Lecture: Kent Larson ‘Changing Places: Responsive housing, mobility systems, and networked intelligence for future cities’

Special Public Lecture

Changing Places: Responsive housing, mobility systems, and networked intelligence for future cities

Professor Kent Larson

To meet the profound sustainability, demographic, and health challenges of the future, new strategies must be found for creating responsive places where people live and work, and the mobility systems that connect them.

Professor Kent Larson will present the work of his MIT Media Lab research group to explore the intersection of high-performance housing with urban mobility-on-demand systems, including persuasive electric bike-lane vehicles to encourage exercise, the transformable live-work “CityHome” that functions as if it were much larger, and autonomous parking/charging technology. He will also review the group’s “Living Lab” experiments to better understand and respond to human activity in natural environments including sensing, algorithms, and interfaces for proactive health and energy conservation.

Professor Larson brings his insights as an architect, researcher and academic at the renowned MIT Media Lab to this lecture. The MIT Media Lab applies an unorthodox research approach to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life. Professor Larson’s current research is focused on three related areas: Responsive Urban Housing; Ubiquitous Technologies; Living Lab Experiments.

Professor Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with work published in Architectural RecordProgressive Architecture, Global ArchitectureThe New York TimesA+U, and Architectural Digest.  His book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture, 2000 by the New York Times Review of Books.  Related work was selected by Time magazine as a “Best Design of the Year” project.

The lecture is presented by the City of Melbourne (Melbourne Boston Sister Cities), The University of Melbourne and International Specialised Skills Institute. Professor Larson is the City of Melbourne Boston International Fellow and recipient, University of Melbourne William J Mitchell Professorship.

There will be a reception in the Wunderlich Gallery following the lecture

Date: Friday 22 July 2011, 6.15pm-7.15pm
Venue: Prince Philip Theatre, Ground Floor, Architecture Building, The University of Melbourne

Please register at: www.msd.unimelb.edu.au/events/special-lectures/kent-larson.html

Exhibition:
An exhibition of selected projects by Kent Larson and MIT Media Lab Research Group will be on display in the Wunderlich Gallery, 11-22 July.

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