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Developing community around design

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Courtesy of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design

Courtesy of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design

By Maria Iacobo

When the creation of the MIT Morningside Academy for Design (MAD) — a major interdisciplinary center housed in the MIT School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P) — was announced last spring, it promised to build on the Institute’s legendary leadership in design-focused education and provide a hub for cross-disciplinary design work across MIT. The 14 graduate students enrolled as MAD’s inaugural cohort of design fellows are making good on that promise with research projects supporting a range of efforts, with many demonstrating a strong interest in working at the interface of design and sustainability.

The fellows are currently enrolled in masters or doctoral programs across MIT. Engineers, business students, architects, city planners, policy developers — they all wanted to participate in the academy to expand their understanding of design and enrich their ongoing projects or theses.

“While design is viewed in many ways across the MIT community, these fellowships prioritize students whose education and research emphasize design with a focus on users who will benefit from or interface with their work,” says John Ochsendorf, MAD’s founding director and the Class of 1942 Professor and a professor of architecture and of civil and environmental engineering.

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