MIT Department of Architecture

The Department of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, seeks candidates to fill a tenure-track faculty position (Assistant Professor or Associate Professor without Tenure) focused on sustainability, resilience, and equity within the built environment in the context of the climate crisis. The position is envisioned as a hire to focus research, design, and pedagogical efforts on forms of architectural response to this critical, multi-disciplinary topic. The candidate will be positioned in Architecture + Urbanism area of the department as outlined below. The expected hiring date is July 1, 2025, or on a mutually agreed date thereafter. Apply here: https://lnkd.in/edEtpA5f. Review of the applications will begin January 25, 2025 and continue until the position is filled. Photo: Gretchen Ertl

Core III completed their reviews this week and their core sequence. Congratulations on all the hard work and a successful final review! Instructors: Yolande Daniels, J. Roc Jih, Adam Modesitt Photo Credit: 1-4, Aleksandra Banas, 5 Ires Chan, 6 Avigail Gilad, 7-13 Courage Dzidula Kpodo, 14 Lindsey Hu, 15 Cian Hrabi

Alireza Khalatbari (MArch ‘27) House of Theaters 4.152 Architecture Design Core Studio II Instructors: Cristina Parreño Alonso, Rafi Segal & Jaffer Kolb ’House of Theatres' is about a series of theatre types and scales within the boundary of Strand Theaters in Dorchester City. The aim is to reimagine the existing building conditions features by integrating various types of theaters and galleries while preserving the traces and palimpsest of the original building. The main decision was to convert this building into a cultural space that includes a variety of programs. The orientation and dimensions of the existing walls create an irregular grid, which gradually diminishes as one moves downwards and leftwards. This grid creates the potential for large, medium, and small cells, to form different spaces. Each floor features a circular element that disrupts the rigidity of the rectangular grid, adding dynamic spatial interest. The roof retains the grid pattern from the ground floor, with skylights designed to allow natural light to penetrate the interior. This design also makes the grid visible from above, similar to how windows perform in a facade, allowing people to use this semi-open space, walk, and see inside through the apertures. The roof's design results from analyzing the typology of local houses. Image credit: 1-2 Andy Ryan, 3-10 Courtesy of Alireza #theatre #vessels #grid #studentwork #dorchester

Martha Schwartz in conversation with Markus Jatsch The Ahmad Tehrani Symposium Part of the MIT Fall 2024 Architecture Lecture Series https://lnkd.in/d2H4KD2T Martha Schwartz is a landscape architect and artist with major interests in cities, communities and the urban landscape. As principal of Martha Schwartz Partners, she has over 35 years of experience as a landscape architect, urbanist and artist on a wide variety of projects located around the world with a variety of world-renowned architects. She is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including the Honorary Royal Designer for Industry Award from the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce for her outstanding contribution to UK design and most recently a Council of Fellows Award by the American Society of Landscape Architects. Dr. Markus Jatsch is an award-winning and renowned architect and landscape urbanist. He combines a background in fine arts and philosophy with over 25 years of professional experience in designing and implementing well-known projects in urban planning, architecture, landscape architecture, and public art. He currently serves as Senior Partner and Creative Director at Martha Schwartz Partners (MSP), where he also oversees the activities of MSP’s R&D group on climate change. He has collaborated with Martha Schwartz for over 20 years, having previously worked with David Chipperfield Architects. Image Credits: Poster design by Omnivore, Inc. 2 Alan Ward, 3-5 Martha Schwartz Partners Read more at https://lnkd.in/dx486iFD #publicprogram #landscape #architecture #urbanism

We are excited to share a project by Justin Wan (MArch ‘28) titled 'Panorama.' The project offers a structural intervention for Long Lounge in MIT’s Building 7, as part of Core I studio Studio Instructors: Liam O’Brien, Carrie Norman, Jaffer Kolb This proposal outlines a vision for transforming the enclosed environment of MIT Building 7 and the Long Lounge into a liberated space that welcomes all collectively and individually. By distilling the existing structure to its essential elements, the structural constraints are seen as opportunities to rethink the space as a dynamic field condition, allowing for a reinterpretation that challenges the existing hierarchical layout composed of classical columns with a modern grid. By removing the bulky elements surrounding the dome and introducing an additional layer between the existing structures, the intervention intensifies the existing grid and reorganizes the spatial configuration within this field, facilitating an interweaving of various programs in the newly freed area. The structural system proposed is akin to a sandwich transfer structure supported by a field of slender columns with their density strategically concentrated in heavy loading zones and responses to programmatic requirements. This new unifying ground redefines the common areas for the Department of Architecture and offers a holistic experience around the dome. #studentwork #dome #panorama #structural #field

Namhi Kwun (SMarchS Urb '25) It's (not) about the money 4.181 Financial Forms Instructor: Jaffer Kolb In Korea, the "White Envelope" tradition—gift-giving at major life events through discreet monetary exchanges—reveals a social economy that extends beyond mere financial transactions. This practice of gifting, often in white envelopes at weddings, funerals, and other milestones, cultivates a network of trust and reciprocity within families and communities. Far from simple exchanges, these contributions are a means of sustaining social bonds over generations. Reflecting the course's focus on rethinking financial structures, this tradition serves as an example of how economies can operate outside conventional capitalist norms. The act of recording each contribution, categorizing attendees, and reciprocating through thank-you calls reveals a system of social accountability that resists the impersonal nature of market transactions. The "White Envelope" tradition forms a support network that not only marks life events but also influences choices around commodities and services, grounding economic participation in community values rather than profit motives. This record functions as both a ledger and a framework for future exchanges, envisioning an economic model that aligns with cultural values and personal preferences for significant life milestones. By examining alternative economies and financial arrangements, this work highlights how social economies can foster resilient networks that prioritize human relationships over market efficiency. In this context, it considers how architecture might respond to these forms of economic relationships, encouraging a shift from profit-driven practices to supportive, community-oriented structures. This exploration challenges dominant financial orientations, proposing a model of economic participation rooted in trust, reciprocity, and shared cultural heritage. #studentwork #financialcultures #korea #economictraditions

Solano Benítez Arq. Lecture title: The Place of Architecture Public Lecture Series Fall 2024 The 30th Pietro Belluschi Lecture Thur Nov 21, 6-8pm at 10-250 Huntington Hall Solano Benítez graduated from the Faculty of Architecture of the National University of Asunción, Paraguay in 1986, forming different groups, from where he has developed professional activity as a researcher. Currently he works at Jopoi de Arquitectura. Solano is the recipient of a number of awards, having been a 2000 Finalist of the “2nd. Mies van de Rohe Award for Latin America”, winner of the 2016 Golden Lion of the Venice Biennale, 2024 Gold Medal of the FCARM, Federation of Colleges of Architects of Mexico, and many others. Image credits: 1. Omnivore, Inc 2-3. Enrico Cano

Sarah Lopez "This Transnational Tie is Volcanic: Migrating Materials and the People that Carry Them in Mexico and the US" Thursday 11/14, 6-8PM Part of the MIT Fall 2024 Architecture Lecture Series. Presented with the History Theory Criticism Group and the Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Registration: https://lnkd.in/dwHEfbJJ This Transnational Tie is Volcanic elevates both Mexican laborers and cantera stone as two key protagonists in the production of new architectures and landscape elements on both sides of the US-Mexico border. “Cantera” means quarry but in Mexico and among the migrant community in the US Southwest, cantera is used as a commercial term to describe Mexican tuff, the mottled volcanic rock that built both colonial churches in cities like San Luis Potosí and Pre-Columbian monuments like the Zapotec structures of Mitla. Once reserved for Mexico’s elite, an exploration of cantera today repositions Mexicans and Mexican Americans as key informants in the design and execution of migrant urbanisms in the US defined as both transnational and hyper-local. By tracking the excavation, processing, distribution and commissioning of cantera stone over the last fifty years, I also explore the limits and possibilities of a material-ethnographic-environmental method that situates Mexican quarrymen, artisans, masons, entrepreneurs, and their objects, at the heart of a binational history. Transnational building processes are here key to understanding cantera landscapes, deployed by once-and/or-still marginalized individuals in both Mexico and the US who claim binational futures. Sarah Lopez is an Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design. Lopez is a built environment historian of 20th century Mexico and the United States whose research focuses on material histories of migration, remittance development and landscapes, and migrant incarceration. She is interested in experimental historical methods, ordinary landscapes, and environmental humanities. Lopez' book, The Remittance Landscape: The Spaces of Migration in Rural Mexico and Urban USA, won the 2017 Spiro Kostof Book Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. She has been the recipient of Mellon fellowships at Princeton, Dumbarton Oaks, and in 2023, the Center for the Study of Visual Arts (CASVA) at the National Gallery. This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and streamed online. Image credits: 1. Poster design by Omnivore, Inc 2. Eric Sucar 3. Sarah Lopez #publiclecture #migration #binationalfutures

"WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND" The LOT-EK movie by Thomas Piper Thur Nov 7, 6-8PM at Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames St Presented with the Architecture and Urbanism Group Event registration: https://lnkd.in/dETXQrRT The design studio LOT-EK is a visionary practice at the intersection of art and architecture, that specializes in upcycling, which is the art and science of repurposing, remaking, rethinking, reimagining. Of using old things in new ways. The shipping container is the thing that has captured their imagination for over a quarter-century: they have remade containers into homes, schools, galleries, libraries, and more. With hundreds of millions of obsolete and unused containers around the world, this is a new and necessary architecture of the future, that repairs and regenerates the unnatural environment that we have inherited from the past. WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND is a feature-length documentary of this vision, and of the soulful lifelong partnership of the people, designers Ada Tolla and Lignano, Giuseppe behind it. WE START WITH THE THINGS WE FIND shows us a way to be radically optimistic, creative, and constructive during times that can feel the opposite of all that. Taking us from spark-filled workshops to a container ship sea voyage over a shimmering sea; and explaining all the prosaic and poetic design thinking behind how LOT-EK brings the container to life, the film shows how all we have can become all we need, how resourceful subsistence can feel like beautiful abundance, and how to keep going when we now know there is no such thing as a fresh start. Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano have Masters Degrees in Architecture and Urban Design from the Universita’ di Napoli, Italy (1989). After graduating they completed post-graduate studies at Columbia University, New York (1990-1991) as Visiting Scholars. They founded LOT-EK in Naples, Italy in 1993 and opened up LOT-EK’s New York studio in 1995. Image Credits: 1 Poster Design by Omnivore, Inc 2-3 Five Seasons, 4 Director Thomas Piper by Malcom Wyer, 5 Movie Poster Design Bartos Theatre, 20 Ames Street Building E15, Lower Atrium level. This event will not be streamed. #publicprogram #moviescreening #shippingcontainer #poeticdesign

Rocket Horizon, as part of the studio “Space Architecture” taught by Skylar Tibbits Design Team: Ray Wang SMArchS ‘25, So Jung Lee MArch ‘24, Jon Lupo PhDAeroAstro ‘28, Heekun Roh PhDAeroAstro ‘27, Manuel Alejandro Sánchez Castro SFMBA ‘25 4.154 Space Architecture is an interdisciplinary studio at MIT, bringing together researchers from the Department of Architecture, Media Lab, Aero Astro, and Sloan School of Management. The joint design is focused on reimagining lunar habitats while pushing the boundaries of what is possible in the next generation’s space explorations and emerging technologies. Central to Rocket Horizon is the principle of reusability—adapting SpaceX‘s Starship HLS (a lunar lander variant of the Starship spacecraft that is slated to transfer astronauts from a lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon and back) not only for transport but also as a core component of the lunar infrastructure. This approach minimizes the need for on-site construction, enabling a faster and more efficient habitat setup that supports human life on the Moon. The project envisions repurposing the Starship by landing it vertically and then repositioning it horizontally to integrate with the habitat’s design. This is achieved by engineering ideas of reshaping the terrain into dunes to absorb the landing impact and using the vehicle’s reaction control thrusters to facilitate horizontal positioning. These technologies allow for efficient habitat construction and ensure the safety and stability of the lunar base. Beyond a single habitat design, Rocket Horizon is a prototype for a scalable, sustainable human presence on the Lunar Surface. It offers a framework for creating larger research institutions and infrastructure as space exploration becomes more cost-effective and rapid. Images courtesy of the group. #spacearchitecture #lunarhabitat #interdisciplinary