MITdesignX is an academic program in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) dedicated to design innovation and entrepreneurship. The program empowers students, faculty, and researchers to build new business ventures and forward-thinking solutions designed to address critical challenges facing the future of cities and the human environment.

MITdesignX provides resources to build new solutions, systems and ventures. Successful ventures exist at the intersection of design, business, science and technology. Interdisciplinary teams of creative thinkers and makers fast-track the development of their innovations and launch ventures into the marketplace. Applications go through a rigorous selection process that reviews ideas based on human and social impact, feasibility, uniqueness, and scalability as well as team composition, diversity and skillset.

Applicants may include graduate students, researchers, staff and/or faculty members from the MIT SA+P and their collaborators from across MIT, other universities and beyond. One participant on a team is required to be an active student, faculty, researcher or staff member of MIT. Preference will be given to teams that include SA+P members.

MIT students are avidly interested in hands-on learning and making things, and MIT Project Manus champions this interest by fostering student maker communities and providing access and training in two makerspaces on MIT’s campus: The Deep (37-072) and Metropolis (6C-006B).

Through the Mobius web app — developed by Project Manus, working with students and shop managers under the direction of Professor Martin Culpepper of the MIT Department of Mechanical Engineering — Project Manus also makes it easier for community members to find spaces and machines, and access training in 35+ makerspaces on the MIT campus.

The MIT Makersystem includes makerspaces tailored for general making, entrepreneurship, research, the arts, class projects, metal working, wood working, glass working, micro/nano making, biomaking, and more. These makerspaces provide access to a host of tools: from chisels, saws, and belt sanders to 3D printers, welding machines, and oscilloscopes and much more.

With the renovation of the MET Warehouse, projected to be completed in 2025, MIT will add a new 17,000 square foot state-of-the-art, community makerspace.