School of Architecture + Planning

The Media Lab has never looked spookier . . .

Scene at MIT: A nightmare on Ames Street

October 31, 2016

First row: (l-r) Azra Akšamija, Phillip Clay, Dennis Frenchman, Skylar Tibbits. Second row: (l-r) James Wescoat, Sheila Kennedy, Alan Berger, Kristel Smentek. Third row: (l-r) Brandon Clifford, Brent Ryan, Kevin Esvelt.

New faculty, promotions, and leadership roles in the School of Architecture and Planning

Four join the SA+P faculty, while seven are recognized for work in art, architecture, and urbanism.

October 28, 2016

Why have solar energy costs fallen?

MIT team awarded U.S. Department of Energy grant to investigate cost reductions in solar energy systems.

October 26, 2016

The Creative Community building, a new 100,000-square-foot facility, will be home to the Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation (DIDI) when it opens its door in 2019. Faculty from MIT's School of Architecture and Planning are helping to develop the DIDI curriculum.

MIT to help Dubai launch a new undergraduate institution focused on design

School of Architecture and Planning will develop curriculum, courses for Dubai Institute of Design and Innovation.

October 24, 2016

Researchers used sample images, like the ones on the top row, to identify several visual features that are highly correlated with judgments that a particular area is safe or unsafe. The left side shows a low level of safety while the right shows a high level. Highlighted areas on the middle row show “unsafe” areas while the bottom row shows “safe” areas in the image.

Quantifying urban revitalization

Combining cellphone data with perceptions of public spaces could help guide urban planning.

October 24, 2016

Professors Leon Glicksman (left) and John Lienhard recently published "Modeling and Approximation in Heat Transfer," following a nearly 20-year collaboration.

3Q: Leon Glicksman and John Lienhard on how to teach the unteachable

MIT professors take on problem formulation in thermal science: It can be taught, and their new book describes how.

October 21, 2016

The team behind DesignX, a new design entrepreneurship accelerator from the MIT School of Architecture and Planning: (left to right) Gilad Rosenzweig, executive director for DesignX; Dennis Frenchman, the Class of 1922 Professor of Urban Design and Planning and faculty director of the program; Andrea Chegut, research scientist in the MIT Center for Real Estate and director of the MIT Real Estate I...

Entrepreneurship by design

New DesignX accelerator speeds innovation at the School of Architecture and Planning.

October 17, 2016

Professor Emeritus Whitman Richards dies at 84

Longtime professor and beloved advisor was known for advances in experimental and theoretical studies of vision, perception, and cognition.

October 17, 2016

MIT Media Lab Director Joi Ito (left), WIRED Editor-in-Chief Scott Dadich (center), and U.S. President Barack Obama confer in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

President Obama discusses artificial intelligence with Media Lab Director Joi Ito

One-on-one conversation in WIRED focuses on advancements in artificial intelligence and how society should respond to related concerns.

October 14, 2016

Women and children in rural Uganda look on as a service provider from a nearby health center provides malaria tests for communities on the lake's edge.

MIT-USAID program releases supply chain evaluation of malaria diagnostics

Study of malaria rapid diagnostic tests in Uganda assesses scalability, identifies supply chain challenges.

October 13, 2016

“If there's any place that I can do the weird stuff that I like to do, it would be in academia, and it would be at MIT,” says PhD student Lily Bui. “I'm not quite satisfied with being pigeonholed into one role, and I think that's just going to stay the case for the rest of my life.”

Harnessing the power of citizens

PhD student Lily Bui works with communities around the world to gather data from the bottom up.

October 12, 2016

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh attends a Boston STEM Week kickoff event.

Inspiring the next generation of scientists and engineers with Boston STEM Week

MIT collaborates with Boston Public Schools to bring hands-on curricula to local students.

October 7, 2016

Partho Sengupta (center) was one of more than 30 invited guests at the Tata Center Symposium.

Tata Center Symposium seeks collaboration for a better world

October 4, 2016

Community members from a rural village outside of Ahmedabad, India, gather to watch videos designed to increase literacy.

Making smarter decisions about classroom technologies

MIT researchers develop a decision-making tool for global classrooms looking to deploy educational technologies.

September 29, 2016

In experiments, the researchers fired a laser beam through a “mask” — a thick sheet of plastic with slits cut through it in a certain configuration, such as the letter A — and then through a 1.5-centimeter “tissue phantom,” a slab of material designed to mimic the optical properties of human tissue for purposes of calibrating imaging systems. Light scattered by the tissue phantom was ...

Toward visible-light-based imaging for medical devices, autonomous vehicles

System accounts for the deflection of light particles passing through animal tissue or fog.