MIT Department of Architecture

10/30/2026

Join the MIT Department of Architecture and the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT for the next installment of the Fall 2026 lecture series on November 2 (6pm ET): “META 5 | CONVOCATION ZERO: A Grammar for Planetary Futures.” This event, in honor of Professor and ACT founding director Ute Meta Bauer, continues META, a thematic art magazine she founded at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart in 1992. Contributions will be gathered through a series of convocations in institutions and places where Ute has worked, including online encounters.

Supported in part by the Goethe-Institut Boston, this lecture will be held in person in the Sidara Auditorium (W41- 1216) and recorded to be shared on YouTube at a later date. Learn more:
https://act.mit.edu/event/meta-5-·-convocation-zero-a-grammar-for-planetary-futures/

10/30/2026

In the spirit of a housewarming — a social ritual that warms a home through the gathering of people — a thesis work by Junha Hwang (MArch '26) and Vincent Jackow (MArch '26) imagines a collective future in which comfort is no longer defined by siloed lifestyles and energy-intensive appliances, but by reclaimed habits of living together.

Today, means of comfort are outsourced to an increasing number of appliances: HVAC, gas boiler, refrigerator, TV, etc., reinforcing individualistic tendencies and dependence on fossil fuels. In the face of housing shortages, climate crises, and an aging building stock, solutions are often sought in new construction and quick-fix technologies, while the habits that sustain these systems remain largely unchanged.

To agitate these domestic habits, this thesis, titled “HOUSEWARMING: Social and Material Habits for Not-so-New Forms of Comfort,” revisits pre-industrial systems of comfort — such as the Korean ondol or the Iranian wind tower — reintroducing them into existing homes as architectural interventions built from readily available materials. Using dollhouse-scale models as temporal devices, the project follows two single-family houses across three time scales: 2025, 2042, and 2068. These models function as living archives, documenting a series of incremental and unplanned renovations that respond to shifting climatic and social pressures. Narrated through a speculative radio show, these interventions reveal how reclaimed habits and collective care extend beyond the individual home.

Ultimately, this thesis places renovation at the heart of architectural practice and advocates for doing more with the homes we already have. It also reflects on the evolving role of the architect in the climate crisis, proposing expanded, socially embedded roles within local communities — as renovation experts, improvisationally-minded architects, social stewards, and the terms house-keepers, material diplomats, and house therapists.

Learn more on the student website: https://junhaverse.com/HOUSEWARMING

10/28/2026

"Critical Perspectives on Contemporary Architecture: Legacies of Ignasi Solà-Morales" is a commemorative program dedicated to the intellectual legacy of Ignasi Solà-Morales, twenty-five years after his death.

MIT Architecture head Ana Miljacki will participate in the “Theory Versus History: Recalibrating Critical Practices” session of the symposium on Thursday, October 29.

Organized by the Fundació Mies van der Rohe and curated by MIT School of Architecture + Planning dean Hashim Sarkis and MIT Department of Architecture lecturer Roi Salgueiro, the cycle brings together leading figures in architecture to reflect on theory, the city of Barcelona, heritage, and the public role of the discipline today.

Through five thematic sessions, the program revisits some of the key lines of thought in Solà-Morales’ work and opens up new readings of contemporary architectural practice.

Read more on the MIT Architecture website: https://architecture.mit.edu/events/critical-perspectives-contemporary-architecture

10/26/2026

Join the MIT Department of Architecture and the History, Theory and Criticism group for the next installment of the Fall 2026 lecture series on October 29 (6pm ET), featuring Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi, Associate Professor at Barnard College, Columbia University, and Visiting Scholar at the Harvard University Hutchins Center for African and African American Research; and Rachel Lee, Assistant Professor in the Department of Architecture at TU Delft.

This lecture will be held in person at the MET Warehouse Sidara Auditorium (W41-1216) and recorded to be shared online via YouTube. Registration available here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mitarchitecture/2370236

The Work of Collaboration
Collaboration has often occupied an ambiguous place within architectural history, a discipline that continues to privilege individual authorship, singular expertise, and archival authority. Collaboration can unsettle these privileges. By bringing researchers together it reshapes the questions we ask, the evidence we value, and the histories we are able to write.

Taking the Feminist Architectural Histories of Migration project as a point of departure, Anooradha and Rachel will reflect on collaboration as both a feminist practice and a mode of historical inquiry. Drawing on their shared work, as well as subsequent projects developed with artists, designers, archivists, communities, and fellow researchers, they will consider how collaborative methods have transformed their scholarship.

Rather than presenting collaboration as an exception to scholarly practice, the lecture argues that it is a way of producing more generous, situated, and critically engaged architectural histories. Looking back at one collaboration and forward to many others, it asks what kinds of historical knowledge become possible when research is understood as a collective endeavour.

10/22/2026

This fall, the MIT Department of Architecture is hosting online information sessions to offer prospective graduate students an opportunity to learn about admissions, programs, school culture, and research at MIT.

Our Fall 2026 Online Prospective Student Open House is TUESDAY, October 27, starting at 9AM EDT.

This online web forum will enable prospective Master of Architecture (MArch) and Master of Science (SMArchS and SMBT) students to ask questions and learn about studying in our department.

Learn more and register: https://architecture.mit.edu/events/fall-2026-online-open-house

10/22/2026

MIT Architecture alumnus Dr. Samuel Dubois (PhD HTC ’26) was awarded the 2025 Martin Eli Weil Prize from the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, recognizing the best student essay in Canadian architectural history. Presented at the Society’s annual conference in Ottawa during June 2025, the prize honors outstanding scholarship by emerging researchers in the field of architectural history.

Dubois received the award for his essay, titled “‘How to Build an Igloo’: Deconstructing Architectural Myths in Canadian Visual Culture,” which examines how the iglu has become an ubiquitous yet often misunderstood symbol in Canadian visual culture. Drawing on architectural history, film studies, and Indigenous theories, the multidisciplinary essay explores the ways Inuit architecture has been represented, appropriated, and reimagined by non-Inuit audiences and designers. The jury praised the work for its rigorous research and its contribution to a more nuanced understanding of Indigenous architecture in Canada.

The essay is adapted from a section of Dubois’s doctoral dissertation, “Arctic Modernities: Architecture and Transcultural Heritage in Inuit Nunangat (Arctic Canada), ca. 1851–1960,” which he successfully defended in April 2026.

Learn more on the MIT Architecture website: https://architecture.mit.edu/news/how-build-igloo-wins-2025-martin-eli-weil-prize

10/22/2026

10/20/2026

Join the MIT Department of Architecture and the Design and Computation group for the next installment of the Fall 2026 lecture series on October 22 (6pm ET), featuring Carrie McKnelly.

This lecture will be held in person at the MET Warehouse Sidara Auditorium (W41-1216) and recorded to be shared online via YouTube. Registration available here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mitarchitecture/2370235

Soft Systems: From Installation to Athlete

Carrie McKnelly is an MIT alum and design leader whose work sits at the intersection of computational design and material craft. She leads the design team within Nike Innovation's Advanced Digital Creation Studio, spanning footwear, apparel, and accessories, directing digital workflows that embed performance, behavior, and data into how product is imagined, designed, and made.

Carrie began her career at SOFTlab in New York, designing large-scale installations that revealed the creative potential of pairing computational logic with physical material. At MIT, she explored knit textiles as a material system for complex form and worked alongside the Self-Assembly Lab. She then joined Nike, leading computational design across products including DriFit Advanced for the 2024 Paris Olympics and Athlete Imagined Revolutions, thirteen concepts co-created with athletes and generative AI.

10/14/2026

Join the MIT Department of Architecture and the Architecture and Urbanism group for the next installment of the Fall 2026 lecture series on October 15 (6pm ET), featuring Giovanni Bellotti and Alessandra Covini of Studio Ossidiana.

This lecture will be held in person at the MET Warehouse Sidara Auditorium (W41-1216) and recorded to be shared online via YouTube. Registration available here: https://www.tickettailor.com/events/mitarchitecture/2370234

Studio Ossidiana is a design practice based in the Netherlands, working across scales to create spaces, objects, exhibitions, and installations at the intersection of architecture, design, art, and landscape. The studio’s projects include experimental playgrounds for children and adults, floating gardens inhabited by birds, outdoor kitchens, land art pavilions on water, to be explored and cultivated by humans and other species.

Led by Alessandra Covini and Giovanni Bellotti, with Klaas van der Molen joining the studio in 2025, Studio Ossidiana collaborates with international institutions including the Centre Pompidou and the National Museum in Oslo. The studio’s work has been presented at the Venice Architecture Biennale (2021–2023), Milan Triennale (2022), Shenzhen Architecture Biennale (2022), Istanbul Design Biennial (2021), Chicago Architecture Biennial (2021), and Bruges Triennial (2024).