Co-directed by Professor Sheila Kennedy and Caitlin Mueller, the ODDS & MODS curriculum engages projective design, critical thinking, computation, and machine learning to create new possibilities for architectural materiality. Material use in ‘MODS’ and ‘ODDS’ represent two aspects of the same problem. The material use, waste, and carbon in ‘MODS’— modular, standardized architectural material and components — must be reduced, while the use of ‘ODDS’ — natural, renewable materials that sequester carbon and vary in geometric form — must be expanded. Innovation in ‘MODS’ will enable the radical rethinking and reduction of waste and carbon in modular building components, such as floorslabs, panels, beams and unit blocks. Innovation in ‘ODDS’ will expand uses in architecture for minimally processed natural materials that sequester carbon, as well as for irregular, ‘broken’ and ‘subaltern’ materials harvested from industrial waste streams.
ODDS & MODS responds to the challenges and opportunities of geometric complexity and material standardization that are often overlooked in current conversations on Material Circularity. The creation of technical and design strategies for ODDS & MODS is key to advance the scale up of circular approaches to architectural design and construction.
The ODDS & MODS curriculum of seminar, workshop and studio courses, together with ongoing work on the climate crisis at MIT, will enable a new stream of integrated material research, design and fabrication activities centered around the creation of attainable, scalable and ecologically responsible architectural materials, components and building systems.
The experimental project-based pedagogy of ODDS & MODS is driven by the concept of radical plausibility. This concept encourages radical ideas for needed change in design and construction practices. It is grounded in the needs of a specific material, community and the transformation of an existing manufacturing or fabrication process.
ODDS& MODS encourages a culture of transformative design research through the design and demonstration of scalable techniques and conceptual principles for community-based material circularity. These demonstration prototypes, created by MIT students in engineering and design, will benefit people in underserved northeast communities who are especially vulnerable to climate crisis. This work will also be relevant for many global communities, public agencies and industry leaders that seek to implement circular material strategies in attainable architecture at scale.
While decarbonization is often approached as a purely technical question, decision-making frameworks in the discipline of architecture are deeply rooted in histories of colonization, material culture and power. ODDS & MODS expands the project of architecture to include the design of the built object as well as the design of materials and energetic processes that proceed it, constitute it and follow it at end of life—opening a wider range of material choices, decarbonization practices and possible pathways to the decolonization of building materials. The cross disciplinary project of ODDS & MODS embraces a diverse range of skills, life experiences, and interests. It is at once a critical project of material and cultural history, a set of focused technical inquiries, and a projective project of the architectural imagination. Please join this initiative to envision and realize collaborative, caring and impactful approaches toward the systemic reduction of material use, waste and carbon in architecture.
Professor
Professor
SMArchS AD Student, Teaching Assistant
SMArchS Computation & S.M. CEE Student, Teaching Assistant
MArch Graduate, Teaching Fellow
SMArchS BT Student, Research Fellow
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