design. Join us!

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Les Norford will be the advisor to this section 4.A22. Les is a mechanical engineer who teaches in the Department of Architecture and has a special interest in environmental issues. He's studied buildings and how people live and work in them around the world. Les earned his BS in engineering science from Cornell University and his PhD in mechanical and aerospace engineering from Princeton University.

All Advising Seminars receive six units of credit and are graded P/D/F.

Selection of thesis topic, definition of method of approach, and preparation of thesis proposal. Independent study supplemented by individual conference with faculty.

Selection of thesis topic, definition of method of approach, and preparation of thesis proposal. Independent study supplemented by individual conference with faculty.

Fundamental research methodologies and ongoing investigations in building tehnology to support the development of student research projects. Topics drawn from low energy building design and thermal comfort, building systems analysis and control, daylighting, structural design and analysis, novel building materials and construction techniques and resource dynamics. Organized as a series of two- and three-week sessions that consider topics through readings, discussions, design and analysis projects, and student presentations.

Note: Lecture room is now 5-234

Addresses advanced structures, exterior envelopes, and contemporary production technologies. Continues the exploration of structural elements and systems, expanding to include more complex determinate, indeterminate, long-span, and high-rise systems. Topics include reinforced concrete, steel and engineered-wood design, and an introduction to tensile systems. The contemporary exterior envelope is discussed with an emphasis on the classification of systems, performance attributes, and analysis techniques, material specifications and novel construction technologies.