“Questions as Tools,” Featuring MAD's Director John Ochsendorf

MAD's founding director John Ochsendorf, 2008 MacArthur Fellow and 2008 Rome Prize Fellow, joins twelve distinguished scholars and artists in exploring the power of questions to shape creativity and research in Questions as Tools.

By American Academy in Rome

Jan 7, 2025

To watch the film, please visit questions.aarome.org.

Questions as Tools explores how questions drive creativity, experimentation, and research. Directed by Hideo Mabuchi from Stanford University and Peter N. Miller of the American Academy in Rome, the film features interviews with twelve MacArthur Fellows, including MAD's founding director John Ochsendorf, a 2008 MacArthur Fellow and 2008 Rome Prize Fellow. The film highlights how questions, even without clear answers, can catalyze innovation and advance entire fields.

A panel discussion with AAR President Peter N. Miller, artist Mary Reid Kelley (2012 Fellow), MIT professor John Ochsendorf (2008 Fellow, former AAR Director), landscape architect Walter Hood (1997 Fellow, 2014 Resident), and Stanford physicist Hideo Mabuchi followed the screening.

John Ochsendorf is an engineer, educator, and designer on the MIT faculty since 2002. He is the MIT Class of 1942 Professor with appointments in the departments of architecture and civil and environmental engineering. His interview contributes to the film's central theme: the role of questions in shaping both artistic and scholarly research.

The project is a collaborative exploration of how the act of questioning has influenced various disciplines, from the sciences and humanities to the arts. By examining how the best questions remain generative across time, the film reveals how questions, like Ochsendorf's own work, play a pivotal role in creativity and intellectual discovery.

This film is made possible by the MacArthur X-Grant Program, with support from the American Academy in Rome and the Stanford Arts Institute.