Classes
MIT Living Labs: Post-Tsunami Japan - Designing New, Resilient Cities, Spring 2012
MAS.552J / 4.557J
MIT Living Labs
Post-Tsunami Japan: Designing New Resilient Cities
Wednesdays, 2:30-5:30pm, E14-525
Spring 2012
Instructors
Kent Larson, Ryan Chin
MIT Course Collaborators
Nicholas Pennycooke, Daniel Smithwick, Praveen Subramani, Jenny Broutin, Brandon Martin-Anderson, Shawn Salzberg, Topper Carew, Tyrone Yang, Haiser Larrea Tamayo, Jet SiZhi Zhou, Ira Winder
Course Description
The destruction from the events of 3.11 in Japan has forced communities to re-question the concept of resiliency. This class will focus on the design of small, resilient cities in Tokoku, Japan, by developing new and scalable housing, mobility, and energy systems. These systems should be designed to be adaptive, robust, reconfigurable, redundant, and exhibit self-healing much like wireless mesh networks in computing. Participants of the course will have the opportunity to travel to Japan during spring break for a one-week design charrette. We will work with community leaders, sponsors, and local universities to design “Living Lab” experiments that can be deployed and tested in Tohoku. Prior to going to Japan, teams will focus on developing key components of a resilient city – in a generalizable fashion – that could scale to new cities in China, India, and Latin America.
Classes
MIT Living Labs: Mobility, Energy, and Housing Innovations, Fall 2011
MAS.552J / 4.557J
MIT Living Labs
Our Campus as a Testbed for Mobility, Energy and Housing Innovations
Wednesdays, 2-5pm, E14-525
Fall 2011
Instructors
Kent Larson, Ryan Chin
MIT Course Collaborators
Joost Bonsen, Virot Chiraphadhanakul, Karthik Dinakar, William Lark, Jr., Nicholas Pennycooke, and Praveen Subramani, and Daniel Smithwick
Course Description
MIT has made a major commitment to long-term breakthrough research on energy. However, we propose that the MIT campus should be a living laboratory to explore how dramatic reductions in energy use can be achieved today. Students will be challenged to develop mobility, energy, and housing innovations that including new lightweight electric vehicles, electric charging and smart grid technologies, transformable high performance housing, persuasive interfaces for energy conversation, and incentives to encourage the use of more energy efficient mobility systems. The potential benefits of an integrated ecosystem approach may include, for example, the freeing up of land for new housing by reducing parking through transportation modal shifts or the introduction of bike sharing programs.
The Living Labs course this term will focus on two major innovations in urban systems: 1) Mobility-on-Demand (MoD) Systems and 2) the CityHome. MoD systems consist of a fleet of Lightweight Electric Vehicles (LEVs) distributed at charging stations in an urban service area.
Classes
MIT Urban Ventures: Commercializing Innovations for Clean, Green, Responsive Cities, Fall 2011
MIT Urban Ventures
Commercializing Innovations for Clean, Green, Responsive Cities
Fall 2011
Instructors
Joost Bonsen, Kent Larson
Course Description
Urban Ventures (UV) is an exploratory entrepreneurship seminar, an Action Lab on founding, financing, and building high-impact viable ventures that will improve urban living. The core class assignment is to research and prepare a business plan and presentations for either an intrapreneurial or entrepreneurial urban venture (i.e. within an existing firm or a stand-alone startup).
Classes
Mobility on Demand - Vienna Workshop, Spring 2011
Design Workshop: Mobility-On-Demand Systems in Vienna, Austria
Spring 2011
Instructors
Kent Larson, Ryan Chin
MIT Course Collaborators
Dimitris Papanikolaou, Nicholas Pennycooke, Chris Post, Praveen Subramani, and Daniel Smithwick
Course Description
This workshop will explore Mobility-on-Demand (MoD) systems for new urban villages. Each student will focus on the design of one selected system component, which may include charging stations, an all-weather electric vehicle for bike-lanes, building design for autonomous parking, mobility pathway and streetscape typology, fleet management, MoD interfaces, and vehicle-togrid energy systems. We will explore how MoD systems can be divided into a number of key elements that work together under a set of established rules, and how this component typology can be applied to the new neighborhood of Aspern in the City of Vienna, Austria.
Classes
Mobility on Demand - New Urban Village, Fall 2010
Design Workshop: Mobility-On-Demand for a New Urban Village
Fall 2010
Instructors
Kent Larson, Ryan Chin
MIT Course Collaborators
William Lark, Jr., Dimitris Papanikolaou, Raul-David “Retro” Poblano, Nicholas Pennycooke, and Praveen Subramani
Course Description
This workshop will explore how architectural and mobility interventions might transform the municipality of Óbidos in Southern Portugal into a model for the urban village of the future – a globally connected center of living, work, culture, and creative entrepreneurship. The municipality of Óbidos, 80 km north of Lisbon, includes one of the most beautifully preserved hill towns of Portugal, beaches, a lagoon, and the Bom Sucesso resort consisting of several thousand modernist homes designed by over twenty Portuguese and international architects. We will coordinate the workshop with a parallel studio at the Technical University (TU) of Lisbon. Portuguese students will focus on site analysis and the urban plan while MIT students will focus primarily on mobility systems and their interface to buildings and the “smart grid.” If funding can be secured, MIT students will travel to Portugal during the third week of October to participate in one-week MIT-TU Óbidos charrette. The Mayor of Óbidos and key members of his staff will participate in sessions.
Classes
