Tag: Architecture

Reality Bytes: Utilizing VR and AR in the Library Space

By on June 12, 2017

Terms like “virtual reality” and “augmented reality” have existed for a long time. In recent years, thanks to products like Google Cardboard and games like Pokemon Go, an increasing number of people have gained firsthand experience with these once-exotic technologies. The MIT Libraries are no exception to this trend. The Program on Information Science has conducted enough experimentation that we would like to share what we have learned and solicit ideas for further investigation.

This discussion will present participants with a firsthand opportunity to not only to hear about the ongoing learning in the VR and AR space in the MIT Libraries, but to also witness some of these technologies in action – both for viewing and creating relevant content. A variety of data will be shared and collected during the discussion.

Matt Bernhardt is a web developer at the MIT Libraries with a wide-ranging interest in technology – including digital fabrication and data visualization. A graduate of the Knowlton School of Architecture at Ohio State, he has been interested in how physical spaces and shapes can be represented digitally since the days of Zork and Snow Crash.

Event Details
Location: E25-401
We will provide lunch, please bring your own drink and your questions.

Information Science Brown Bag talks, hosted by the Program on Information Science, consist of regular discussions and brainstorming sessions on all aspects of information science and uses of information science and technology to assess and solve institutional, social, and research problems. These are informal talks. Discussions are often inspired by real-world problems being faced by the lead discussant.

June 21, 2017 12 - 1pm

International Tangier: Exhibit in Rotch Library

By on November 10, 2016

An exhibit at Rotch Library features never-before-exhibited photographs of the early 20th–century International Zone of Tangier, Morocco. For centuries European powers battled one another and Moroccan forces for control of the city of Tangier, due to its strategic location on the Straits of Gibraltar, the point where the Mediterranean Sea meets the Atlantic Ocean. In 1924 an agreement made the city a demilitarized “International Zone” administered by a group of officials from other countries, yet still nominally under Moroccan sovereignty. With the exception of a period of five-year occupation by the Spanish during World War II, some variation of this arrangement remained in place until the city was returned to Moroccan sovereignty in 1956.

An exhibition at Rotch Library, curated by Michael A. Toler, PhD, highlights this period with prints made from the glass negatives collection of the Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies (TALIM) in Morocco. The photographs date from roughly 1900 to 1930, a period during which the city of Tangier underwent a transformation that has been unrivaled until the growth of recent decades. Not only is Tangier now seeing a radical transformation due to new construction and infrastructure improvements, but there is also a growing emphasis on historic preservation of the built environment. The exhibition juxtaposes the older black and white images against more recent photographs appearing on the image labels.

The exhibition is hosted by the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT (AKDC@MIT) and organized in collaboration with the Program in Middle Eastern Studies of Wellesley College. It highlights a collaboration between AKDC, Wellesley’s Middle Eastern Studies Program, and Wellesley’s Office of Career Education to assist TALIM in the preservation of TALIM’s glass negatives collection. In the summers between 2013 and 2016, interns from Wellesley College went to Tangier and scanned all 2,000 negatives in TALIM’s collection, creating high resolution surrogates so the originals could be placed in cold storage. A catalog of the collection has been made available on Archnet.

AKDC@MIT and Wellesley College’s Middle Eastern Studies Program will host a joint reception for “International Tangier” on November 17 at 7:30pm.

An online version of the exhibitions will appear on Archnet soon after the reception.

Explore design visualization and integration in the International Journal of Architectural Research

By on January 5, 2016

Design creativity and integrated visualization are explored in a special issue of the International Journal of Architectural Research (Archnet-IJAR), available now on Archnet. Jack Steven Goulding and Farzad Pour Rahimian served as guest editors for the November 2015 issue (volume 9, issue 3), which presents nine papers from leading scholars, industry, and contemporaries. These papers provide an eclectic but cognate representation of AEC (Architecture, Engineering, and Construction) design visualisation and integration, not only uncovering new insight and understanding of these challenges and solutions, but also providing new theoretical and practice signposts for future research. The entire volume is available for download.

Established in 2007, Archnet- IJAR is an interdisciplinary, fully-refereed, open access, scholarly online journal of architecture, planning, and built environment studies, edited by Professor Ashraf M. Salama, head of Architecture at University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland. Supported by two co-editors, Farzad Pour Rahimian and Remah Gharib, IJAR has two international boards (advisory and editorial) that ensure the quality of scholarly papers and allow for a comprehensive academic review of contributions spanning a wide spectrum of issues, methods, theoretical approaches, and architectural and development practices. IJAR provides a comprehensive academic review of a wide spectrum of issues, methods, and theoretical approaches. It aims to bridge theory and practice in the fields of architectural/design research and urban planning/built environment studies, reporting on the latest research findings and innovative approaches for creating responsive environments.

Archnet-IJAR is indexed and listed in several scientific and research databases, including Avery index to Architectural Periodicals, EBSCO-Current Abstracts-Art and Architecture, INTUTE, Directory of Open Access Journals, Pro-Quest, Scopus-Elsevier and many university library databases. The journal is archived, in its entirety, in Archnet, the most comprehensive online community for architects, planners, urban designers, interior designers, landscape architects, and scholars working in these fields, developed by the Aga Khan Documentation Center at MIT and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network.

To submit articles for future issues of IJAR, visit the online submission page.

Adventurer in Light and Color: Stained glass exhibit

By mit-admin on May 6, 2014

Stop by the Jackson Homestead in Historic Newton before the end of July to catch the “Charles J. Connick: Adventurer in Light and Color” exhibition. It features drawings, photos, studies, and stained glass works by Charles J. Connick a prominent stained glass artist from Newton, Massachusetts. Included in the exhibit are several reproductions of drawings held by MIT Libraries as well as a stained glass window (Sir Bors Succours the Maid) from the Libraries’ collections. For more information about the Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation Collection held at MIT, visit our Special Collections page or watch the video at TechTV.

Design inspired by E. Dickinson poem “There is no Frigate Like a Book.”

The exhibition features the cartoon, or full-size study for a work in another medium, shown here. This design was executed in pencil and gouache and later realized in stained glass in 1939 for the Newtonville Public Library, which is now the Newton Senior Center. The work was inspired by the Emily Dickinson poem, “There is no Frigate Like a Book.” For more information about this image, please visit the Charles J. Connick image collection in Dome.

For more about the work of Charles J. Connick and his studio, visit the Charles J. Connick Stained Glass Foundation website and the Boston Public Library’s Charles J. Connick Gouaches: Massachusetts Flickr collection.

The following details were captured when the cartoon was in the Wunsch Conservation Lab for examination.

This post was researched written with Lorrie McAllister, Digital and Special Collections Strategist.

Connick’s initials “CJC” and date 1939.

This detail reveals underdrawing in pencil.

White drips of paint may suggest that Connick worked some areas upright.

This detail shows the painterly quality of the work.