Design

Los Angelos Times reporter Mark Swed spotlights Prof. Tod Machover’s “already and not yet,” a new symphony that “handles democracy not as a done deal, but a series of scary questions — and doesn’t trust the heartless machines for answers.” “Already and not yet” challenges us to make the world more beautiful by looking deeply into ourselves,” writes Swed. The orchestral score treats “musicians as creative artists and the audience as capable of opening its collective mind.”  

Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw SM ’17, PhD ’20 speaks with CNN’s Amy Gunia about her work developing TESSERAE, a space architecture project involving magnetic, self-assembling tiles that could one day be used to create structures in space. “The tiles can be stacked on top of each other inside a rocket and released in space, where they can autonomously attach to each other—employing electro-permanent magnets, cameras and AI—to create a predetermined shape,” Gunia explains. The tiles “can self-assemble into something way bigger than the size of the rocket that they came up in,” Ekblaw shares, which could allow humans to build “science-fiction-worthy, big, grand structures” in space. 

Prof. Tod Machover’s composition “already and not yet,” was performed by members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra along with an AI system that listens to musicians and adds improvisations, reports A.Z. Madonna for The Boston Globe. “Music is something that’s meant to plumb your soul, and have you discover things,” says Machover. The composition is “about my view of where we are, how to take a deep breath and figure out, gather strength to go somewhere else, and then what a possible future of democracy might be.”  

Prof. Tod Machover speaks to WBUR’s Andrea Shea about “already and not yet” an interactive composition he wrote for the Boston Symphony Orchestra and an AI instrument developed by Machover and graduate student Manaswi Mishra. Machover explains that they designed the AI tools so that they’re “always going to make a kind of variation, a coloration, an extension of what the musician's playing – but exactly what it's going to do I do not have complete control over. I'm trying to show that it [AI] can be integrated in a beautiful, provocative and interesting way in a serious piece of music.”  

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.” The festival featured the public debut of the redesigned Metropolitan Warehouse, along with conversations, exhibits and demonstrations on architecture, design and technology. “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.” 

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.”   

Using AI, satellite, and ocean current data, MIT spinout Coastal Assembly constructs artificial reefs designed to help rebuild beaches restore shrinking beaches, writes Fast Company’s Adele Peters. “We take 10 years of data, and we say, where do we predict the critical areas of erosion will be in the coming months to year,” says Prof. Skylar Tibbits, co-founder of Coastal Assembly. “That tells me where the best place is to intervene—what’s the part that is most critical, where we should focus our time, effort, and money.” 

New York Times reporter Quinn Glabicki highlights Coastal Assembly, an MIT spinout that uses AI, satellite and ocean current data to monitor communities threatened by coastal erosion and create underwater structures to regrow beaches at nearly 900 coastal sites. “We can go to any community around the world and understand what has happened and then propose a solution that is very precisely tailored to them,” says Prof. Skylar Tibbits, one of Coastal Assembly’s founders.  

Members of MassLive’s “25 Most Influential Innovators of 2026” list, which includes President Sally Kornbluth and a number of other MIT faculty and alumni, gathered at the MIT Museum to “discuss the forces shaping the future of innovation in Massachusetts,” writes reporter Tréa Lavery. “MIT Provost Anantha Chandrakasan said about half of undergraduate students at the school are studying some form of computing, and enrollment in those courses has gone up in recent years, prompting professors and administrators to rethink how they incorporate AI into their teaching,” writes Lavery.  

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.”  

In a video, Visiting Scholar Ariel Ekblaw speaks to NBC News about floating, magnetic tiles that could be used to build structures in space. “We could self-assemble these [tiles] on the Moon,” says Ekblaw. “We could make habitats for the Artemis program. Once we have this idea of modular space tiles, there’s so many different things that we can do with self-assembly.”  

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.”  

MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) Dean Hashim Sarkis speaks to WBZ News Radio’s Emma Friedman about “The Living Bucentaur,” the Sept. 8 procession made up of 250 people, to SA+P’s new home in the redesigned Metropolitan Warehouse. “This is really a very conscious reenactment of the moment that MIT decided to move to Cambridge from Boston,” says Sarkis. “After all, moving into this building is an act of renewal.” 

Priti Paul ‘90, director of Apeejay Surrendra Group, and her sister Priya, chairperson and executive director of Apeejay Surrendra Park Hotels, are honored on Forbes’ list of “Women Hospitality Leaders Who Should’ve Been In The Room,” by Jacques Ledbetter. Paul has led Apeejay’s “real estate and design work and helped shape projects across the family enterprise,” writes Ledbetter. “Together, they [Priti and Priya] represent the ownership, design and operating sides of hospitality in India.”