Course IV Alumni Social: MITArchA New York

On January 31st, 2017, the MIT Club of New York and the MIT Architecture Affinity Group (MITArchA) hosted a Course IV Alumni Social event in New York City. The event was held at WeWork Charging Bull, located in New York’s Financial District, and was hosted by Melissa Marsh, M.Arch ’04, MITArchA’s Vice President of Membership.

The event was set up as a combined social and presentation event. Alumni working in architecture or related disciplines were invited to give presentations on their personal or professional work.

Reflecting the fact that MIT architecture alumni work in many diverse fields, the presentations covered a wide range of topics, including: interaction design, urban planning, structural engineering, social justice, and architecture. The work presented also varied in type and scale, from responsive light installations to gravity-defying skyscrapers.

Ten alumni gave presentations: Jacob Kain, (President of MITArchA), Liz Burow, Elliot Felix, Erik Olsen, Li Lian Tan, Frank Hebbert, Ifeoma Ebo, Ahmed ElHusseiny, and James Patten.

The social event was implemented as part of an ongoing engagement initiative intended to expand MITArchA membership, foster an active architecture alumni community, and advance the missions of the MIT Club of New York and MITArchA.

Keep an eye out for news and events from other MIT student and alumni groups including DesignX, an SA+P-affiliated incubator that supports student, faculty, and alumni entrepreneurs as they start their ventures.

Toast to IAP Tram Party: MITArchA + MIT Club of Hong Kong

On January 21, 2017 MITArchA, the MIT Club of Hong Kong, and the MIT Hong Kong Innovation Node joined forces to Celebrate Toast to IAP with a Tram party.  70 professors, alumni, family and guests enjoyed a 2-hr ride along the vibrant streets of Hong Kong Island on 2 antique trams, served with light dinner and drinks, had a wonderful time celebrating the new year and IAP together.

6 Course IV Alumni and their family, including one couple visiting from LA participated in the event. Participants enjoyed a memorable evening critiquing the architecture of Hong Kong, reminiscing about studio, catching up with old friends, making new connections, learning that MIT has a school song and then singing it on the tram.

The event ended with a renewed sense of camaraderie and a renewed feeling of connection with MIT. The tram party proved to be an extraordinarily popular event, and will become a new IAP tradition for the Hong Kong alumni community.

Course IV IAP Externships Start!

Image: MIT CPS via Flickr

The Department of Architecture has placed undergraduate and graduate students in IAP externships across the country. This program, a long-held MIT tradition, allows students to work in leading architecture firms and research groups between the fall and spring semesters. This experience provides students with valuable hands-on training, an opportunity to improve design skills, receive alumni mentorship, and gain an inside look at architectural research and practice. This program strengthens professional connections between the alumni community and the student body, and often leads to offers of full-time employment.

This year's cohort of externs were placed in prominent design practices all across the country, including Snøhetta, Morphosis, OMA, and nArchitects. 

Design and Civic Engagement: a Talk by Christine Gaspar M.Arch/MCP '04

On November 3, 2016, the Club of New York and the new MIT Architecture Alumni Affinity Group hosted a talk by  Christine Gaspar, M.Arch/MCP ‘04, Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy. The Center (known as CUP) leverages art and design to increase meaningful civic engagement—its projects clarify complex policy and planning issues, empowering individuals to participate in civic life.

Mrs. Gaspar began by discussing CUP’s working method, a dual approach that includes youth education initiatives and community programs, allowing it to reach a wide audience while touching on a wide variety of issues including: zoning, housing, law enforcement, energy, and infrastructure. Having explained CUP’s broader goals, Gaspar showed the audience some recent projects, beginning with Power Trip, an investigation into New York City’s electrical infrastructure conducted by students and a CUP teaching artist. Students interviewed energy experts and went on field trips to learn about the subject, consolidating their findings in a poster printed in multiple languages. This poster has since become a resource for science educators.

Gaspar then discussed CUP’s community education initiatives, in which designers and artists partner with advocacy groups to educate residents about important issues. Gaspar discussed Rent Regulation Rights, a bilingual brochure explaining rent law and tenant rights to residents of Chinatown. To make the final product accessible to its intended audience, designers and community advocates worked together closely to understand cultural concerns and local sensibilities. Gaspar discussed a number of other projects before concluding her talk. Engaged alumni asked many detailed and thoughtful questions, creating a lively atmosphere at the end of the event.

MITArchA kicks off its presence in New York.

Image: Pexels.com / CC0 License

MITArchA will kick off its presence in New York with a talk by Christine Gaspar, MArch/MCP '04, Executive Director of the Center for Urban Pedagogy. She will speak to local alumni on November 3 about the work of her organization, which leverages the power of art and design to help citizens understand the policy and planning issues that impact their communities.

Board members Melissa Marsh, M.Arch '04, and Matthew Chua, M.Arch '08, will lead MITArchA's programs in New York in conjunction with Kenneth Namkung, M.Arch '03 who will coordinate between MITArchA and the MIT Club of New York. Both groups will work to engage the sizable community of Course IV alumni in the area, many of whom work in leadership roles in the design industry.

Announcing the creation of MITArchA!

Image: MIT CPS via Flickr.

MITArchA is the newly formed MIT Architecture Alumni affinity group, within the MIT Alumni Association. Open to all MIT Architecture Alumni, undergraduates and graduates, as well as current students and friends of the program, MITArchA is our forum to connect with each other, with current students and faculty, the School of Architecture and Planning and the Institute at Large.

MITArchA is a worldwide network that aims to increase our awareness of one another and to highlight how, as a community, we are building upon the incredible legacy of the oldest School of Architecture and Planning in the US. Whether you are practicing architecture or have found other pursuits, we share a sensibility that is uniquely MIT!

We want to hear from you! How did MIT shape what it is you do today? Can you share your workspace, give a talk or a tour of something you have created? What do you think MITArchA can be? Do you have ideas for an event or interest in playing an active role? Contact a board member

By becoming a member of MITArchA, you support the building of stronger bonds between us and enable the planning of high quality programs and events. Become a member today! We invite you to log into our website, using your existing MIT Infinite Connection account, and explore the options and update your profile.

Join us at one of the upcoming events, listed below.

I look forward to building MITArchA with you and to the possibilities that await!

Best regards,
Jacob E. Kain, M.Arch '00
President
MITArchA

The Shape of the Future City with Carlo Ratti and Natalie Jeremijenko

On March 31, 2016, the MIT Club of New York joined forces with Cooper Union’s Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture for a signature event. Carlo Ratti, Professor of the Practice in the School of Architecture + Planning at MIT and Director of the SENSEable City Lab, came to New York for a dual presentation and a discussion with artist and engineer Natalie Jeremijenko, head of the Environmental Health Clinic at NYU. The event began with an introduction by Nader Tehrani, Dean of Architecture at Cooper Union, who headed the Department of Architecture at MIT from 2010 to 2014.

Natalie Jeremijenko gave the first presentation, explaining how she works between disciplines to create new paradigms for social and environmental change. She presented a number of her projects, including: the London Phenological Clock, which tracks and presents the life cycles of species in urban ecosystems to understand the interdependency between them; BioChar, a product made from household waste which enriches soil and sequesters carbon, and generates energy as part of its creation; and Butterfly Bridge, a proposal for Long Island City designed to lure butterflies away from traffic, creating an urban infrastructure which enhances the natural world.

Professor Ratti gave the second presentation, delving into many of his recent works including: the Future Food District for Expo Milano 2015, a proposal for an enhanced, information-rich grocery store; the New Holland Agriculture Pavilion, also for Expo Milano 2015, featuring two self-driving tractors “drawing” on a planted roof; and DriveWave, a proposal for an intelligent traffic intersection defined by a real-time control system that seamlessly knits together flows of cars, pedestrians and bicyclists.

Ratti and Jeremijenko then sat down for an open-ended conversation on the relationship between technology, design, and urbanism, and the new possibilities that exist between these them. An engaged crowd of over 79 attendees consisting of architects, engineers, urban planners, artists, and the like asked many intelligent and philosophical questions, extending the event well into the evening.

Reading Structures: A Lecture by Guy Nordenson ‘77

On March 8, 2016 the Club hosted a talk by Guy Nordenson ’77, a renowned structural engineer and a professor in the School of Architecture at Princeton University. Titled “Reading Structures,” the lecture focused on his approach to engineering and its relationship to architecture. 

Nordenson began his talk with anecdotes from his undergraduate years at MIT, revealing an early interest in cross-disciplinary thinking. He went on to discuss a number of works of architecture, including Yale’s Beinecke Library, the original World Trade Center, and Crown Hall at IIT, describing their design concepts, the creativity behind their engineering approaches, and how each project integrated the two. He then explained his own approach to engineering through a multidisciplinary lens—having studied comparative literature before changing majors, his MIT education taught him that structure and literature can have the same level of complexity.

Having explained his background and unique approach, Nordenson then described a number of his projects, each executed in collaboration with a renowned architect. He began with the Glass Pavilion at the Toledo Museum of Art, an impossibly light and delicate structure that required intensive and precise engineering, and went on to explain a number of projects including: the extension of the Kimbell Art Museum by Renzo Piano (defined by a highly articulated roof structure), the innovative Contemporary Wing at the Corning Museum of Glass, the Menil Drawing Center in Houston, and the National Museum of African American History and Culture. The audience asked many detailed questions at the end of the lecture, provoking some philosophical and historical discussions on engineering and ending the event on a high note.