[Editors] MIT SA+P News: September 2014

[Scott R Campbell]

Jarzombek Named Interim Dean

Frenchman Named Associate Dean

Students Win Visual Arts Awards

Otto Piene, 1928 – 2014

JoAnn Carmin, 1957 – 2014

 	
SA+P NEWS: September 2014

From our new interim dean…

In mid-August I went to Maine for a family vacation and while I was there I visited the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts on Deer Island. Students come to Haystack from all over to work in one of its various workshops—glass, metal, woodworking, printing, ceramics and the like.

The school consists of individual sheds, one for each activity, connected by boardwalks, all set in a beautiful site of a pine forest with moss-covered rocks. I arrived on a sunny afternoon to find the workshops abuzz with activity—sounds of hammering, grinding and chatter filtered through the forest.

The reason for my visit was to check out the new MIT Fab Lab, a creation of SA+P’s Center for Bits and Atoms. Its establishment at Haystack was controversial, since some of the faculty wanted to preserve the old-fashioned idea of art as a purely human creation. But a few years ago the directors of the colony agreed to accept it and it is by all accounts a success.



I walked into the shed unannounced and found a number of people busy on the computers, preparing their projects. And on the back deck who do I meet but our own Neil Gershenfeld, Mr. Fab Lab himself! On his hands and knees, preparing a document for a scanner.

As you may well know, Neil is the creator of the Fab Lab, more than 400 of which have now been established in more than 50 countries. This is the first one outside of MIT that I have seen and I will also assume that this one is the most beautifully sited of them all, floating as it does in the treetops of the forest. I was ready to sign up!

__________________________________
Mark Jarzombek
Interim Dean 
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

That class changed my whole life.

Dina El-Zanfaly talking about Neil Gershendfeld’s class ‘How to Make (Almost) Anything’, a hands-on introduction to the resources for designing and fabricating smart systems; ‘every week you learn a new skill,’ she says, ‘and you use another machine.’ The class prompted her to help found a FabLab in Egypt, so her countrymen could acquire those empowering skills. MIT News, July 15.
Controversial, misunderstood and sometimes overlooked.

Wall text introducing Minor White at a retrospective exhibit of his silver gelatin prints, on view through October 19 at the J. Paul Getty Museum, the first such survey in a quarter-century; in the mid-60s, White founded SA+P’s program in creative photography. Los Angeles Times, August 1.
Write the victory speech for the other side.

Larry Susskind suggesting a new approach to negotiation, detailed in his new book Good for You, Great for Me; ‘I have to put myself in your shoes in a really empathetic way,’ he says, ‘to try to sell you on why the version of the deal I want is one you can take home’. MIT News, June 26.
I only know that you have to build the project that you would love to live in.

Hector Perez (SMArchS’99) talking about La Esquina, an eight-unit live-work building in San Diego’s Barrio Logan neighborhood, successfully developed by an informal group of nine architects he gathered together; ‘it’s an incredibly scary thing,’ he said, ‘to be a developer when you don’t come from money.’ Dwell, September 2014.
A kind of oasis, a quiet, almost-perfect city.

Tod Machover describing Lucerne, Switzerland, for which he will compose another in his series of city symphonies incorporating the local urban soundscape; Lucerne, he says, is a city ‘where the most delicate sounds…are unburdened by traffic or crowd noise, creating a kind of idealized chamber music.’ The piece will have its world premiere in September 2015. New York Times, August 20.
 
NEW FEATURES ONLINE

SA+P at the Venice Architecture Biennale
Curating National Pavilions and Introducing New Technology

Joan Jonas to Represent US at Venice Art Biennale
Most Recent of Many SA+P Artists and Architects in Venice

Improving the Resilience of Coastal Areas
Center for Advanced Urbanism Wins Rebuild By Design Competition

Sharing Our Way to a Better Future
A Step Toward Improving Urban Transportation Efficiency

A New Way to Navigate the City
Let Your SuperShoes Do the Walking

 
SELECTED PRESS CLIPS

Full Listing available here.

Planning differently (MIT News, Aug 2014) Inspired by Los Angeles, alumnus John Arroyo (MCP’10) takes a new approach to urban planning.

Rethinking architecture (MIT News, Aug 2014) Mark Goulthorpe is an architect, writer, and teacher. In each role, his goal is the same: to seek models of thought that might yield new approaches to designing and constructing buildings.

A mapping group at MIT wants to show us the way to greener cities (Grist, Jun 2014) If we’re looking for a road forward to shape the cities we love—to have more of what we love about them—Sep Kamvar’s maps just might be able to show us the way.

Meet the woman behind Ikea's living wage calculator(Marketplace, Aug 2014) Scandinavian furniture store Ikea recently announced it will adopt a new, higher wage structure at its U.S. stores in 2015. How did one MIT professor's research project become a tool that will affect the wages of thousands of American workers?

Illuminating art in a high-tech culture (Palo Alto, Aug 2014) The relevance of art in a world dominated by technology and science was a question that confronted visionary art theorist and artist Gyorgy Kepes in 1946, and art historians say it is still relevant more than ever in the digital age—and especially in Silicon Valley.

 
NEWS FLASHES

Sheila Kennedy has been presented with the inaugural Design Innovator Award by Architectural Record magazine, part of their new program to acknowledge the increasingly visible role of women in the profession; the award honors her consistent body of work in advancing innovation in materials and new building types.

John Arroyo (MCP’10) reports that Project 51—an interdisciplinary collective of artists, designers, writers, educators and scholars—has won a grant from ArtPlace America for Play the LA River, a year-long public art initiative that seeks to reimagine the LA river as a vital public space and civic corridor; the project is an outgrowth of Arroyo’s 2010 masters thesis.

Gregory Beck, AIA, (SMArchS‘86) has been appointed dean of the school of entertainment arts at the Savannah College of Art & Design. The school offers programs in filmmaking, performing arts, sound and production design, and a new interdisciplinary degree in entertainment design, the first of its kind in the US.

Paul Fallon (MArch’81) is publishing a new book in October with the University of Missouri Press—Architecture by Moonlight: Rebuilding Haiti, Redrafting a Life is an account of his three-year involvement in the design and construction of an orphanage and a school in Haiti in the wake of the 2010 earthquake.

Rajendra Kumar (MCP’04/PhD'07) has won a UN Public Service Award for 'Mobile Seva', a project he conceptualized and implemented for the government of India that aims to deliver all the country’s public services through mobile devices; launched in July 2011, it has already brought over 1000 government departments on board with a daily average of over 2 million transactions.

Joyce Lee (MArch/MSRED’89) has been named a Trustee at the Grand Rapids Art Museum in Michigan after her move from New York; she is working closely with Museum Director Dana Friis-Hansen (a former curator of the MIT List Visual Arts Center) on expanding the audience, awareness and engagement from the field of architecture and design, especially the recent exhibition, Michigan Modern.

Hector Perez (SMArchS’99) is currently Graduate Programs Coordinator at Woodbury School of Architecture in San Diego and Principal at De-Arc – a small, unorthodox architectural studio in La Jolla with projects that fluctuate between architecture, art, artifacts and academia.

Jeffrey Shumaker (MCP/SMArchS'01) has been appointed Chief Urban Designer and Director of Urban Design for the NYC Department of City Planning. Prior to joining the city, Shumaker worked for a variety of architecture and planning firms including SOM in New York, GCA in Boston, WRT in Philadelphia and his own practice, which he founded in 2002. He is currently an adjunct professor of urban design for the Syracuse University Architecture NYC program.

The drawings of Scott Tulay (MArch’98) were featured in two group shows this summer—‘LOOK 4’ at Foe Gallery in Northampton MA and ‘Black & White’ at SPACEWOMb Gallery in Manhattan; Tulay works with Juster Pope Frazier Architects.

 
EXHIBITS

Industrial Urbanism
Through December 19, 2014, Wolk Gallery.

ACT | Public Space? Lost & Found Exhibition
Through October 30, 2014, The Media Lab.

Three Pioneers 
Through October 31, 2014, Media Lab.

Round Room: Matter Design & Quarra Stone
September 9 – October 15, Keller Gallery.


EVENTS

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

September 4th
Opening Reception for Industrial Urbanism: Places of Production 
5:30pm, 7-338

Student Loan Program Exhibition Guided Tour: All the Small Things
5:30pm, E-15 MIT List Visual Arts Center

September 5th
Student Loan Exhibition: Arts BBQ 
5pm, E-15 MIT List Visual Arts Center

September 7th
Student Loan Exhibition: Public Brunch 
11am, E-15 MIT List Visual Arts Center

September 7th
MISTI Info Session: MEET 
6pm, 56-191

September 9th
MISTI Info Session: MEET 
6pm, 56-191

September 11th
Media Lab Conversations Series: Sarah Parcak 
2pm, Media Lab, 3rd Floor Atrium

September 19th
MISTI Info Session: China/Singapore 
5:30pm, E40-496

September 20th
Performance Lateral Studio with Coco Fusco 
9am, Various

Lateral Studios 
9am, Various

September 22nd
MISTI Info Session: Global Teaching Labs 
5pm, 6-120

September 24th
MISTI Info Session: Korea 
6pm, 10:105

September 25th
MISTI Info Session: Brazil 
5pm, E40-496

September 25th
MISTI Info Session: Global Teaching Labs, Italy 
5pm, E40-496

 
STAY CONNECTED

     


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