MIT Department of Architecture

Shape Computation: Fifty Years, 1927-2022 is available now as open access. Edited by Dr. Sotirios D. Kotsopoulos SM '00, PhD '05, it gives a panorama of Shape Computation, exploring its diverse design practices and interdisciplinary applications. Originating in the seminal 1972 article by George Stiny and James Gips that introduced shape grammars as a new computational paradigm, Shape Computation challenges traditional notions of visual and symbolic calculation, particularly in art and design.

Available on Springer Nature (no login required):
https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-81623-9

David Chipperfield
The 31st Pietro Belluschi Lecture
Part of the Spring 2026 MIT Architecture Lecture Series.

Register to attend: https://buytickets.at/mitarchitecture/2187610

David Chipperfield studied architecture at the Kingston School of Art and the Architectural Association School of Architecture in London. He worked for Douglas Stephen, Richard Rogers and Norman Foster before founding his own practice in 1985 and establishing a design methodology that is now used across five offices in London, Berlin, Milan, Shanghai and Santiago de Compostela.

David Chipperfield is a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects and an honorary fellow of both the American Institute of Architects and the Bund Deutscher Architekten. Among the accolades he has received are the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany, awarded in 2009, and a knighthood for services to architecture in the UK and Germany, awarded in 2010. He has received the RIBA Royal Gold Medal for Architecture (2011) and the Praemium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association (2013), both given in recognition of a lifetime’s work. David Chipperfield was appointed a member of the Order of the UK's Companions of Honour in 2021, Commander of Spain's Orden de Isabel la Católica and member of Germany's Orden Pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste in 2022 for his services to architecture internationally. In 2023 he was selected Laureate for the Pritzker Architecture Prize.

In addition to design work, David Chipperfield has taught and lectured at schools of architecture worldwide. In 2012 he curated the 13th International Architecture Exhibition of the Venice Biennale under the title 'Common Ground. He served as the mentor for architecture from 2016–17 for the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. In 2017 he founded Fundación RIA, a private, non-profit entity that works towards meaningful economic, environmental and cultural development in Galicia, Spain.

David Chipperfield has published numerous books and articles, including 'On Planning – A Thought Experiment' (2018), a publication that explores and theorises the urban qualities of contemporary urban developments. He was the 2020 guest editor of Italian design magazine Domus.

TONIGHT, Thursday April 23, 6pm | Long Lounge (7-429) and on YouTube:
Curry J. Hackett
"Other Channels: Imaging Black Life, Land, and Knowledge"
The MIT NOMAS Lecture
Part of the Spring 2026 MIT Architecture Lecture Series.

This talk asks how pedagogy, speculative fiction, and multimedia art can render what Katherine McKittrick calls a “Black sense of place.” Drawing on his transdisciplinary work and research, Curry J. Hackett reflects on how image-making, sound, archives, and AI might act as channels for narrating and re-presenting Black relationships to territory, history, and possibility.

Curry J. Hackett is a transdisciplinary designer, visual artist, and educator exploring Black relationships to land, media, and memory. A Farmville, Virginia native, his work works across scales and mediums to speculate on the aesthetics and ecologies of the American South.
Hackett’s work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Bloomberg, and Metropolis, among others. He has exhibited at the University of Tennessee–Knoxville, the Architectural Association School of Architecture, and the “Making Home”—Smithsonian Design Triennial at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.Curry holds architecture degrees from Howard University and the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and currently serves as Clinical Assistant Professor in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development.

Thursday, April 2, 2026 | 6:00pm EST

Forrest Meggers
THERManifesto: Wordplay, Techplay, and Systemic Change in Architecture�
Part of the Spring 2026 MIT Architecture Lecture Series.
Presented with the Building Technology Group.

Does architecture really require a strict divide between inside and outside? This lecture questions the long-held belief that buildings must create sealed, mechanically controlled “comfortable” interiors. For over a century, architects and engineers have relied on thermal systems—especially air conditioning—that quietly shaped our buildings, aesthetics, and expectations of comfort. Yet the standards and metrics guiding these systems may be flawed, contributing to high energy use, health concerns, and limited design imagination. Drawing on research and built experiments, I explore alternatives based on radiant heat and other strategies that blur indoor and outdoor boundaries. Rethinking comfort can help us design healthier, lower-carbon, and more equitable places—not just enclosed shelters.

Forrest Meggers is an associate professor of architecture and the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment at Princeton University. His fields of knowledge include building systems design and integration, radiant systems, desiccants, heat pumps; exergy analysis; geothermal energy; thermal storage; building materials; thermodynamics and heat transfer. Meggers founded and directs CHAOS (Cooling and Heating for Architecturally Optimized Systems) Lab, where he and his research team investigate alternative thermal paradigms to challenge the status quo in thermal system design, comfort metrics, and user-centric architecture. Meggers has several patents and founded Clearly-cool.com and CHAOSense.com to bring radiant and sensor technology to market while working closely with industry and standards organizations to accelerate critical opportunities for innovation adoption.

This lecture will be held in person in Long Lounge, 7-429 and will be streamed on YouTube. Learn more: https://architecture.mit.edu/events/forrest-meggers

Thursday, March 12, 2026 - 6:00pm | Long Lounge (7-429) and Live on YouTube

MIT Architecture will host Jeanne Gang, FAIA, of Studio Gang, as part of the Spring 2026 MIT Architecture Lecture Series. Presented with the Architecture and Urbanism Group in collaboration with the MIT Norman B. Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism (LCAU).

Architect Jeanne Gang is the founding partner of international architecture and urban design practice Studio Gang. Known for a distinctive design approach that expands beyond architecture’s conventional boundaries, she creates striking places that strengthen connections between people, their communities, and nature. Her diverse portfolio across the Americas and Europe includes the Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History; a new United States Embassy in Brazil; and an expansion of the Clinton Presidential Center. A MacArthur Fellow and the Kajima Professor in Practice of Architecture at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, Jeanne has been named one of TIME Magazine’s most influential people in the world.

Photo credits:
Jeanne Gang, by John David Pittman
Richard Gilder Center at the American Museum of Natural History, photo by Iwan Baan.

Seeing the Forest for the Trees:
Presentations and discussion on sustainable forestry and wood innovation, hosted by the MIT Department of Architecture and industry partner WholeTrees Structures.

Friday, November 21, 2025 — 3:00 to 5:00 PM GMT+1 / 9:00 to 11:00 AM EST

Registration: https://mit.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_ADzPetxVTpKfSDfyK6xRlw #/registration

Speakers include Dr. Caitlin Mueller (MIT), Sheila Kennedy (MIT), Amelia Baxter (WholeTrees Structures), Dr. Nate Helbach (Neutral), Amy Berry (Tahoe Fund), Aurimas Bukauskas (RMI), Prof. Dr. Christopher Robeller (Augsburg Technical University of Applied Sciences THA), Dr. Barbara Cueto (LAS Art Foundation), Rachel Blowes (MIT), Kate Davies (Hooke Park), Dr. Dario Parigi (Aalborg University), Dr. Paul Mayencourt (UC Berkley) and Dr. Fiona O'Donnell (Swarthmore College).

Tuesday, November 18, 2025 | 6pm

Lucas Epp
The Edward and Mary Allen Lecture in Structural Design
Design + Build, Reconnected
Part of the MIT Fall 2025 Architecture Lecture Series. Presented with the Building Technology Group.

Design and construction have bifurcated. What might buildings look like if we returned to shaping natural materials in their rawest form? Designers and builders, reunited in the pursuit of efficiency and beauty amid an increasingly code-constrained, risk-averse era.

Lucas Epp is a structural engineer whose work sits at the intersection of architecture, engineering, and craft. His work advances timber and natural materials as primary, high-performance structural systems - from mass timber to long-span, free-form geometries. He has pioneered modern all-wood structural systems and joinery techniques at the new National Performing Arts Centre in Barbados and the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Kansas, blending ancient craft with state-of-the-art computational design and robotics – and pointing toward new possibilities for timber architecture.

In 2021 he founded Branch, an in-house software venture creating the next generation of digital tools for structural design-to-manufacture, informed by direct feedback from engineers, fabricators, and field crews.

Epp has practiced across the UK, New Zealand, China, the United States, and Canada. He has taught at ETH Zurich, the Architectural Association, and MIT; serves on Canadian and American timber code committees; and has authored multiple industry guidelines. His practice points toward a near future in which structural engineering, fabrication, and software merge - a return to the master builder mindset.

This lecture will be held in person in Huntington Hall, 10-250 and streamed online on our YouTube channel: https://youtube.com/live/e6wNnwtjdjk?feature=share

University of Kansas Makers KUbe (1-2), Barbados National Performing Arts Center (3-4), and Surrey Central City (5). All photos credit StructureCraft

May 1, 2025 - 12pm EST
Ronita Bardhan
Built Environment - A Climate & Health Action
Presented with the Building Technology Group
Part of the MIT Spring 2025 Architecture Lecture Series.

Dr. Ronita Bardhan is an Associate Professor at the University of Cambridge and is Director of Research and Deputy Head of the Department of Architecture. Ronita leads the Cambridge Sustainable Design Group and holds affiliated positions at Cambridge Public Health and the Department of Computer Science and Technology. Ronita's research intersects the built environment, climate change, and health, focusing on data-driven built environment strategies for precision prevention. Her seminal work on gender-inclusive climate adaptation in built environments is now shaping policies in the Global South. Ronita is ranked among the top 2% of scientists in her domain and was awarded the Top 50 Finalist Women in Engineering in UK 2024 for her contribution in enhancing lives through engineering. She regularly advises policymakers on critical issues related to low-carbon transition and heat-health.

https://architecture.mit.edu/events/ronita-bardhan

I Would Prefer Not To, a podcast hosted by Ana Miljački, Professor of Architecture at MIT, will be honored with the Architecture in Media Award at this year’s AIA New York Honors and Awards Luncheon on Friday, April 25.

Since 2021, Critical Broadcasting Lab has been collaborating with the The Architectural League of New York on a podcast titled: I Would Prefer Not To. Learn more about the 2025 honorees:

Meet the 2025 Honorees of the AIANY Honors and Awards Luncheon — AIA New York Join us at the AIA New York Honors and Awards Luncheon, taking place on Friday, April 25, at Cipriani Wall Street, as we celebrate the recipients of prestigious AIA New York awards—the Medal of Honor, Champion of Architecture Medal, Architecture in Media Award, and New Perspectives Award—as well...

Thursday, April 17: Alison Clarke
Presented with the Morningside Academy for Design and HTC Forum
Part of the MIT Spring 2025 Architecture Lecture Series.
Livestream: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpzfB6r40oY

Architectural Damage & Creative Engineering: Interventions in Cold War Design and Development

When in the late 1960s a radical pan-Scandinavian design movement initiated a full-blown attack on the ‘architectural damage’ wrought by Modernist welfare architects, their localized grassroots activism appeared far removed from the formal machinations of Cold War geopolitics. Yet the influential environmental design discourse they helped promulgate was inextricably tied to the U.S. government-sponsored transdisciplinary experiments in industrial design, engineering and social science that had sprung up in institutes across the U.S., from MIT to Purdue University. As the influential post-development anthropologist Arturo Escobar has argued, design acted as a crucial (yet routinely overlooked) mechanism of Cold War development policy and its discontents. Based on original archival research, this talk explores how a distinct genre of transdisciplinary design became instrumentalized in U.S. development agendas across the Global South, examining its residual legacy in contemporary user-based corporate design practice.
HTC Forum is made possible with support from Thomas Beicher (phd, 2004)

As a design historian and social anthropologist, Alison J. Clarke’s research deals with the intersection of these disciplines, specifically in terms of their shared focus on the politics of material culture and social relations. Her most recent monograph Victor Papanek: Designer for the Real World (MIT Press, 2021) explores the controversial origins of social design, casting a critical perspective on the origins of a movement that has claimed to promote social justice through people-centred approaches. Her present book and research project Design Anthropology: Decolonizing and Recolonizing the Material World (MIT Press) explores the blurred historical boundaries between design practice and anthropology as well as the social consequences of the uptake of this melding by the contemporary corporate sector. Clarke’s research has been supported by the Graham Foundation, Smithsonian Institution, Austrian Science Fund, and Arts and Humanities Research Council, among others.

To A Future Space-Time, Associate Professor J. Yolande Daniels’s first solo exhibition, is now on view through September 6, 2025. Presented by the California African American Museum at Art + Practice (Los Angeles), the show features Daniels’s twenty-plus-year study, BLACK City: Editions.

Curator Zion Estrada said, “Bringing J. Yolande Daniels’s research, ideas, and installations together in the artist’s first solo exhibition creates its own space-time offering. This exhibition demonstrates how spaces can hold histories and share futures. Los Angeles has been a subject of Daniels’s work, and dialogue with A+P and the Leimert Park community extends that connection.” Learn more:

J. Yolande Daniels: To A Future Space-Time – Art + Practice For over three decades, the works of multidisciplinary artist J. Yolande Daniels have explored the fraught relationship between race, power, and time, as well as how these concepts shape the built environment. Infusing her projects with sociological and architectural research, Daniels reveals the su...