Fall 2021 public program

The MIT Department of Architecture is pleased to announce our fall 2021 public program; a continuing set of conversations on where we are now. Hybrid events engaging in-person visitors as well as remote audiences, our events explore the Department’s home at the intersection of design and research. We will confront visionary symbolism, extraordinary mechanics, decolonial maneuvers, new methods of computational craft, situated technologies, design research, spaceships in the desert, conversations on care, and the enduring power of defiant optimism. Our voices will engage with each other and the world, as we respond to the architectural roles that help us to better understand space and its transformative potentials.

Like all our work at MIT, this series seeks to complicate traditional methods in design and architectural inquiry through contemporary, challenging, and cutting edge research. The series is a collaboration between the diverse faculty, staff, and students of MIT’s Department of Architecture, which includes designers, urbanists, historians, critics, theorists, and experts in computation and building technology. Alongside our academic programs and public events, student-run exhibits, various publications, and online platforms advance our agenda — and help shape it.

Events are held online and streamed on our Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter channels. Lectures are posted afterward on our YouTube channel. We invite you to explore the full public program below and find more details including links to webcasts on our events calendar. Learn more about all we do at architecture.mit.edu.

Fall 2021 public program, MIT Department of Architecture

Sanford Biggers
Interdisciplinary Artist and MLK Visiting Scholar
“Oracular”
Presented with the Architecture + Urbanism and Art, Culture and Technology Programs
September 16

Vernelle A. A. Noel
Director, Situated Computation + Design Lab, Georgia Institute of Technology
“Situated Computations, Craft + Technology”
Presented with the Design and Computation Group
September 23

Sigrid Adriaenssens
Associate Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Director, Program in Mechanics, Material Stuctures, Princeton University
“Harnessing Extraordinary Mechanics for Structural Design”
The Edward and Mary Allen Lecture in Structural Design
September 30

Gökçe Günel
Assistant Professor of Anthropology and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Rice University
“Spaceship in the Desert”
Presented by the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture
October 4

“Conversations on Care: Mpho Matsipa”
Curator and Scholar, Loeb Fellow 2022
Presented with the Critical Broadcasting Lab
October 14

Joseph Choma and Maya Hayuk
A Research Studio conversation
Presented with the Architecture + Urbanism Program
October 21

Diana Martinez
Assistant Professor and Director of Architectural Studies, Department of History of Art and Architecture, Tufts University
“A Decolonial Architecture? America’s Gift of “freedom” to the Philippines”
Presented with the History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art Program
October 28

Billie Tsien and Tod Williams
“Defiant Optimism”
Presented with the Architecture + Urbanism Group
November 4

“Boundary Conditions: Architecture, Simulation, Cinema”
Presented by the Transmedia Storytelling Initiative
November 12

Sussan Babaie
Professor of Islamic and Iranian Art and Architecture, The Courtauld Institute, University of London
“Fischer von Erlach to Banister Fletcher: Writing Islam into the World’s Architectural History”
Presented by the Aga Khan Program in Islamic Architecture
November 15

Donnel Baird
Founder, BlocPower
“BlocPower Tech & Environmental Justice”
Presented with the Building Technology Group
November 18

Our fall 2021 public program is supported in-part by the Arthur H. Schein (1951) Memorial Fund.
#BlackLivesMatter