Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan writes about how MIT has submitted design plans for the next phase of its proposal to transform the Volpe Transportation Center into a dynamic mixed-use development, including “eight office and residential towers on the 14-acre site north of Broadway.”
Writing for Cambridge Day, Marieke Van Damme, executive director of the Cambridge Historical Society, explores the life and work of alumna Lois Lilley Howe, a member of the Class of 1890. Howe was “a trailblazer, one of the first women to graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s architectural program, the organizer of the only all-woman architectural firm in Boston in the early 20th century and the first woman elected as a fellow of the American Institute of Architects,” writes Van Damme.
Fast Company reporter Nate Berg writes that architects from MIT startup Generate have developed a new system that could be used to help make the architecture and construction process more environmentally sustainable. The new systemized approach could “save time and money, while also cutting down on buildings’ environmental footprint.”
MIT alumna Angeline Jacques speaks with Archinect reporter Katherine Guimapang about her design for a new conceptual framework for Glacier National Park and her experience entering the workforce during the Covid-19 pandemic. Jacques explains that her MIT thesis “was on the design of National Parks in the age of climate change and spanned geography, landscape, and architecture as disciplines.”
Writing for The Boston Globe, Prof. Carlo Ratti explores the importance of public spaces in bringing people together. “Public space is performing its primordial function: revealing fault lines in our society and helping to reconcile them,” writes Ratti. “This is a particularly important activity today, as the growth of digital communication is leading to increased polarization.”
Architects from MIT and Generate Technologies have designed Boston’s first cross-laminated timber (CLT) building, a “’revolutionary’ type of timber [that] promises to reduce emissions that cause climate change, create affordable housing and jumpstart a new job-producing, homegrown industry in New England,” reports Bruce Gellerman and Kathleen McNerney for WBUR.
Boston Magazine reporter Alyssa Vaughn spotlights Prof. Azra Aksamija’s design proposal for a piece of public art in Cambridge that would honor the passage of the 19th Amendment. Aksamija’s project “takes the form of a three dimensional palimpsest,” writes Vaughn, “that is visible through an arrangement of concrete elements. These elements are inscribed with names and quotes from notable activists.”
Dean Hashim Sarkis speaks with Washington Post reporter Philip Kennicott about his new book, “The World as an Architectural Project” and the role of architecture in a post-pandemic world. “As architects, we are condemned to optimism,” says Sarkis. “Our field is necessarily about proposing and imaging new things, what the world could be through making a part of it better.”
Professor Emeritus Tunney Lee, an architect and urban planner who served as the chief of planning and design for the Boston Redevelopment Authority, has died at age 88, reports Bryan Marquard for The Boston Globe. “At MIT, Mr. Lee was a mentor to scores of architects, teaching them to look beyond the creativity that went into designing buildings."
Boston Globe reporters Patricia Harris and David Lyon spotlight MIT’s public art collection. “A striking collection of modern sculpture, much of it tucked away in secluded courtyards and grassy quads,” they write. “Large-scale sculpture lives at the nexus of art and architecture,” adding that MIT, “has always been a school of imaginative can-do.”
New York Times reporter Neil Genzlinger memorializes the work of Philip Freelon, an MIT alumnus and well-known architect. Genzlinger writes that Freelon’s “long list of credits includes museums and other cultural institutions devoted to the black experience, among them the National Museum of African American History and Culture on the Mall in Washington.”
MIT alumnus Philip Freelon, a renowned architect known for his work designing the National Museum of African American History and Culture, has died at 66, reports Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan for Fast Company. Campbell-Dollaghan notes that Freelon was also known for his efforts to make the field of architecture more diverse and inclusive.
Penelope Green of The New York Times highlights the research of Prof. Neri Oxman in this article about air conditioning. “At MIT, Dr. Oxman’s team is experimenting with polymers and bacteria in the hopes they might ‘grow’ building facades, and ‘wearables’ — clothing, for example — complete with arteries to hold cooled liquids or gas,” writes Green.
Boston Globe reporter Sean Smyth spotlights how the work of the late I.M. Pei, a renowned architect and MIT alumnus, can be found throughout the MIT campus and around the world. Smyth notes that Pei’s portfolio included the Green Building at MIT, the Landau Building at MIT, the West Wing addition to the MFA in Boston and the Louvre pyramid in Paris.
MIT alumnus I.M. Pei, “who was widely recognized as the most prominent American architect of his generation,” has died at age 102, reports Robert Campbell for The Boston Globe. Campbell notes that Pei “charted his own course, remaining a canonical modernist and ignoring the fads and revolutions in taste.”