Community

Metropolis reporter Anthony Paletta details how MIT’s inaugural Future Fest “brought together visionary leaders across design, technology, and art to address the world’s most pressing problems,” and also featured the public debut of the redesigned Metropolitan Warehouse. The festival featured discussions, exhibits and demonstrations on architecture, design and technology, including a new technique that utilizes knitted fibers as a flexible formwork for concrete, a discussion on how AI could be used to increase sustainability in construction and exploration of how “reef legos” can rebuild beaches and combat costal erosion. “There are no shortage of things going wrong in the world, and others likely to follow,” writes Paletta, “but MIT’s Future Fest offered reassuring proof that we’ve not run out of means to address these problems.” 

Poets & Quants reporter Jeff Schmitt writes that MIT Sloan School of Management’s Assistant Dean Dawna Levenson has been honored as the “MBA Admissions Director of the Year,” by Poets & Quants. “Dawna brings a very human-first approach to MIT Sloan Admissions, deeply learning about our applicants as people and professionals, getting to know them through interviews, and understanding how they hope to make a difference in the world through their education,” says Sloan Dean Richard Locke. “She supports students throughout the admissions journey, providing guidance, helping them navigate the process, and pivoting, as needed, to support their matriculation.”  

Principal Research Scientist Deepjyoti Deka speaks to MassLive’s Tréa Lavery about the possibility of large data centers being located in greater Boston. “Anything, mostly, that you are using the computer for, that you are getting some information from, is housed in a data center,” says Deka. “When you talk about data centers in greater Boston, I doubt if we have any hyperscale, because there would need to be a gigantic factory that you could observe from a distance. But there are small ones.” 

Prof. Behnaz Farahi’s “Ocean of Dreams,” an interactive art installation currently on display in Kendall Square that features submissions from more than 400 international participants, is featured by Dezeen reporter Ben Dreith. “For me, design is ultimately a way of asking: what could be otherwise, and how might we help bring that possibility into being,” says Farahi. “That is also how I think about ‘Ocean of Dreams,’ as a space for collectively imagining and designing possible futures.”  

The newly renovated, historic Metropolitan Warehouse, home to MIT’s School of Architecture + Planning “has become a teaching tool” for students who can look up at features such as the “cutaways of the terra cotta subway arches vaulting across the old building’s ceilings” and “understand what structural engineers were thinking 130 years ago,” writes Bloomberg’s Anthony Flint. “The whole multiyear process for rehabbing the Met has been left delightfully legible.”  

For The Architectural Record, reporter Izzy Kornblatt details how the Metropolitan Warehouse was converted into the MIT School of Architecture + Planning’s signature building, a reimagining that “makes the case for the reconstituting of existing structures as a creative act of design.” Kornblatt notes: “The completion of this project also marks a repositioning of design within both MIT and Cambridge. The building gives the School of Architecture and Planning distinctness—a perceptible structure of its own. Yet one of the project’s aims...is to frame design as a set of practices and techniques that are as relevant for scientists and start-up founders as they are for architects.”   

Prof. Behnaz Farahi joins GBH’s, “The Curiosity Desk," to discuss “Ocean of Dreams,” a public art installation that projects participants’ collective hopes for the future into a “living ocean,” which is on display at Kendall Square Plaza as part of MIT Future Fest. “At the moment when we have so many conversations about the future that are shaped by uncertainty about AI, war, climate change, and displacements, I hope this work creates a space for something a little different,” says Farahi. “Before we can build a different future, we first have to be able to imagine one.” 

Star Trek’s original USS enterprise will be unveiled at MIT Future Fest this week, writes WBUR’s Nik DeCosta-Klipa for “Boston’s Morning Newsletter.” “The 33-inch model, which was used in the opening of each episode, has never been publicly displayed before on the East Coast. In fact, it was thought to be lost for decades before it popped up on eBay in 2023,” notes DeCosta-Klipa.  

The 33-inch original model of the ‘Starship Enterprise,’ from the 1960s “Star Trek” series, will be on display at the MIT Museum from Sept. 30 to March 28, writes reporter Mark Feeney for The Boston Globe. “We are thrilled to have the opportunity to show this unique model,” says MIT Museum Director Michael John Gorman. The model “is not merely a prop; it’s a time capsule of human aspiration.”  

Jeffrey Riley, executive director of MIT RAISE’s “Day of AI” K-12 program, speaks to WBUR’s Suevon Lee about the importance of teaching school-aged children AI literacy skills. “Kids need to know about voice clones and deepfakes and plagiarism,” says Riley. “We need to teach kids so that they're healthy skeptics of this technology, that they mistrust and verify the information they're getting from it.”  

Members of the MIT community speak to Boston 25 News reporter Lisa Gresci about how they use AI, and their concerns with regulating the technology. Developers should consider, “how AI can help communities so [they are] not just building things, but are also deploying it [with purpose] out in the world,” says graduate student Anku Rani.  

The New York Times’ Christopher Hawthorne highlights the Metropolitan Warehouse as “the new central hub for the School of Architecture and Planning.” Hawthorne notes that by “slicing into the brick exterior of the warehouse a la Gordon Matta-Clark, the architects have added giant windows while hanging new studio spaces from the existing ceiling. This is adaptive reuse with some bite.”  

Akamai will honor their late cofounder Danny Lewin SM ’98, a victim of the American Airlines Flight 11 on 9/11, by illuminating their headquarters in blue the evening of Sept. 11, write Jon Chesto and Shirley Leung for The Boston Globe. “Lewin remains revered at Akamai; its highest employee award is given out each year in his honor,” Chesto and Leung write.  

Prof. Anette “Peko” Hosoi, co-founder of the MIT Sports Lab, and Andrew Byron, assistant coach for the MIT Football team, join Edgar B. Herwick III, host of GBH’s “The Curiosity Desk,” to discuss athletic intelligence and football IQ. “One of the special things about football is that it’s an incredibly complicated game compared to other games because there are very specialized positions,” says Hosoi. “Everybody has a very special role and there are a lot of players on the field at once.”  

In a video short, The Boston Globe’s Daniel Kool spotlights “The Living Bucentaur,” a parade of 250 people dressed in repurposed sail cloth to celebrate the opening of the School of Architecture and Plannings’ new home in the Metropolitan Warehouse. “In 1916, when MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge, they built this elaborate barge called Bucentaur. It was white and it had this beautiful decoration with angels and stucco and everyone was wearing costumes and waving tea squares,” says Prof. Azra Aksamija. “This project is in a way a reenactment.”