MIT School of Architecture and Planning

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“Exoercising A Haunted City” A Thesis project by BRYAN WONG (SMArchS '24) advised by Arindam Dutta, Carrie Norman and Jaffer Kolb With the looming threat of cultural erasure posed by Hong Kong’s repatriation to China no later than 2047, rituals emerge as the last resource sustaining the collective identity of the city. This thesis documents, through the study of local Taoist-Buddhist practices, the choreographies of rituals as a reparative tool to resist the disappearance of local culture. It is linked to findings from everyday domestic offerings to ancestors, annual festive performances of traumatic cleansing, and the booming clientele businesses of precautionary rites, all of which demonstrate their spatial and temporal qualities as methods to resist modern state control. To retain the residue of pre-modern practices as a critique of socio-political turmoil, this thesis suggests an alternative design that preserves and promotes the annual ghost festival for public participation. By revising the festival’s pilgrimage route and ritual sheds, this thesis transforms the traditional nature of ephemeral scaffoldings into permanent poles and follies. Situated along the city’s most haunted public estate, these structures are programmed as public facilities for fitness training and children’s playscapes. During the festival, they will be activated into ritual sheds, demonstrating a formal and functional contrast between the everyday and the ritual—from form to formlessness, exposure to closure, and lightness to heaviness. Designed to evade institutional surveillance, these clandestine transformations preserve solidarity and identity not by emphasizing the significance of priests exorcising in rituals, but by highlighting the quotidian motor memories developed from locals exercising within. The duality of ritual and everyday movements shall exercise the ghosts of a haunted city. Images courtesy of Bryan #studentwork #thesis #urban #ritual #hongkong

Four proposals from Media Lab researchers have been awarded Education Innovation Grants by the MIT Jameel World Education Lab (J-WEL) at MIT Open Learning. These proposals span a range of topics, from synthetic biology to personalized learning. The proposals include: “Empowering global synthetic biology learners using a robotic cloud lab network for enabling collaborative, scalable research projects,” by David Sun Kong, Ph.D. “NeuroChat: bridging the gap in personalized education through physiological sensing integration in AI-based adaptive learning platforms,” by Nataliya Kosmyna, Ph.D and Professor Pattie Maes “Remixable resources to expand creative learning opportunities with OctoStudio,” by Dr. Natalie Rusk “Interactive social robots for nurturing social-emotional skills in Arabic-speaking refugee children through culturally sensitive design and algorithms,” by Dr. Sharifa AlGhowinem and Dr. Hae Won Park Congratulations to all of the recipients!

Learning Theater Design Through Play Students explored the magic of set, sound, and lighting design by tapping into their own personal experiences to create powerful and evocative work.  As Sara Brown, professional set designer and professor at MIT, says: “If you feel it personally, an audience will also feel it personally.” #TheaterDesign #CreativeLearning #MITTheater #SetDesign #LightingDesign #SoundDesign #PowerOfPlay #StudentCreativity https://lnkd.in/efJz_zn4

"Great, that's all of your data. But why did you collect it? What are you trying to explain with it? What's a useful thread you can pull through this that you can explain to someone else, 'Here's what might be interesting about it'?" 2024 Teaching with Digital Technology Awardee Ben Fry shares how he engages his MIT School of Architecture and Planning students in information design and visualization. Learn more: https://bit.ly/3YmlP1D #Teaching #Learning #Technology #EdTech #Education #HigherEducation #Data #DataVisualization #Architecture

"I want to pay it forward and bring the same kind of inspiration and joy to the students that I'm now teaching. To just feel that they are equipped with a new skill to do things — that gives me a lot of satisfaction." Learn why Cong Cong's MIT School of Architecture and Planning students nominated her for the 2024 Teaching with Digital Technology Awards: bit.ly/3YmlP1D #Teaching #Learning #Technology #EdTech #Education #HigherEducation #ComputerScience #UrbanPlanning #Data #Coding

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SA+P's new home and MIT's new center for design are featured in President Kornbluth's recent note to alumni. https://lnkd.in/ezKpupZz

Welcome to MIT! https://lnkd.in/dZxjSfug

Sharing news from Architecture's Marcelo Coelho: https://lnkd.in/eJMi2hnN