Field Trip: Studio Visit with Matter Design @ MIT Met Warehouse x Misstropolis

Discover how Matter Design bridges architecture, robotics, and ancient construction methods to reframe the built environment. Join CoDesign Collaborative for an exclusive studio visit at MIT’s Met Warehouse, curated by Misstropolis.

Walking Assembly. Image © Matter Design

Join CoDesign Collaborative on October 13, from 12-1pm for a private studio visit with Matter Design at MIT’s newly opened Metropolitan Storage Warehouse (Met Warehouse), transformed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro.

Working across architecture, robotics, product design, and visual arts, Matter Design offers a radically sustainable approach to contemporary construction, collaborating closely with material scientists, archaeologists, and artists to address the full lifespan of materials from extraction to disassembly. Curated by Misstropolis, as part of a new series of Field Trips, our visit will center on Matter Design’s research, built installations, and reframing of the built environment as an evolving process.

Learn about Matter Design’s long-view philosophy, drawing on prehistoric construction methods and speculative futures to challenge short-sighted mandates. Hear about Walking Assembly, their project that adopted the way prehistoric builders moved megaliths without cranes or wheels, and The Cannibal’s Cookbook, their recipe manual for ways to take the rubble of buildings that came before and use it to build what comes next.

MIT’s Metropolitan Storage Warehouse is the 1895 brick fortress on Vassar Street that Diller Scofidio + Renfro has just reopened as the new home of MIT’s design programs. Most people have only seen it from the outside. This visit puts you inside with a small group of like-minded professionals.

Special thanks to Director Brandon Clifford and Partner Jo Lobdell for opening their space and work to the CoDeCo community.

Field Trips are a benefit of membership in the Design Impact Society and Corporate Membership. General Members (Individual+) register at a discounted rate ($15/person). Not-yet-Members can reserve tickets for $25/person. Please email membership@codesigncollaborative.org for help with registration.

About Misstropolis & Robin Hauck
Misstropolis is an online contemporary arts platform covering arts, culture, and ideas. Robin Hauck is a writer, curator, and advocate for the arts, especially in her home city of Boston. Robin founded Misstropolis to bring people together around contemporary art, and to champion work by pioneering female artists.

She received her Master’s in Comparative Media Studies from MIT and her Bachelor’s in English and Creative Writing from Denison University. She sits on the Advisory Board of the ICA/Boston and VIA Art Fund, and travels extensively to learn about art in diverse contexts. She is Secretary of the Board of Directors of Boston Art Review and participates in local advocacy around family homelessness as a member of the Advisory Council of Horizons for Homeless Children. Misstropolis has been featured in WBUR, The Arts Fuse, the Boston Globe, and by the Massachusetts chapter of the National Museum of Women in the Arts.