[Editors] SA+P News: March 2014

[Scott R Campbell]

  PLAN 86 is in the mail

  This Website Won a Student a $6500 Prize

  Intern Javon James Joins Staff Full-Time

  Best of Design Award, Student-Built Work

  A Food Desert No More Thanks to Our Alums

 	
SA+P NEWS: March 2014

We want to draw your attention this month to the latest issue of MIT’s Spectrum – ‘The Future is Cities, Cities of the Future’ – a glossy 24-page production featuring oversize full-color spreads on the work of nearly twenty of our people.

With an introduction by MIT President Rafael Reif, the issue addresses many of today’s most important challenges – including poverty, energy, climate change, disaster resilience, transportation and sustainability – and the often startling ways our researchers are tackling those issues.

For a quick overview of the problems and some of our proposed solutions, the introductory article, “The Future is Cities” is one-stop shopping. To penetrate more deeply, follow the links to specific articles listed under NEW FEATURES ONLINE. below. You can also find the entire issue online or download a PDF. If you’d like a hardcopy, please let us know.

As we launch our new Center for Advanced Urbanism, this magazine provides an invaluable glimpse of the range and scope of our vision for the future. Please find some time to spend with it; we think you’ll find it worth your while.

__________________________________
Scott Campbell
Director of Communications 
MIT School of Architecture + Planning
77 Massachusetts Avenue 7-231
Cambridge MA  02139 
sap-info at mit.edu 

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QUOTES OF NOTE

Breathtaking, actually.

Adèle Naudé Santos, talking about the enormous problems facing the cities of the future; ‘we’re planning at a scale that’s absolutely unprecedented,’ she said, ‘and effectively speaking, we don’t really know how to do it. That’s the truth.’ Spectrum, Winter 2014.
We can’t do anything until we have certainty.

JoAnn Carmin citing a frequent response to climate change projections, a response that cities around the world are rejecting in favor of working with what we know now. Her research shows that cities are becoming much more individualized in how they’re approaching climate change; ‘to have strong gains,’ she said, ‘a program really has to be tailored to a city’. MIT News, February 18.
There are examples of how not to do it all over the world.

Christoph Reinhart talking about his aim to create seductive city spaces that also support sustainable energy; his new modeling system allows design teams to model and evaluate dozens or even hundreds of buildings at a time, enabling planners to improve the performance of their designs at both the building and street scales. Spectrum, Winter 2014.
I got dressed up in a suit…they all walked in wearing jeans and fleeces.

Jeff Schwartz (MCP’08) talking about his first meeting with the executives of Whole Foods; as head of Broad Community Connections, he led the effort to transform a vacant grocery store in New Orleans, abandoned since Katrina, into a food hub for the whole neighborhood, anchored by the supermarket chain. Next City, February 7.
That’s our destiny.

Alexander D’Hooghe talking of collaboration as a fundamental part of MIT’s genetic material; ‘when MIT began 150 years ago,’ he said, ‘it was by definition a model of integrating disciplines…it’s the way we still operate today.’ Spectrum, Winter 2014.
 

NEW FEATURES ONLINE

The Radix Endeavor
A New Online Game to Help Teach High School Math and Biology.

Jennifer Pahlka Honored with Kevin Lynch Award
Founder of Code for America, for Contributions to Better Government.

Introducing Our Year Up Interns
Intensive One-Year Program Provides Skills, Credits and Experience.

Spectrum
The Future of Cities

The Future Is Cities
Cities are growing faster than you can say megalopolis, and thanks to social media and the Internet, global climate change and a bad economy, the American dream of ownership is changing, and we are finding ourselves living in inclusive cities, sharing our houses, cars, bikes, offices, and more.

Shaping Vibrant Cities
Alumni from Toronto to Beijing meet to discuss urbanism.

Smart Components, Assembling Themselves
Skylar Tibbits transforms common materials into responsive and reconfigurable building elements.

Where Economy Meets Ecology
John Fernández is at the forefront of urban sustainability, an emerging field that explores a city’s economy and ecology.

Barriers to Opportunity
Xavier de Souza Briggs reveals that if people in high-poverty areas move to low-poverty areas, soon they may be no better off than before.

Resilient Places
San Francisco rebuilt after the 1906 earthquake while Warsaw rebuilt after World War 11. Larry Vale explains what makes cities so resilient.

Seductive Spaces, Sustainable Energy
Christoph Reinhart, who runs MIT’s Sustainable Design Lab, creates a new modeling system to evaluate hundreds of buildings at a time.

A Soft House, To Last a Century
Sheila Kennedy creates a Soft House –– tough enough to withstand the harshest elements and to last a century.

3-D Printed Buildings for A Developing World
Larry Sass’s vision is for new buildings to rise faster, use fewer resources, and cost less, thanks to digital fabrication.

Do-it-Yourself Manufacturing
Neil Gershenfeld creates fab labs, aimed to reshape cities socially and economically.

Data Visualizing Healthy Cities
Sep Kamvar’s group is making 10,000 data visualization maps, so residents can view cities like never before.

Greening Gray Infrastructure
Judith Layzer says as urban development escalates and climate change creates rising seas, current water management systems are failing.

Not Just Men in Spandex
Michael Lin and Sandra Richter design a future vehicle for bike lanes.

 

NEWS FLASHES

Faculty

Sandy Pentland has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering in honor of his contributions to computer vision and technologies for measuring human social behavior; the professional distinction is among the highest that can be accorded to an engineer.

Shan He, a second-year SMarchS candidate, won a $6500 first prize (with her teammate) in an annual IAP website design competition sponsored by Amazon, Facebook, Dropbox and others; their entry, urban explorer, challenges players to locate photographed places in the city.

Alumni

Alan Joslin (BS’77, Architecture; MArch’82) has been elected to the AIA College of Fellows in Category One: Design, Urban Design or Preservation; ‘the crafted architecture of Alan Joslin,’ they wrote, ‘uniquely and memorably connects community, the arts, and their environments. Its influence is felt through direct experience of nationally recognized cultural venues, their publication, and its dissemination through teaching.’

Matthew Mazzotta (SMVisS’04) has won the Best of Design Award, Student-Built Work from The Architect's Newspaper for his project Open House; follow the link to watch an explanatory video; well worth it. Open House was also featured in this season's Public Art Review Magazine #49.

Todd Siler (SM’81, PhD’86, Architecture) is taking part in The Armory Show in New York, March 6-9; his exhibit, NanoWorld, explores the science that helped give form and function to today’s technological innovations, exemplified by such advances as solar cells, fuel cells, batteries and environmental devices for improving global climate control.

Joe Savitzky (MCP'58) died January 25 of lymphoma at age 84. He devoted much of his career to the planning, policy and preservation of the city of Jerusalem, working for the Municipality of Jerusalem for several decades and, upon retirement, for Turner & Associates; other significant endeavors include work for the Rouse Company on the new town of Columbia MD; the Boston City Planning Department; the Community Renewal Program of the District of Columbia Government; and the Israeli Ministries of Housing and Labor.

 

SELECTED PRESS CLIPS

Full Listing: http://sap.mit.edu/news_events/press_clips

As Objects Go Online (Foreign Affairs) The Internet of Things is not just science fiction; it has already arrived. Some of the things currently networked together send data over the public Internet, and some communicate over secure private networks, but all share common protocols that allow them to interoperate to help solve profound problems.

The Ties That Divide (MIT Technology Review) Many residents of Britain, Italy, and Belgium believe that their countries are divided socially along north-south lines. Now a study on communication patterns by SA+P researchers shows empirically that such divides do exist in those countries and others.

Why Startups Should Steal Ideas and Hire Weirdos (Wired) The most consistently creative and insightful people are explorers. They spend an enormous amount of time seeking out new people and different ideas, without necessarily trying very hard to find the “best” people or “best” ideas. Instead, they seek out people with different views and different ideas.

3 Questions: JoAnn Carmin on helping cities plan for climate change (MIT News) JoAnn Carmin, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning, has surveyed urban leaders worldwide on the subject. Now, in a new report commissioned by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, Carmin outlines the strategies city officials — from Tokyo to Boston to Maputo — are employing as they seek more progress.

Singing robots show humanity of technology in opera of the future (PBS Newshour) Composer, computer scientist and futurist Tod Machover has joined the power of technology with one of the great classical art forms. In "Death and the Powers," opera robots take the stage to sing about the search for immortality and how our humanity is transformed by tech. Jeffrey Brown reports on the preparations taking place at the Media Lab for an upcoming interactive performance.

 

EXHIBITS

Solidarity Works: Politics of Cultural Memory
Through March 21, 2014, Wolk Gallery.

Sonia Almeida: Forward/Play/Pause
Through April 6, 2014, Hayden Gallery.

Hans Op de Beeck: Staging Silence (2)
Through April 6, 2014, Hayden Gallery.

Hourly Directional: Helen Mirra and Ernst Karel 
Through April 6, 2014, Reference Gallery.
EVENTS

Many of our regular lecture series are in various stages of planning. Our full online calendar is always available here.

March 5
Media Lab Conversations Series: Jaron Lanier. 4:00 – 5:30 pm, E-14 3rd Floor Atrium

Live Performance: Ernst Karel. 6:00 – 7:30 pm, E15-001, ACT Cube

March 6
Architecture Lecture | Belluschi Lecture: Fuensanta Nieto & Enrique Sobejano. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

Keller Gallery Opening: "Get to Work" by ROOM Studio. 6:30 – 9:30 pm, 7-408

Cinematic Migrations Symposium. All Day, E15-001 ACT Cube

March 7
Vicente Guallart: The Self Sufficient City . 5:30 – 7:00 pm, 7-429

Cinematic Migrations Symposium. All Day, E15-001 ACT Cube

March 10
Architecture | Building Technology Lecture Series | Jeff Anderson: Transparent Structure - Designing with Glass. 12:30 – 2:00 pm, 7-429

March 11
Legatum Lecture: Next Generation Strategies for the Base of the Pyramid. 5:30 – 6:30 pm, MIT Tang Center, 70 Memorial Drive

Architectural Design Series: Dinner with the In-Laws | Ana Miljacki and Skylar Tibbits. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

March 14
Architecture Lecture | New Definition of an Architect. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

March 17
Understanding the Urban Heritage: The Cultural Wire-Scape of Historic Lahore. 6:00 – 7:30 pm, 3-133

ACT Lecture | Kazue Kobata: Migration Inside-Out: Contemplate, Imagine, Act. 9:00 – 9:00 pm, E15-001 ACT Cube

March 18
Architectural Design Series: Dinner with the In-Laws | Miho Mazereeuw and Cristina Parreno Alonso. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

March 20
Architecture Lecture | Alberto Veiga: Geographies. 6:30 – 8:30 pm,10-250

March 21
Computation Lecture Series | Debra Weisberg: Material Drawing: Exploration and Connectivity. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

April 1
Architecture Lecture | HTC Lecture Series | Carrie Lambert-Beatty: Lost Wax - The Parafictional Object. 5:30 – 7:30 pm, 7-429

 

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