The MIT School of Architecture and Planning is one of the five schools of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US. Founded in 1865 by William Robert Ware, the School offered the first formal architectural curriculum in the United States, and the first architecture program in the world operating within the establishment of a University. The school is considered a global academic leader in the design fields.
The current Dean of Architecture and Planning is Hashim Sarkis.
In the 20th century, the School came to be known as a leader in introducing modernism to America. MIT has a history of commissioning progressive buildings, many of which were designed by faculty or former students associated with the School. In recent years, the Campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has commissioned a mix of modernist and post-modernist buildings.
Video MIT School of Architecture and Planning
History
Architecture
The Architecture program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology was founded in 1865, with the first courses taught in 1868. Architecture was the 4th course of study in the history of the university. Despite its founding within a technical school, the architecture course was, from the beginning, a course of general study that was more closely aligned with the liberal arts. Ware modeled the school as a modified version of the École des Beaux-Arts, entrusting the program's design leadership to Eugene Letang, a French graduate of the École who was a strict teacher of precise draftsmanship and clear composition.
In 1932, when MIT President Karl T. Compton reorganized the Institute's academic structure, the School of Architecture was formally established, incorporating the Department of Architecture. The head of the Department of Architecture, William Emerson, became the first dean of the School of Architecture.
Planning
Urban Studies and Planning was originally a department within the School of Architecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The City Planning course was first offered in September 1933.
In 1944 the school was renamed the School of Architecture and Planning. In 1947, the Department of City and Regional Planning was established, which was renamed the Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) in 1969.
Media Lab
The idea for the Media Lab came into being in 1980 by Professor Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President and Science Advisor to President John F. Kennedy, Jerome Wiesner. The Lab grew out of the work of MIT's Architecture Machine Group, and remains within MIT's School of Architecture and Planning.
Devoted to research projects at the convergence of multimedia and technology, the Media Lab was widely popularized in the 1990s by business and technology publications such as Wired and Red Herring for a series of innovative but practical inventions in the fields of wireless networks, field sensing, web browsers and the World Wide Web. The Media Lab works primarily on the question of physical-virtual interface. As Negroponte envisioned it, interface has become an architectural problem. There have been numerous notable research spinoffs growing out of the Media Lab including One Laptop per Child (OLPC), Electronic Ink and LEGO Mindstorms.
Visual Arts
The Program for Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), housed within the Department of Architecture, was created in the summer of 2009 by the merger of the Visual Arts Program (VAP) and the Center for Advanced Visual Studies (CAVS). The CAVS, now the ACT Fellows program, was founded in 1968 with György Kepes as the director. The CAVS had the goal of encouraging collaboration among artists, scientists, and engineers, and it served as a precursor to the MIT Media Lab decades later. The successor ACT Fellows program is still held in high regard as a research center for practicing artists.
Center for Real Estate
The MIT Center for Real Estate was established in 1983 with the aim of improving the quality of the built environment. An intensive one-year program leads to a Master of Science in Real Estate degree.
Deans of MIT School of Architecture and Planning
Maps MIT School of Architecture and Planning
Departments
Architecture
The Department of Architecture is divided into five main research areas: Architectural Design; Building Technology; Design and Computation; History, Theory and Criticism of Architecture and Art (for which MIT was the first to establish such a program); and the Art, Culture and Technology (ACT) program. Further, there are three special research groups: Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture (in partnership with Harvard University), the Center for Real Estate and the Special Interest Group in Urban Settlements.
The Department offers several degrees, including:
- Bachelor of Science in Art and Design (BSAD
- Bachelor of Science (BS) as pre-professional, undergraduate degrees
- Master of Architecture (MArch)
- Master of Science in Architecture Studies (SMArchS) with a specialization in the school's five main research areas
- Master of Science in Building Technology (SMBT)
- Master of Science in Art, Culture and Technology (SMACT)
- Doctor of Philosophy in Architecture (PhD) degree with specialization in
- Building Technology
- Design and Computation
- History and Theory of Architecture
- History and Theory of and Art
The department is currently led by Meejin Yoon.
Media Laboratory
The MIT Media Lab Program in Media Arts and Sciences (MAS) offers two degrees
- Master of Science
- Doctor of Philosophy in Media Arts and Sciences
Urban Studies and Planning
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning (DUSP) has four specialization areas: City Design and Development; Environmental Policy; Housing, Community and Economic Development; and the International Development Group. There are also three cross-cutting areas of study: Transportation Planning and Policy; Urban Information Systems (UIS); and Regional Planning.
The Department of Urban Studies and Planning offers the following degrees
- Master in City Planning (MCP)
- PhD in Urban and Regional Studies
- PhD in Urban and Regional Planning
- Bachelor of Science (SB) in Planning
- a five-year SB/MCP
- minors in Public Policy and in Urban Studies and Planning.
Center for Real Estate
The MIT Center for Real Estate was established in 1983 with the aim of improving the quality of the built environment. An intensive one-year program leads to a Master of Science in Real Estate degree.
Financial support
A substantial portion of the annual budget, which supports half tuition and full-tuition scholarships in addition to the school's costs, is generated through donations from alumni in both the public and the private sector. Students also have the opportunity to be fully funded when traveling abroad through MISTI.
Rankings
As of 2017, the MIT Architecture Department received top world ranking for the third year in a row from QS World University Rankings.
As of 2017, DesignIntelligence ranked the MIT MArch program in 2nd place. The program's ten-year average ranking places it 4th overall, on its ranking of programs accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.
Research, Projects & Partnerships
In addition to its degree programs, MIT administers research initiatives in design, technology, history and structure. The school publishes the annual peer-reviewed journalx Thresholds and Building Discourse, and other design books and studio works.
MIT@Lawrence
MIT@Lawrence is a partnership between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), several Lawrence, Massachusetts-based community organizations, and the City of Lawrence. The partnership is aimed at facilitating affordable housing development, building community assets, and improving youth pathways to advancement. It is funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
MIT Senseable City Lab
The MIT Senseable City Laboratory aims to investigate and anticipate how digital technologies are changing the way people live and their implications at the urban scale. Director Carlo Ratti founded the Senseable City Lab in 2004 within the City Design and Development group at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, as well as in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab. Recent projects include "The Copenhagen Wheel" which debuted at the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference, "Trash_Track" shown at the Architectural League of New York and the Seattle Public Library, "New York Talk Exchange" featured in the MoMA The Museum of Modern Art, and Real Time Rome included in the 2006 Venice Biennale of Architecture.
Campus
Uncommon to design education, MIT's programs are integrated in the greater University in both curriculum, resources and campus. The network of continuous buildings that combines to create the campus shares common spaces and circulations with neighboring fields.
Rogers Building
Most of the School facilities are located in or near the Rogers Building, at the main entrance to the central MIT campus (chiefly designed by William Welles Bosworth - the hallway spaces have been nicknamed the infinite corridor. The 4th floor lobby 7 of the infinite corridor is lined with studio spaces and classrooms while other classrooms are dispersed throughout the campus. MIT and SA+P have venues along the infinite corridor with exhibits that regularly feature the work of faculty, researchers and students in addition to the MIT Museum- Wolk Gallery, Keller Gallery, the Deans Office Gallery, Rotch Library, and the PLAZmA Digital Gallery. The 'glass bowl' nature of the spaces along the infinite corridor invite colleagues across the school for observation and collaboration.
Rotch Library
Originally built in 1938 as part of the William Barton Rogers Building designed by William Welles Bosworth with Harry J. Carlson. MIT's Rotch Library of Architecture and Planning is one of the premier architecture libraries in the United States, supporting the first architecture program in the country. Rotch Library is also home to the Aga Khan Documentation Center, the GIS Lab, the Visual Collection and the Rotch Limited Access collections.
Although the library acquired an additional half floor of space in the mid-1950s, the collection had outgrown its 9,200 square-foot facility by the 1970s. However, its challenging site made plans for expansion difficult. A solution was proposed by Schwartz/Silver Architects - to suspend the floor from roof girders. These support the weight of the books from above, allowing the elimination of floor beams to maximize the narrow site. Six floors fit into the same space as the four of the original building, while still allowing for a 17-foot clearance for a truck turnaround below. A narrow, sky-lit atrium between the old building and the addition allows sunlight to reach offices and studios in the upper floors, mitigating entire elimination of views and natural light. The result is an addition that has been referred to as a 'glass cage,' which contains the stacks, limited-access collection, and exhibition gallery, while the renovated Bosworth building holds the main reading room and administrative offices.
Fab Labs
MIT SAP has multiple fab labs including two in the infinite corridor, a wood shop in N51, the Media Lab shop, the design center lab, among others
Media Lab Buildings
At the Eastern Gateway of the campus, the Wiesner building (designed by I.M.Pei and later expanded by Fumihiko Maki) mainly house the media lab programs, the List Visual Arts Center, the School of Architecture and Planning's Program in Art, Culture and Technology (ACT), and MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies.
In 2009, the Media Lab expanded into a new building designed by Pritzker Prize-winning Japanese architect Fumihiko Maki. The local architect of record is Leers Weinzapfel Associates, of Boston. The 163,000-square-foot (15,100 m2), six-story building features an open, atelier-style, adaptable architecture specifically designed to provide the flexibility to respond to emerging research priorities. High levels of transparency throughout the building's interior make ongoing research visible, encouraging connections and collaboration among researchers.
Distinguished alumni and faculty
Alumni
Current Faculty
Former Faculty
References
Further reading
- Paul Bennett, "Landscape Organism: The West Philadelphia Landscape Project", Landscape Architecture (March 2000): 66-71, 82.
- Campbell, Glenn, "Learning Gets Real With Service", Philadelphia Daily News, May 7, 1998.
- Steve Curwood, "Nature in the City: Redesigning the Granite Garden", Living on Earth, National Public Radio, 1993 [1]
- Anne Whiston Spirn, "Restoring Mill Creek: Landscape Literacy, Environmental Justice, and City Planning and Design", Landscape Research 30:5 (July 2005): pp. 359-377. [2]
- Anne Whiston Spirn, The Language of Landscape, Yale University Press, 1998.
- Keiko Takayama, "The West Philadelphia Landscape Project", Bio-City 17 (November 1999), pp. 57-67. In Japanese.
External links
- Official website
Source of article : Wikipedia
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