Design

MIT’s inaugural Future Fest, a new festival exploring the future of science, technology, art, and design will be held across the MIT campus from Sept. 30 to Oct. 4, writes Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. “More than 50 events looking at art, design, science, technology, and their interactions will be held on the MIT campus,” the staff write. “Those events held at the museum will be free throughout the festival, which concludes on Oct. 4 with the Cambridge Science Carnival.” 

MassLive’s Joshua Macht explains how the MIT Museum is a “fitting” setting to host the honorees of MassLive’s “Most Influential Innovators” list, which includes President Sally Kornbluth and a number of other MIT faculty and alumni. “The museum welcomes all to participate in MIT’s unique culture of problem solving and playful creativity,” writes Macht. “It is also producing the inaugural MIT Future Fest, a new, annual festival exploring the future of science, technology, art and design.”  

President Sally Kornbluth and Governor Maura Healey will kick off the festivities at MIT’s inaugural Future Fest, which aims to bring “together leaders across higher education, government and tech to explore the future of science, technology, art and design across MIT's campus for five days,” writes the Boston Business Journal’s Stephen MacLeod. The festival will also include the Cambridge Science Carnival, featuring “100 booths and activities, and other demonstrations, including a robot petting zoo, a floating installation at the MIT Sailing Pavilion known as the Adaptive Archipelago and the public unveiling of MIT’s new design hub and home of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, the Met Warehouse.” 

In a Financial Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti discusses alternatives to implementing traditional air conditioning systems, which move rather than reduce heat, that could be used in Europe as temperatures continue to rise. “The best answer, then, is a mixed system, co-ordinated in real time, with sensors to track temperature, occupancy and demand, and algorithms deciding when to produce, store and distribute cooling in step with the electricity grid,” writes Ratti. 

The Boston Globe’s Mark Feeney chronicles MIT’s adaptive reuse of the historic Metropolitan Warehouse into the new home of the School of Architecture and Planning. “As spaces, our studios used to be a lot more like labs, but now they are grand and full of light and celebratory in a way that hopefully enables better work,” says Prof. Ana Miljački, Head of the Department of Architecture.  

Dezeen’s Ellen Eberhardt describes how the renovation of the historic Metropolitan Warehouse, the new home of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, maintains “details such as the building's fortress-like corner towers and crenellated corbeled cornices, while punching new windows into its two-foot-thick walls.” Eberhardt highlights how “the project included careful ‘cutting strategies’ and the application of new support systems to shift existing loads within the building to make room for modern academic spaces such as studios and makerspaces.”  

For The Architect’s Newspaper, reporter Fred A. Bernstein details the renovation of the Metropolitan Warehouse, the new home of MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning, transforming the fortress-like storage warehouse into “light-filled classrooms and studios.” The building is “going to be a living laboratory and a teaching tool for generations of students,” shares Prof. John Ochsendorf. “Twenty years ago, MIT took me inside and asked if I could see a way to reuse the building. And I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ It was hard to imagine it could be as open and light-filled as it is. That took heroics.” 

In a “radical example of adaptive reuse” and a reimagining of a historic Cambridge landmark, MIT has transformed the Metropolitan Storage Warehouse into the new home of the School of Architecture and Planning, bringing together MIT’s architecture and design programs into one connected academic hub, reports Boston Business Journal reporter Maya Shavit. “There will be new installations and new manifestations of our students’ creativity every single week,” explains Prof. John Ochsendorf. “That’s unpredictable and messy, but it’s also part of the fun of being at a place like MIT where people are constantly inventing the future.”

In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, Prof. Carlo Ratti and contributor Mario Carpo make the case that AI is built to imitate human creativity and is less capable of original design. “In a profession that defines itself through invention, GenAI increasingly is seen less as a creative genius and more as a ‘stochastic parrot’ — a term introduced in 2021 by leading AI researchers to describe a technology that learns to repeat the most likely sequences found in whatever data it’s been shown,” write Ratti and Carpo. 

Mel Robbins visits the MIT AgeLab and tries out the lab’s Age Gain Now Empathy System (AGNES) suit, which is designed to help wearers experience the challenges associated with aging. “When we think about aging, most people don’t really have a definition of it. They think about it as a number of birthdays—that's older,” says Joseph Coughlin, AgeLab director. “Actually, aging is about diminishing capacity over time. So weightlifting is increasing your capacity—you're pushing out the clock. Learning something new keeps you cognitively well.” 

Graduate students Alfonso Parra Rubio and Erik Strand from the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms worked with the Boston Public Library and the Boston Mayor's Office of Arts and Culture to create a chain-like aluminum sculpture, which will be on display at the library until November, writes Axios’ Steph Solis. “It's a feat of science-driven design and art,” notes Solis.  

MIT researchers have created a new building design model that could enable engineers to construct buildings and bridges that use less materials, writes Tech Briefs’ Andrew Corselli. “Traditional topology optimization essentially starts with a blank space and tries to figure out at each point in this blank space: ‘Should there be material,’ ‘should there not be material’ from an efficiency standpoint,” says Prof. Josephine Carstensen. “Our approach populates the space with a bunch of lines that are instead candidates for ‘should there be material’ or ‘should there not be material.’ By using this line approach, we have the opportunity to have more control.” 

WBUR’s Amelia Mason highlights the MIT Museum’s acquisition of the project archives of renowned architect I.M. Pei ’40, which includes details from some of Pei’s most famous works, such as the Louvre’s glass pyramid and the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. “ It's an exciting moment for MIT,” says Jonathan Duval, MIT Museum assistant curator of architecture. “I.M. Pei's archive really belongs here. This is where he started his architectural career and education. It’s a homecoming.”

In the first installment of his Wallpaper series on ordinary objects that define daily life, Prof. Carlo Ratti describes the origins of the mosquito coil, a spiral shaped insect repellent, and its cultural significance as a ‘zampirone,’ during Italian summers. Named after its 19^th century creator Giovanni Battista Zampironi, the zampirone represents “typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise,” writes Ratti. “We might also say that the zampirone is a typically Italian technology: the technology of compromise. It does not build a barrier, but creates a temporary condition of habitability.”

Yuly Fuentes-Medel of the MIT Climate Project speaks with GBH Boston Public Radio hosts Jim Braude and Margery Eagan about her work focused on improving sustainability in the footwear industry, and making running shoes more eco-friendly.