[Editors] SA+P News: January 2015

[Scott R Campbell]

  One of Five Who Are Changing the World

  MIT Architects' New Gallery in NYC

  Neri Oxman’s Bio-Augmented Space Suit

  Floor Van der Velde’s New Facebook Lobby

  New Chief of Housing and Community Development

 	
SA+P NEWS: January 2015

Two big events here this month, on the very same day.

On January 7, Hashim Sarkis officially reported for duty, so to speak, as the new dean of SA+P. His appointment was announced in October, and he’s been busy since then working on the transition, but on January 7 he actually moved into his new office here. After getting acquainted with him this fall, it is no exaggeration to say that everyone at MIT is very much looking forward to working with him.

The other big event that day was sealing the deal on a $118M gift to SA+P’s Department of Urban Studies + Planning and Center for Real Estate. The gift, from alumnus Samuel Tak Lee ’62, SM ’64 – one of the largest gifts in MIT’s history – will establish the Samuel Tak Lee MIT Real Estate Entrepreneurship Lab to promote social responsibility in the real estate profession worldwide, with a particular focus on China. In recognition of Lee’s substantial and ongoing commitment to the Institute, Building 9 – home to the Center for Real Estate – will be named the Samuel Tak Lee Building.

You can read more about the gift here. And read about Sarkis here and here.

A pretty auspicious start to 2015.

Happy New Year, indeed!

__________________________________
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

The book is basically a biography of this piece of infrastructure.

Rania Ghosn talking about her book project Oil Across the Middle East: The Trans-Arabian Pipeline, describing how the 1000-mile pipeline laid across the Middle East produced its own geographies – spaces such as pumping station towns, water wells and health and education facilities; Ghosn’s work focuses on the spatial and political implications of urban infrastructures, in particular those of energy. Energy Futures, Autumn 2014.
Photoshopped to death.

Ryan Chin describing photorealistic renderings of architecture and urban planning proposals; CityScope has created a 30”x60” model of Kendall Square in Cambridge made entirely of Lego blocks which, in its lack of refinement, makes for a more malleable, interactive design tool. The Guardian, December 18.
I became active in the immigrant youth movement when I discovered I was undocumented.

Sofia Campos (MCP’15) talking about her experiences as a young activist; Campos was recognized as one of five young women who are changing the world. USA Today, December 5.
It is time to come up with a richer lexicon.

Hashim Sarkis talking about the way we describe our habitats. We can’t understand or observe the wealth of possibilities we have, he maintains, if we just call everything the city, the suburbs, and the countryside.  ‘If we stick to the old, big categories, we will not be able to discern the vast differences within each,’ he says, ‘or the hybrids and overlaps.’ Boston Magazine, January 2015.
Crushing gravity, ammonius air, prolonged darkness and temperatures that would boil glass or freeze carbon dioxide.

Neri Oxman describing the sorts of conditions found on other planets; for a speculative design project, Oxman and her team have built four wearable skins that serve as bio-augmented space suits, each designed to battle a specific extreme environment by transforming elements found there into ones that can sustain human life. Wired, December 11.
Think how much real estate you are using to store idle pieces of metal that are used for what – an hour a day?

Carlo Ratti talking about parking in cities. In perhaps a decade, the advent of driverless cars will start transforming the city: one day your car will drop you at work, then drive itself off, either to park outside town or to collect someone else. FT.com, November 28.
 

NEW FEATURES ONLINE

The Lateral Studios
Master Classes for the Unencumbered

 

SELECTED PRESS CLIPS

Full Listing available here.

SA+P's contributions to ‘20 Reasons to Love Boston in 2014’ (Boston Magazine) The work of SA+P's Carlo Ratti (#6) and Meejin Yoon (#19) were featured in this list of 20 projects that made a difference in Boston in 2014.

MIT architects open new NYC gallery space (Archpaper) The Van Alen Institute is opening a new street-level space in Manhattan, designed by Collective–LOK. Collective–LOK is a collaboration between SA+P’s William O’Brien Jr. and Michael Kubo with Jon Lott (PARA-Project); the team’s proposal, called ‘Screen Play’, won the Institute’s 2013 Ground/Work competition, which received over 120 design submissions.

Urban housing, a decade after disaster (Places Journal) SA+P’s Lawrence Vale, Shomon Shamsuddin and Kian Goh wrote about the tsunami that struck the north coast of Sumatra in 2004, considering what rehousing initiatives teach us about the ongoing struggle for urban resilience.

Four Media Lab Inventions We Wish We Could Give as Gifts This Christmas (Bostinno) All year, researchers have been imagining up these innovative ideas and have brought several to life, just not yet through to commercialization.

Alum designs Facebook Boston's lobby (Boston Magazine) Floor van der Velde received a Master of Science in Art, Culture, and Technology from SA+P; her installation in the Facebook lobby ties Facebook Boston to its neighboring MIT community.

 

NEWS FLASHES

Jim Wescoat and Fadi Masoud have recently published chapters in Out of Water: Design Solutions for Arid Regions (Birkhäuser, October 2014). Wescoat’s chapter is titled ‘Water-Conserving Design Solutions: Contributions of Water Budget Analysis in Arid and Semi-Arid Regions’ and Masoud’s is titled ‘A Model for Integrated Agrarian Urbanism: Water Management in the Jordan River Basin’.

Chrystal Kornegay (MCP’97) will be appointed by Governor-elect Charlie Baker to be chief of the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development, according to people with knowledge of the appointment; Kornegay is president and chief executive of Urban Edge, which assists residents of Roxbury and Jamaica Plain with housing and development matters.

Emil Rodriguez Garabot, a 2010-11 Humphrey Fellow in SA+P’s SPURS Program, was appointed part of the curatorial team for the first national exhibit of the Dominican Republic at the 2014 Venice Architecture Biennale; the introductory texts for the exhibit and the catalogue were written by Pulitzer Prize winning author Junot Diaz, professor of creative writing at MIT. Part of the work will be presented next spring as part of MoMA’s exhibition ‘Latin America in Construction’.

 


EVENTS

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

January 8th
Seminar: Expansion Microscopy 
4:00pm, 46-3189

January 9th
ODD Street Safety Challenge 
6:30pm, Microsoft Nerd Center - 1 Memorial Drive, Cambridge

January 10th
Film Screening and Artist Talk by Redmond Entwistle 
4:00pm, E15: Bartos Theater, 20 Ames St., Cambridge

January 23rd
Starr Forum Friday Flicks: "Hearts and Minds" 
12:00pm, E40-496: The Lucian Pye Conference Room

January 30th
Starr Forum Friday Flicks: "A Forgotten Crime" 
12:00pm, E40-496: The Lucian Pye Conference Room

 

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