4.110 Design Across Scales Announces its 2024 Spring Semester Guest Speakers

Articulated around several themes highlighting the importance of thinking design across disciplines, Design Across Scales will offer undergraduate students the opportunity to meet several guests over the 2024 Spring semester. From engineering to architecture to planning; from science to computing to the arts — the encounters will contribute to establishing a shared design culture across MIT, capable of responding to design’s evolving responsibilities.

Feb 6, 2024

Overview

Design Across Scales is an undergraduate-level course open to students across all MIT schools and majors.

Through a combination of guest-lectures by renowned designers and lab sessions, the course exposes salient, contemporary design challenges and gives students design tools to approach them. Today, design doesn’t only concern the creation of isolated objects, but the consideration of the different systems and externalities associated with them.

To do so, designers need to think, more than ever, across disciplines and scales. We need to situate our design intentions within broader social and environmental concerns. We need to consider how design addresses different publics and cultures, different economies and ecologies. The course's full commitment to cross-disciplinary practice aspires to build a shared design culture across MIT — from engineering to architecture to planning; from science to computing to the arts — capable of responding to design’s evolving responsibilities.

2024 Spring semester guests

Alphabetically ordered:

Gihan Amarasiriwardena — Founder, Ministry of Supply.
Allison Arieff — Editorial Director of Print for the MIT Technology Review.
Matthew Carter — Founder, Carter & Cone.
Brandon Clifford — Director and co-founder, Matter Design. Associate Professor MIT SA+P.
Julie Cho, Alice Chung & Karen Hsu — Founders, Omnivore studio.
Lila Chrysikou — Director, Chrysikou Lab. Associate Professor at Drexel University in the Applied Cognitive and Brain Sciences program.
Karilyn Crockett — Assistant Professor of Urban History, Public Policy & Planning MIT SA+P.
Claudia Dobles Camargo — Visting Scholar, Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism. Co-leader of Costa Rican National Decarbonization Plan. First lady of Costa Rica from 2018 to 2022.
Miko McGinty — Principal, McGinty Studio.
Ana Miljacki — Professor of Architecture at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Dava Newman — Director, MIT Media Lab. Apollo Program Professor of Astronautics.
John Peterson — Founder, Public Architecture. Curator of the Loeb Fellowship at Harvard Graduate School of Design.
Hashim Sarkis — Principal, Hashim Sarkis Studios. Dean MIT SA+P.
Skylar Tibbits — Director, Self-Assembly Lab. Associate Professor of Design Research MIT SA+P.
Gary Van Zante — Curator, MIT Museum.
Danielle Wood — Director, MIT Space Enabled Group. Assistant Professor of Media, Arts & Sciences and Aeronautics and Astronautics.

Course details

4.110
DESIGN ACROSS SCALES

Instructors: Nicholas de Monchaux & Roi Salgueiro Barrio
TAs: Alicia Jael Delgado, Logan King, Johann Schweig

Credits: 2-2-8 (UG)

Class Sessions: Mondays, 10am–12pm / N52-337
Lab Sessions: Wednesdays, 7–9pm / N52-33

Presented by: MIT Architecture and MIT MAD