n e w s D i g e s t o f t h e M i t s c h o o l o f A r c h i t e c t u r e + P l A n n i n g

A MessAge froM MArk JArzoMbek

At MIT we often talk about how we like to work and think in the

context of real world problems. This is, of course, an unassailable

position. but what is ‘the real world?’ It was once thought that

we lived in a post-industrial world but that is now considered

a too-limited concept. The term globalization has also run its

course. In today’s era, different realities are intensely intermin-

gled to create something like a post-Holocene-socio-computa-

tional-technical-mediated-aesthetic-epistemic-distributed

world. It is a terrible mouthful, but there is no good way to get

around it.

There is no ‘bluetooth’ magic that binds everything together in a

seamless fashion. Depending on context, one of those compo-

nents will be stronger than the others, but we can hardly deal

with the one without all the others being mobilized in some way

or another, for better or worse. We should, therefore, be con-

scious of—produce and even theorize—the overt and covert

pushings and pullings between these entangled realities.

so how do we position our school and what will be the questions

that will orient our efforts? That will be the subject for a contin-

ued conversation, even in the very pages of PLAN. our school

should not seek to have a single viewpoint but nor should we sit

back and ‘make-do.’ Instead, we should promote a range of

answers, speculations, pedagogies and solutions, both real and

imaginary, both practical and impractical, both in the real world

and in the not-so-real world.

MArk JArzoMbek

on July 1, Mark Jarzombek and Meejin Yoon took over important leadership positions at sA+P: Jarzombek was named Interim Dean of the school, succeeding Adèle Naudé santos who stepped down at the end of June, and Yoon was appointed Head of the Department of Architecture, succeeding Nader Tehrani who served as department head from 2010 to 2014. Jarzombek, a renowned architectural histo-rian, critic and theorist, is one of the country’s leading advocates for taking a global perspec-tive in examining the history of architecture. His ground-breaking textbook, A global History of Architecture (Wiley Press, 2006), emphasized the connections, contrasts and influences of architectural movements throughout the span of history; and his most recent book, Architecture of first societies: A global Perspective (Wiley

chAnging of the guArD TWo IMPorTANT NeW APPoINTMeNTs

Press, 2013) surveys building practices among societies in the distant past. Jarzombek is also director of the global Architecture History Teaching Collaborative, recently established with a $1M grant from the Andrew W. Mellon foundation to promote the development and exchange of teaching materi-als for architectural history education across the globe. And recently, through edX, he taught the first-ever MooC (Massive open online Course) on the history of architecture; attracting 25,000 registered students and 5500 active partici-pants world-wide, it was among the most suc-cessful courses ever taught on the edX platform to date. Anne Whiston spirn, professor of land-scape architecture and planning, has taken over Jarzombek’s role as chair of the committee

leading the search for a permanent dean; the committee expects to conclude its work this fall. Yoon, the first woman ever appointed to head the architecture department, is co-founder of Höweler + Yoon Architecture and MY studio, a multidisciplinary practice widely praised for work at the intersection of architecture, interac-tive environments and public space. In 2013, for her work as director of the undergraduate program in architecture, she was presented with the Irwin sizer Award for the Most significant Improvement to MIT education. Last year she introduced a new course, co-taught with Neri oxman at the Media Lab, that brought students together from over a dozen MIT departments to focus on design as a way of looking at the world that promotes the synthesis of knowledge from many different dis-ciplines in order to unlock creative solutions to our most challenging problems. Yoon’s design work has been widely rec-ognized for its innovative and interdisciplinary nature, winning the United states Artist Award in Architecture and Design in 2008, the Athena rIsD emerging Designer Award in 2008, Architecture record’s Design Vanguard Award in 2007, the Architecture League’s emerging Voices Award in 2007, and the rome Prize in Design in 2005. With her partner eric Höweler, she was also presented with the 2012 Audi Urban future Award—a €100k prize—for a proposal to create a new kind of transportation platform in the boston to Washington corridor for the year 2030.

(A)Aviary, designed by Höweler + Yoon and Parallel Development with a sound composition by erik Carlson, creates a playful sculpture with light and sound, responding to touch with a display of light and sound effects evoking a bird in flight or the natural habitat for birds. (Photo:

Courtesy of Höweler + Yoon Architecture)

(B)Yoon was commissioned to design MIT’s memorial for sean Collier, the campus police officer killed in the wake of the 2013 boston Marathon bombing; the shape of the memorial evokes the absence of a large figure at the center, creating in the void a unifying central space of remembrance. (Image: Courtesy of

Höweler + Yoon Architecture)

(c)Jarzombek’s 2004 book Designing MIT, traces the early development of the MIT campus, describing the artistic clashes, bureaucratic tangles and academic politics that marked the process of finding an architect and deciding on the final design; the book also sheds light on the role of patronage in the world of architecture in the Us at that time.

(D)organized along a global timeline, Jarzombek’s A global History of Architecture presents an innovative approach to the study of architectural history: stretching from 3500 bCe to the present, it spans the globe within each time period.

(A) (B) (c) (D)

Photo: Judith M

. Daniels/s

A+P

Photo: r

ichard How

ard, courtesy of the office of C

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unications, MIT

As Meejin Yoon prepared to take over as head of the Department of Architecture this summer, we sat down for a brief conversation about the future. below, an edited version of that talk: what do you think is the greatest challenge currently facing the architecture profession? I think the profession is currently most chal-lenged by two simultaneous and inter-related conditions: on the one hand we have the expan-sion of an understanding of the built environ-ment as a social, technological and ecological condition, while on the other hand we have the contraction of the architects’ ability to inter-vene in that built environment. This contraction is a loss of the original breadth of the discipline. The notion of the master architect—which we all inherited through the atelier model and is perpetuated in the media and in the academy—is changing. The profession has moved to the expertise model, where there are architects that specialize in building types: just health care, just sports facilities, or commercial office buildings. by specializing, of course, you limit liability because you become an expert in that area but you risk losing the wider view—the ability to connect the dots and see the big picture, which is precisely what is needed. And while that’s happening on one end of the profession, on the other end of the profession other disciplines are taking on more of what was the historic respon-sibility of the architect. Like construction. The

construction industry is no longer as integrated with architecture as it was historically, when we had a relationship with crafts people, because construction is now its own kind of industry. This condition of expansion and contraction seems to be an opportunity to frame a new kind of archi-tectural practice, discourse and debate.

so what’s happening is that architects are giving away pieces of their work to experts while at the same time, pieces of their work are being taken away from them by other disciplines. Yes. this is not a good scenario. No. but there are certain firms that are lead-ing the way in expanding the practice—taking on more in terms of materials research, project delivery systems, innovation in building tech-nology and speculative research. And I believe our faculty, across the department, are leading in this effort. Which means that we are in a great position to rethink design research in the Academy. which brings us then to the next question. that’s a pretty difficult situation you just described, the state of the profession. how do we best prepare students to function, and even flourish, in that environment? I think we have to teach students how to ask the right questions. We should be striving to create the kinds of students who challenge the discipline by asking questions that push the discipline beyond its current comfort zone. We need to nurture the leaders and innovators, as well as the ‘black sheep’ of the profession. I think most people get into architecture because they believe the built environment has an impact on society, and culture. but because of the over-whelming complexity of the building industry today, the profession often withdraws from experimentation because it requires more risk. I think in the long run, though, it is more risky not to experiment, test and innovate. I think our goal, as an institution, is to prepare our students so that, in that context, they can still find ways to innovate and invent, and help change the profes-sion from within.

speaking of how people come into the profession, why they get interested in it—what did you do with the program for our undergraduates that won you the award for most significant improvement to Mit education? The agenda I had for the program was to broaden the questions that were being asked in the introductory studios. so students weren’t delving into the specifics of buildings from day one but were asked instead to work with fun-damental principles—such as inside/outside, compression/tension, equilibrium or imbal-ance—and to understand how these fundamen-tal aspects of our physical environment are actually quite rich and complex. Also, histori-cally, our undergraduate students were asked to designate a specialization in one of our five dis-cipline groups—computation, building technol-ogy, architectural design, history and theory, or art, culture and technology. starting next year, though, the students will be in an integrated cur-riculum that offers courses in all those areas but doesn’t ask them to declare a specialization. We want students to understand they need to have breadth across all those areas to have meaning-ful depth in any one of them. This broad design education encourages the undergrads to think of design as a means of framing questions, col-laborating and developing solutions, rather than a discrete body of knowledge to be acquired. how do you gauge the success of that change to the program? The measure of success has been what our grad-uates go on to do. over the last four years we’ve seen a big increase in the number of students going to top grad schools, as well as students finding alternate entrepreneurial paths related to the discipline but not entirely within it. The challenge that remains for our undergraduate program is to draw a larger student audience. We see that people all across the Institute are really interested in design but they have trouble finding a place where they can get a design edu-cation that isn’t discipline-specific. Learning about design thinking and methodology, right now, is always within a specific discipline—mechanical engineering or architecture or civil engineering. It seems we need to be thinking about design education in a broader sense—across disciplines and scales.

everything you’ve said sort of points to the answer to this last question. But let’s just ask it and see if there’s more to say. what’s your ambition for the department and for the pro-gram during your tenure as head? I think the program is already in an amazing place. I think stan, Yung Ho and Nader did a great job making the department what it is today. If there is anything I want to work on in the next couple of years, I would say it’s integrating all the discipline groups by find-ing platforms and projects that would allow us all to come together to explore big questions. Like water resources: what are we going to do? How do we deal with natural disasters? How do we question current notions of sustainability and really make a contribution—not by LeeD points but by rethinking basic questions about energy and materials? This is all being done by various faculty but I think we need to find plat-forms and projects that bring us all together so we can work on them together. The other big agenda I would have is to make the Department of Architecture at MIT notable for its experi-ments in architecture. To really interrogate the potential of design research and how it can contribute to questions within our profession, as well as some questions that traditionally lie outside our profession. In short, to capitalize on what is really unique about MIT: we are part of a research institute where science and tech-nology provide a culture of experimentation that could serve as a platform for a new kind of design education and pedagogy.MUCH MUCH More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

A conversAtion with MeeJin YoonoN THe fUTUre of ArCHITeCTUre AND ArCHITeCTUrAL eDUCATIoN

(Above) A reinterpretation of the chinese courtyard typology as a contemporary exhibition hall, howeler + Yoon’s chengdu sky courts uses its constraints—the building typology and a mandate for sloped roofs—as opportuni-ties to transform this traditional building type into a contemporary architectural proposition for a modern mixed-use program. (Photo: Yihuai Hu)

(Above)constructed for ces international 2014, höweler + Yoon’s ‘Audi urban future initiative interactive table’ displays projections for the future of urbanism; the table utilizes augmented reality screens which layer these projections onto a model of the city of Boston to contextualize data and visions. (Photo: Courtesy of Höweler + Yoon

Architecture)

(Bottom)originally created for the 2004 olympics in Athens, Yoon’s white noise/white light is an interactive sound and light field that responds to the movement of people as they walk through it; each stalk unit traces visitors’ presence and movement, transmitting white light from leDs and white noise from speakers below. (Photo © Andy ryan.)

center for ADvAnceD urBAnisM wins reBuilD BY Design coMPetition IMProVINg THe resILIeNCe of CoAsTAL AreAs

sA+P’s Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU), in collaboration with others, has been named a winner of the rebuild by Design competition, sponsored by the Us Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to address the challenges faced by coastal communities in the wake of Hurricane sandy. The state of New Jersey will receive $150M to implement CAU’s winning proposal. overall, HUD is allocating approximately $920M to New York, New Jersey and New York City to begin implementing the competition’s six winning projects. Taken together, the proj-ects provide a blueprint for how communities throughout the sandy region, the Us and the world can maximize resilience as they rebuild and recover from major disasters. In the rebuild by Design competition, ten participating teams worked with local and regional stakeholders to develop locally-respon-sive proposals. The CAU team combined the cutting-edge research and local knowledge of MIT with the best in water design and man-agement from the Netherlands, including zUs, De Urbanisten, Deltares, Volker Infra Design and 75b. The team’s New Meadowlands project pro-poses to integrate transportation, ecology and development to address a wide spectrum of risks while providing civic amenities and creating opportunities for new redevelopment. Central to the project is the creation of a large natural reserve called The Meadowpark to offer flood protection and to connect and expand marsh-land restoration efforts by the New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. Around and across the Meadowpark, the team proposes an intricate system of berms and marshes to protect against ocean surges and to collect rainfall, reducing sewer overflows in adjacent towns. The park will also add value to surrounding development through its views and recreational offerings. ‘This project is a game changer,’ says CAU research director Alan Berger. ‘It goes beyond typical ‘move or defend’ strategies to show how ecological function can be reclaimed in urban areas, with landscape serving as the great mediator in adapting to climate change risks. We drew from several disciplines within MIT to devise our strategy; one single expertise could not have successfully embraced this challenge.’MUCH More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

In April, sA+P’s Center for Advanced Urbanism (CAU) brought together more than 200 politi-cal leaders, infrastructural engineers, design professionals and academicians to explore the question of how to shape sustainable futures for cities around the world. The impetus for the event was the need to rethink how we approach infrastructural invest-ment and at what scales we apply those invest-ments in the face of current economic, political and environmental challenges. Participants addressed the question in a series of extended discussions on such topics as recalibrating infrastructure in the context of shrinking cities, new thinking on how risk and disaster can be mitigated through redundancy and how smaller infrastructure might change the way we think about cities, urbanization, location choice, land-scape resources and design. one promising approach to disaster resil-ience, for instance, is the notion of scaling infra-structure down in customized ways to ensure systemic failure does not occur when urban areas are struck by unforeseen events. While monumental infrastructures may protect cit-ies from flooding or catastrophic storms, such vast defense barriers can fail with drastic and calamitous results. Consequently, planners are exploring infrastructures that are smaller and mutually independent, while at the same time reinforcing, to meet the dual challenges of sus-tainability and resilience, perhaps scaling down even to the level of individual preferences. Another important concern is the fact that

new forms of urbanization in American and international contexts are far different from twentieth century centralization models, lead-ing some experts to recommend that instead of focusing only on urbanization, we pursue more sustainable suburban practices. ken Laberteaux, a senior principal scientist at the Toyota research Institute-North America, hailed relatively dense, energy-efficient neigh-borhoods as welcome advances in suburban form—such as the West Village area of Davis CA, the largest zero net community in the Us, and the experimental Toyota City project in Japan, a low-carbon development featuring plug-in vehicles that can also be used as genera-tors, channeling energy to the house, the entire project monitored and managed from the Cloud. New mobility options are also needed for suburbs—a combination of dynamic rideshar-ing, car sharing, bike sharing, smart paratransit, LIfT taxi service, uberX, NeVs (neighborhood electric vehicles), conventional transit and even soon-to-market autonomous cars that may change altogether how we think about urban form. According to Daniel sperling, found-ing director of the Institute of Transportation studies at UC/Davis, the transportation sector is probably the least innovative system in our society but it’s now on the cusp of transforma-tion and the obstacles are not the technology or the cost but institutions and policy.

This story is based in part on a report by Peter Dizikes | MIT News office: goo.gl/zhWbqs

new APProAches to urBAn infrAstructure A TWo-DAY CoNfereNCe AT THe CeNTer for ADVANCeD UrbANIsM

(Above)the edge of the Meadowpark will be defined by the Meadowband—a street, a rapid transit line and a series of public spaces, recreation zones and access points to the park, offering additional flood protection, connections between towns and wetlands and opportunities for towns to grow. the Meadowband will bring together different systems (such as transport, ecology, and development) and local residents and visitors from further afield who will gather at this new civic amenity. (Image: MIT CAU+zUs

+Urbanisten)

(Below)the team’s proposal goes beyond protecting existing development areas to suggest more intensive land use in the region through a shift of land-use zoning from suburban to more urban: single- story warehouse zones would be up-zoned to become multi-story, and areas around the Meadow-band would be zoned to include multi-story residential opportuni-ties. (Image: MIT CAU+zUs+Urbanisten)

(Below left)Keynote speaker for the conference was chicago Mayor rahm emanuel, author of the chicago infrastructure trust—an effort to secure private investment for projects the city could not afford through its budget or traditional borrowing. his talk was followed with a Q&A period with Professor Judith layzer (r). (Photo by Dominick reuter)

(Below right)one panel explored the idea of micro-infrastructure, asking how small we can imagine infrastruc-ture and how that changes the way we think about cities, urbanization, location choice, landscape resources and design. Pictured l to r: Ken laberteaux, toyota research institute north America; Daniel sperling, uc Davis; Paola viganò, studio ‘09; scott Kennedy, Masdar institute. the panel was moderated by Jinhua Zhao, edward h. and Joyce linde career Development Assistant Professor of urban Planning. (Photo: Peggy

Cain/sA+P)

Joan Jonas, Professor emerita with sA+P’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology, has been chosen to represent the United states next year at the 56th Venice biennale, the world’s most prestigious contemporary art event. she is the second artist from sA+P to represent the Us at the biennale and one of several others from sA+P who have represented their coun-tries of origin and/or curated exhibits there. A pioneering figure in performance art and video, and one of the most important contem-porary artists today, Jonas explores ways of seeing, the rhythms of ritual and the authority of objects and gestures. for the five galleries of the Us Pavilion, she will create new, inter-related, site-responsive installations incorporat-ing video, drawings, objects and sound. she will shoot all the video, create the sculptural and drawn elements, write the script and design the soundtrack. (for more detail, visit joanjonas-venice2015.com) The Us Pavilion for 2015 is curated by ute Meta Bauer, founding director of sA+P’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology—now director of the Centre for Contemporary Art at the Nanyang Technological University in singapore—and by Paul ha, director of the MIT List Visual Arts Center, who also serves as commissioner for the project. Jonas’ exhibition will be the third project presented by the List Center at the Venice biennale, including fred Wilson: speak of Me as I Am (2003) and Ann Hamilton: Myein (1999).

JoAn JonAs to rePresent u.s. At venice Art BiennAleMosT reCeNT of MANY sA+P ArTIsTs AND ArCHITeCTs IN VeNICe

In 2011, sA+P alum Jennifer Allora (sMviss’03) represented the Us with her partner guillermo Calzadilla. sA+P faculty representing their country of origin in Venice have included Krzysztof wodiczko represent-ing Poland in 2009; gediminas urbonas with his partner nomeda urbonas, representing Lithuania in 2007 (singled out for honorable mention); Antoni Muntadas representing spain in 2005; and otto Piene representing germany in 1971 and 1967. In 2005, sA+P’s Yung ho chang designed a prominent bamboo refuge for China’s first official pavilion and in 2003 ute Meta Bauer served as commissioner for the Nordic Pavilion (finland, Norway and sweden). At the Venice Architecture biennale in 2012, Professor Anton garcia-Abril curated the spanish Pavilion and in 2006 sA+P exhibited several projects there dealing with digital technology and the urban environment. The Venice biennale (La biennale di Venezia) dates to 1895, when the first International Art exhibition was organized; it is one of the most important international biennials and cultural institutions in the world, introducing hundreds of thousands of visitors to exciting new art every two years. The biennale Archiettura debuted in 1980.

Jonas is the only artist in the world who has participated in six different editions of Documenta, a global art event arguably second in importance only to the venice Biennale. Pictured above l to r: organic honey’s vertical roll, Musee galliera, Paris, 1972/1973 (Photo: beatrice Helligers); the shape, the scent, the feel of things, performance at Dia Beacon, 2005 (Photo: Paula Court); reanimation, performance at Mit with jazz pianist and Mit visiting Artist Jason Moran, 2011 (Photo: L. barry

Hetherington)

The Us Pavilion was co-curated by archi-tecture professor Ana Miljacki; the kuwait Pavilion was curated by alumna Alia farid (sMviss’08); an installation of new technology from the senseable city lab is a main compo-nent in the Central Pavilion; and the biennale’s highest honor—the golden Lion—went to the korean Pavilion, co-curated by alumnus hyung-Min Pai (PhD’93, Architecture). Directed by Dutch architect rem koolhaas, this year’s biennale features an exhibition called elements of Architecture that brings together past, current and future versions of building fundamentals—such as the floor, the wall, the ceiling, etc.—in rooms that are each dedicated to a single element. In a room focused on ‘fireplace’, the senseable City Lab is exhibit-ing a new technology that creates microclimates around individuals. originated by research fellow Miriam roure and developed into a thesis project by alumnus leigh christie (sMAct’14), ‘Local Warming’ uses Wifi-based motion tracking and ceiling-mounted infrared heating to target individuals with spotlights of warmth, keeping them com-fortable while the space around them is main-tained at a lower temperature, thus saving energy. The largest portion of the biennale, titled Absorbing Modernity, calls upon each country’s pavilion to show, in its own way, the erasure of its national characteristics in architecture in favor of the almost-universal adoption of mod-ernism between 1914 and 2014. for kuwait’s pavilion, Acquiring Modernity, farid investigates the arrival of modernity

in kuwait through a number of buildings and projects commissioned by the state as ‘modern status symbols’, with a special focus on Michael ecochard’s kuwait National Museum. The investigation analyzes the current conditions of these buildings towards understanding the impact of modernity on local culture—whether modernist ideals were assimilated, altered, neglected, rejected—and what those reactions convey about contemporary society in kuwait. The installation is accompanied by a bi-lingual research publication, a film and a joint installa-tion with the Nordic Pavilion. The korean Pavilion examines the role of architecture in the region’s post-war polariza-tion using architecture as a key to discovering new narratives of the peninsula’s complex past, present and future. Pai and his co-curators Minsuk Cho and Changmo Ahn invited a group of architects, urbanists, poets, writers, artists, photographers, filmmakers, curators and collec-tors to explore the architectural intersections and divisions between the two countries and to extend that exploration to the global state of architecture itself. recognized by the judges as ‘research in action’, Crow’s eye View provides alternative points of view to a discourse that has been largely carried by Western-centric narratives. for the Us Pavilion, Miljacki and her co-curators—fellow Americans eva franch i gilabert and Ashley schafer—chose to examine the Us influence on global practice in terms of standardized protocols and office organizations. Called officeUs, the exhibition looks backward and forward at once, reviewing archival mate-

rial from the era while also converting the pavil-ion into a working architecture studio. The curators put together an international group of eight design practitioners to serve as partners in their ad hoc firm. The group has set up shop inside the pavilion and, with a volun-teer staff, are actively working there for the five-month duration of the show, surrounded by archives that document some 1000 projects realized abroad by 200 American firms during the designated years. over the course of the biennale, the design-ers are producing 25 projects based on a set of 25 issues—one for each week of the show—deciding over the course of each week how they want to rework history into a contemporary object that reflects the past while also project-ing into the future. They are collaborating with a group of 90 satellite offices around the world, connected through the officeUs website, and with visiting experts who are staging a series of workshops related to each topic. Collectively designed by NY-based archi-tects Leong Leong, graphic designer Natasha Jen/Pentagram and technology consultants at CAse, the pavilion comprises four rooms sur-rounding a central space. Modular worktables snake through each of the four peripheral rooms while the central room, called the workground of the future, contains a circular bed reflect-ing the curators’ belief that practice has now evolved to an era when work and play are merg-ing. Aroma-master Christophe Laudemiel cre-ated a custom scent for each of the five rooms, evoking the time and place of its era.

officeUs was commissioned by the store-front for Art and Architecture, directed by eva franch i gilabert, on behalf of the bureau of educational and Cultural Affairs, Us Department of state. The project was devel-oped in collaboration with PrAXIs journal and with students from sA+P’s Department of Architecture and the knowlton school at The ohio state University. Partner Lars Müller is publishing four catalogs about the exhibition and media partner Architizer is host to a series of online articles exploring the many layers of officeUs.

(A) for the Us Pavilion, Ana Miljacki and her co-curators convened an ad hoc firm that set up shop at the pavilion; with a volunteer staff, they are actively working there for the duration of the show, surrounded by archives that document some 1000 projects realized abroad by 200 American firms during the designated years. (Photo: Courtesy David

sundberg/esto.)

(B)The biennale’s highest honor –the golden Lion—went to the korean Pavilion, co-curated by alumnus Hyung-Min Pai; the exhibit presents multiple points of view on how architectural interventions have reflected and shaped the life of the korean Peninsula since WWII. (Pho-

to: Courtesy of the 2014 korean Pavilion)

(c) (D)The senseable City Lab’s ‘Local Warming’ uses Wifi-based motion tracking and ceiling-mounted infrared heating to target indi-viduals with spotlights of warmth, keeping them comfortable while the space around them is maintained at a lower temperature, thus saving energy. (Detail photos: Aaron Nevin)

(e)for kuwait’s pavilion, alumna Alia farid investigates the arrival of modernity in kuwait through a number of buildings and projects commissioned by the state as ‘modern status symbols’. (Photo:

Courtesy of the National Council for Culture,

Arts, and Letters.)

sA+P Is WeLL rePreseNTeD AT THIs YeAr’s VeNICe ArCHITeCTUre bIeNNALe, oPeN NoW THroUgH NoVeMber 23.

CUrATINg NATIoNAL PAVILIoNs AND INTroDUCINg NeW TeCHNoLogY

sA+P At the venice Architecture BiennAle

(A)

(B) (c) (D)

(e)

sA+P’s senseable City Lab has created a visu-alization tool that could potentially help reduce congestion, decrease vehicle emissions and lower the cost of mobility infrastructure. In the near term, researchers hope it will help to stim-ulate thinking about ways to use publicly avail-able data to explore new concepts for mobility, especially in crowded urban contexts. based on data from more than 170 million taxi trips in New York City in 2011, HubCab takes the form of a map of the city’s five bor-oughs, with blue and yellow dots denoting taxi pick-ups and drop-offs. Users can explore 200,000 street segments over various time seg-ments of the day, amounting to more than one trillion flow combinations, and/or filter for a specific time of day to see where cabs are most often needed for commuters before and after work, or for partiers at night. by providing insight into the city’s inner workings with a never-before-seen granularity, the tool allows users to navigate to the places where their taxi trips start and end, and to see how many others in their area follow the same travel patterns, suggesting how many of their cab rides might be shareable with others around them. by visualizing the benefits that could arise from sharing cabs, the research shows that taxi sharing could reduce the number of trips by 40% with only minimal inconvenience to the passengers. And by identifying commuter travel patterns, researchers can work to develop a more efficient car share system—a system that might not only save people time and money, but also allow them to better plan their taxi rides around the city. see IT Here: WWW.HUbCAb.org.

A researcher at the Media Lab has invented flexible inner soles that you can slip into your shoes that will turn them into supershoes, foot-wear so smart it can guide you around the city with such accuracy that you’ll never need to consult a map. explaining the motivation for his invention, Dhairya Dand laments the amount of time we spend staring at our smart phones instead of the world around us. We use google to find the right street, Yelp to find the right restaurant, Match to find the right friends, and so on. We don’t get lost anymore, says Dand, we don’t wander, wonder and discover. by freeing us to engage directly with unfamiliar surroundings, he says, supershoes bring us back to our innate nature as explorers. supershoes work by connecting via blue-tooth to the smartphone in your pocket, which runs an app called shoeCentral. You register with shoeCentral—once—and populate it with your preferences in food, shopping, interests, etc. Then, using your smartphone’s gPs data, shoeCentral can guide you to where you want to go by telling you when and where to turn left or right. over time, by learning your patterns, the app will fine tune its understanding of your preferences, becoming ever more efficient. The shoes use a tickling interface to guide you as you walk. If your left toe tickles, you should turn left. If your right toe tickles, turn right. No tickle? keep on straight ahead. both toes tickle? There’s something nearby that might interest you. And if both toes tickle repeatedly, voilà! You have reached your destination. In addition to using your supershoes as a guide, you can use them as a reminder: put your to-do list on your smartphone and the shoes will alert you when you’re close to the clean-ers, grocery, pharmacy or wherever you have errands to run. More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

sharing our way to a Better futureA step Toward Improving Urban Transportation efficiency

A new way to navigate the cityLet Your supershoes Do the Walking

Three planning students from sA+P were among the winners of the 2014 Affordable Housing Design Competition sponsored by the federal Home Loan bank of boston. The annual competition pairs teams of stu-dents with affordable housing organizations to develop innovative proposals addressing the organizations’ needs; since the contest was established, sA+P has consistently been repre-sented among the top winners. This year, elizabeth Kuwada’s team won the $10k first place for their AlmaViva proj-ect, a four-parcel, scattered-site plan to provide affordable rental housing in Lawrence MA. AlmaViva would provide 33 rental units—mostly two- and three-bedroom apartments—for very low-income and extremely low-income families. The new construction and historic rehabilitation would restore the streetscape along the neighborhood’s commercial corridor and include an early childhood day care center, a neighborhood education center and a bike shop and cycling advocacy center. In addition to kuwada, the team was composed of students from Harvard and boston University working with Lawrence CommunityWorks; executive Director of Lawrence CommunityWorks Is Jessica Andors (MCP’99). Alison crowley’s and laura Martin’s team won the $3k third place prize for their Jackson spring proposal to provide a mix of affordable and market-rate housing near a transit station in the Jamaica Plain/roxbury section of boston. The development would include 168 units with 114 mixed-income rental residential units and 54 mixed-income ownership units; the 13,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial space would include a café and market. Working in collaboration with the nonprofit The Community builders, Inc., the team included students from Harvard in addition to Crowley and Martin; the team was mentored by sA+P’s Peter roth (MArch/McP’86).

urban Planners to Play Key role in new Mit initiativeCampus-Wide effort Will Address Large-scale environmental Issues

Planning students win in Affordable housing competition sA+P represented on first and Third Place Teams

(Above)if you give the shoes access to your calendar, they will know when you have a free slot in the day and can plan a short walk, allowing you to take a break without worrying about getting back on time; you can also use the shoes to get lost by asking for routes to let you do more exploring. (Images: Dhairya Dand)

(Below)Because the needs and challenges related to water and food systems are often specific to a particular region or country, the research will seek to develop environmen-tally benign, scalable solutions for water and food supply across a range of regional, social and economic contexts. (Photo: shutterstock)

(Below)Project researchers say the hubcab tool represents a substantial advance over existing state-of-the-art solutions to social sharing problems; below, screenshots of hubcab showing (l) taxi flows and potential sharing benefits between two locations in Manhattan; (r top) pickups and drop-offs of all 170 million taxi trips over one year in new York city; (r bottom) all taxi pickups and drop-offs at JfK airport daily between 3AM and 6AM. (Images: © MIT senseable City Lab)

(Above)competition proposals were required to provide for housing in which at least 40% of the units could be sold or rented to low-income households. elizabeth Kuwada’s team won the $10K first place for their Almaviva project, a four-parcel, scattered-site plan to provide affordable rental housing in lawrence MA. (Image: AlmaViva Team)

sA+P’s Department of Urban studies + Planning will be playing a key role in a new campus-wide initiative to promote cross-disci-plinary research related to large-scale environ-mental issues. Initially under the direction of susan solomon, the ellen swallow richards Professor of Atmospheric Chemistry and Climate science, the initiative will promote interdisciplinary research to address the most significant prob-lems in our environment, spanning the physi-cal and social sciences; engineering; and urban planning and policy. An important goal will be to propose research that might not be easily funded by cur-rent federal agencies, which tend to be defined by disciplinary areas. Like the MIT energy Initiative (MITeI), the new program is also expected to produce detailed, comprehensive studies in particular areas of concern. A major component of the initiative will be the Abdul Latif Jameel World Water and food security Lab (J-WAfs), newly estab-lished through a major gift from MIT alumnus Mohammed Abdul Latif Jameel (bsCe’78) aimed at ensuring the world’s food and water supply for the 21st century. Headed by John Lienhard, the Jameel Professor of Water and food in the Department of Mechanical engineering, the lab is being established to help humankind adapt to a rap-idly rising population, a changing climate and increasing urbanization and development. In order to have the greatest impact, J-WAfs will draw on MIT’s particular strength in urban plan-ning to tackle the pressing problems faced by cities. More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

five students from the school of Architecture + Planning—candidates for degrees in media studies, in architecture, and in art, culture and technology—took top honors in this year’s annual visual arts awards. The Harold and Arlene schnitzer Prize in the Visual Arts was established in 1996 through an endowment from Harold and Arlene schnitzer of Portland or to recognize excellence in a body of student artistic work; in recent years, sA+P students have regularly dominated the awards. This year’s $5k first prize went to Anne Macmillan, a candidate for the sM in Art, Culture and Technology. Macmillan’s work focuses on the complexities of measuring and representing the natural world—such as lakes, rocks and trees. In her winning piece, ‘boxes for rocks’, she 3-D scanned rocks to create custom cardboard boxes for them, leaving gaps in the cardboard that represented inherent limitations in depicting nature. sophia Brueckner, a candidate for the Ms in Media Arts and sciences, won the second-place prize of $3k with her computation-influ-enced painting. With interests in interaction design, generative art, algorithmic writing, and painting, brueckner explores the relationship between digital and manual modes of creating. Winner of the $2k third prize was floor van de velde, a candidate for the sM in Art, Culture and Technology. Her artistic experiments in the perceptual phenomena of light, sound and space aim to be immersive and visceral. In her most recent show, ‘score for a Color field’, seven sheets of fluorescent acrylic were suspended from the ceiling and lit by black lights, creating an intense ultraviolet light that aimed to skew the viewer’s sense of perception.

Alison Malouf, an undergraduate studying architecture, won honorable mention for her work in architecture, photography and film. Her winning entry, ‘Chance’, is a series of paintings that questions decision making in abstract art by using ‘random’ input to generate sets of con-straints within a single, frame-like algorithm. formal decision-making occurs, she says, in the (often subversive) translation of these con-straints onto canvas. The Laya and Jerome b. Wiesner student Art Awards are presented annually to two or three students, living groups, organizations or activities for outstanding achievement in and contributions to the arts at MIT. established by the Council for the Arts at MIT in 1979, these awards honor the late President emeritus Jerome Wiesner and Mrs. Wiesner for their commitment to the arts at MIT. An endowment fund provides a $1500 honorarium to each recipient. This year’s winners include elena Jessop, a PhD candidate in media arts and sciences, for art and technology; and, again, floor van de velde, for visual art. Also named winners in this year’s awards were Adam strandberg, a senior in physics, for theater direction; and grace Young, a senior in mechanical engineering, for arts journalism. The work of the Wiesner winners was on view at the Jerome b. Wiesner student Art gallery through August; the gallery was estab-lished as a gift from the Class of 1983.

sA+P stuDents win visuAl Arts AwArDsCANDIDATes IN MeDIA sTUDIes, IN ArCHITeCTUre, AND IN ArT, CULTUre AND TeCHNoLogY

(A)floor van de Velde, score for Lime Intervals, 2014. Digital Acrylic fabrication. Inspired by the chance operations and compositional techniques of the composer John Cage, score for Lime Intervals follows a similar aesthetic prompt—the choice and positioning of the pressure-fit, lime-green shapes in the luminous pink perforated sheet, are expressed in free-form operations. (Photo: floor Van de Velde)

(B)elly Jessop tuning the Chandelier for the opera Death and the Powers. The Chandelier is both a set piece and an unconventional instrument—as a performer strokes, plucks or dampens the strings, she shapes and controls layers of sound. The form of the Chandelier was designed by steve Pliam and Alex McDowell; the interaction sensing and design was created by elly Jessop. (Photo:

Peter Torpey)

(c)Alison Malouf, Chance series, 2012. Acrylic on canvas, 48” x 36”. Chance is a series of paintings that questions decision-making in ab-stract art by using ‘random’ input to generate sets of constraints within a single, frame-like algorithm. formal decision-making occurs in the (often subversive) translation of these constraints onto canvas. (Photo: Courtesy of Alison Malouf)

(D)floor van de Velde. Vibrant Divide, 2014. Digital Acrylic fabrication. Vibrant Divide, a large site-specific artwork constructed from fluores-cent acrylic, draws the viewer’s attention to a realm of space that is often neglected, viewed in Western tradition as negative space. (Photo:

elizabeth Woodward)

(e)sophia brueckner, Carte blanche, 2012. C++, YouTube videos. A C++ program combines the imagery and sound from YouTube videos of wild horses and trees in the wind in real-time. (Photo: sophia brueckner)

(f)Anne Macmillan, boxes for rocks, 2012 and ongoing. boxes for rocks is an ongoing process of collect-ing, naming and encapsulating, as unique cardboard boxes are made to fit individual rocks as accurately as possible. (Photo: Anne Macmillan)

(A) (B)

(e)

(f)

(c) (D)

In April, sA+P’s Program in Art, Culture and Technology, in concert with MIT’s Center for Art, science and Technology, presented a two-day symposium and an accompanying exhibit to celebrate the living legacy of artist and educa-tor Antoni Muntadas who retired in the spring after 24 years of teaching here. The symposium brought together more than 300 scholars, artists, architects and planners from MIT and beyond to consider definitions of public space and the tools, tactics and con-sequences of reclaiming it through architecture and art. The themes of the symposium drew from Muntadas’ career at MIT and his artis-tic practice, a legacy that directly affected the work and philosophies of many of the invited speakers. A forthcoming publication will expand the symposium discussions and bring together diver-gent voices in theory and practice through texts and projects that challenge or support ideas of cultural identity, documenting and analyzing public spaces from several locations and cul-tures in recent history. The exhibition that opened during the sym-posium was on view in the lobby of the Media Lab Complex throughout the summer. An archive of course posters, syllabi, research materials and documents, travel photographs and logs, and documentation of projects were presented as a condensed survey mapping the ideas and the destinations explored and researched in Muntadas’ seminars on public space. The Public space? Lost & found sympo-sium and exhibition was chaired by gediminas Urbonas, Mitsui Career Development Associate Professor in ACT. More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

An exhibit on view at the MIT Museum through January 4 presents more than 250 items from the early days of photography, drawn from the collection of noted collector William b. becker, with additional artifacts from Dan Colucci. Daguerre’s American Legacy features daguerrotypes, tintypes, ambrotypes, albu-men prints, cameras, lenses, handbills, even a storage box for daguerreotype plates. ‘To call “Daguerre’s American Legacy” a visual census would be far too sweeping,’ wrote Mark feeney in his boston globe review, ‘but not altogether inaccurate.’ before 1840, portraits had been expensive to make and were mostly restricted to the aris-tocracy but the less-expensive daguerreotype made portraits available to a wider clientele; by 1853, three million daguerreotypes were being taken per year. The subjects and the photographers are mostly anonymous, but there are examples in the show of work from boston’s southworth & Hawes, perhaps the most artistically distin-guished of pre-Civil War American photogra-phers, and the studio of Mathew brady. In presenting the images of men, women and children, many of whom had never before had access to portraiture, ‘the show gives a sense,’ wrote feeney, ‘of just how large and how varied an increasingly large and varied country was becoming.’ More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

reclaiming Public spaceA symposium and exhibition in Honor of Antoni Muntadas

Daguerre’s American legacyPhotographic Portraits from the William b. becker Collection

JoAnn carmin, 1957–2014renowned scholar of environmental governance

stanford Anderson, Professor of History and Architecture, retired from active duty in January, culminating an extraordinarily dis-tinguished 50-year career at the school of Architecture + Planning. Anderson joined the school’s faculty in 1963 and served as Head of the Department of Architecture for a remarkable 13 years, from 1991 through 2004. In 1974, he co-founded the department’s History, Theory and Criticism pro-gram with architectural historian Henry Millon and art historians Wayne Andersen and rosalind krauss, directing the program from 1974-91 and again in 1995-96. With his book eladio Dieste: Innovation in structural Art (2004, Princeton Architectural Press), he helped to secure a place in history for one of the lesser-known geniuses of 20th-century architecture. And in his book Peter behrens and a New Architecture for the Twentieth Century (2000, MIT Press) he assimilated decades of research into a nuanced, definitive work on one of the emblematic figures in the development of architectural modernism. In 1997, in testament to his effect on those around him, Anderson’s former students com-piled a festschrift in his honor, The education of the Architect: Historiography, Urbanism and the growth of knowledge, a collection of essays edited by Martha Pollak and published by the MIT Press. In further testament to his impact, he received MIT’s graduate student Teaching Award for 1989 and the king fahd Award for Design and research in Islamic Architecture, 1985-86. In 2004, he received the prestigious Topaz Medallion for excellence in Architectural education from the board of Directors of the American Institute of Architects and the Asso-ciation of Collegiate schools of Architecture.More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/PLAN-88

stanford Anderson retiresCulminating a Distinguished 50-year Career at sA+P

JoAnn carmin was on the faculty of the Department of urban studies and Planning since 2003; she conducted extensive research on urban planning for climate change. (Photo: L. barry Hetherington)

over the course of his career, Anderson focused his research and writing on architectural theory, modern architecture in europe and America, American urbanism, and epistemology and historiography. (Photo: Nancy royal)

(Above l to r)) the Public space? lost & found exhibition, a condensed survey of the ideas and destinations explored and researched in Muntadas’ seminars on public space (Photo: © John kennard); Muntadas speaking at the reclaiming Public space symposium (Photo: elisa Young). Both events were created to honor Muntadas on the occasion of his retirement last spring.

(l to r)geo h. Dresser, native American with Blonde Baby, albumen print, after 1885; clarence r. osborne, smoking Man reclining in a wicker chair, albumen print, ca. 1898; unidentified photographer, three Men with fish and lobster, tintype, ca. 1890. (All images from the

William b. becker Collection/American

Museum of Photography)

JoAnn Carmin, an associate professor of envi-ronmental policy and planning in sA+P’s Department of Urban studies and Planning, died July 15 after an extended illness. she was 56 years old. Professor Carmin was an internationally-renowned scholar of the institutional and soci-etal dimensions of environmental governance. Her work broke new ground in examining the relationship between environmental problems and governmental actions, in particular the pro-cess through which cities around the world are responding to climate change. Her research relied on intensive fieldwork in cities, and on pioneering global surveys about the responses of urban leaders. she conducted extensive research on urban planning for cli-mate change in Durban, south Africa, and Quito, ecuador, among other places, describing in detail how local officials either found effective new ways of pushing climate planning forward, or ran into significant challenges. Carmin co-edited four books on politics and environmental issues; she also wrote or co-authored more than two dozen journal articles, as well as more than a dozen book chapters or published reports. she was also a Lead Author for the urban chapter of the Us National Climate Assessment and for part of the fifth Assessment report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Donations in her memory can be made to the JoAnn Carmin Memorial fund at MIT or to the World Wildlife fund. More: sAP.MIT.eDU/IssUe/

PLAN-88

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DAteBooKfALL 2014

octoBer 27Industrial Urbanism symposium. exploring future relationships between city and industry. 4–7PM, Long Lounge (room 7-429). reception following in the Wolk gallery.

octoBer 30Lecture: Amale Andraos, Dean, Columbia graduate school of Architecture, Planning and Preservation; co-founder Workac. 6PM, Long Lounge. (room 7-429)

octoBer 31–DeceMBer 18exhibit: Programming Materials: Customized for self-folding. erik Demaine, Christopher guberan, skylar Tibbits. 9AM–6PM, Monday–saturday, keller galery (room 7-408).

noveMBer 6Ahmad Tehrani Mini-symposium. guy Nordenson & steven Holl, Mod-erated by Anton garcia-Abril. 1-5 PM, Long Lounge (room 7-429).

noveMBer 11first Joint Architecture and Planning Connections event. An opportunity for alumni to return, revisit, reacquaint, remember, renew and reinvent. Visit alumic.mit.edu/sAP2014 for info.

through DeceMBer 19Industrial Urbanism: Places of Production. An exhibition exploring the role of industry in the city. Weekdays 9AM–5PM, Wolk gallery (room 7-338).

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(Cover)from Joan Jonas’ organic Honey’s Vertical roll, a video piece featuring Jonas’ alter-ego organic Honey performing in a series of costumes; the piece examined the fragmented female image and women’s shifting roles. (Photo: beatrice Helligers)

octoBer 23simón Vélez—Vegetarian Architecture. The 3rd edward b. and Mary M. Allen Lecture in structural Design. 6:30PM, Long Lounge (room 7-429).

octoBer 25back to school Day 2014. A half-day program co-hosted by the Center for real estate and its alumni association offering insight into the current real estate market and a chance to catch up with former classmates. 11:30AM to 6PM, 250 West 55th, New York City.