MIT Design Lab

mit design lab

The MIT Design Laboratory focuses on the theories, techniques, and practices of innovative design. It pursues research, executes practical design and art projects, and engages in scholarship and criticism. It is organized as a collection of multidisciplinary research and project teams, and it is not constrained by the traditional boundaries among design, planning and engineering professions and disciplines.

Generally, the Laboratory's projects engage new technologies and their potential to enable fresh and highly effective solutions to problems of substantial social, economic, and cultural importance. The Laboratory is particularly interested in the emerging possibilities of new information technologies, new material, fabrication, and construction technologies, new ways of providing functionality at micro and nano scales, new techniques for engineering biological materials and structures, and new planning and management strategies. It is concerned not only with the design of individual products, buildings, and urban areas, but also with the roles that these elements play in larger urban, regional, and global systems and their long-term sustainability. It is committed to the highest standards of design quality, and it pursues its projects within a context of vigorous debate about related issues of values, ethics, and social justice.

The Design Laboratory is organized as a multidisciplinary laboratory within the School of Architecture and Planning. It is located at Main Street, Cambridge MA 02139.