ACT Featured in MIT News’ Summer 2021 Reading List

MIT News recently published a summer reading compilation of works written and/or edited by faculty and staff at MIT that was published during the previous academic year.

Of the 46 books selected, 3 are from ACT and 15 are from the larger SA+P community.

Representing ACT are:

“Camino Road” (Primary Information, 2021)
By Renée Green, professor of architecture, Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT

Green’s debut novel is an homage to (and parody of) the historically male-dominated genre of the road novel. Set between the late 1970s and early 1980s, and combining the genres of road novel, countercultural memoir, travel journal, epistolary novel, and screenplay, it is the record of the mind of a young woman coming of age as an artist, traveling in Mexico, and exploring the bohemian milieu of 1980s New York.

“Dance, Architecture and Engineering (Dance in Dialogue)” (Bloomsbury, 2021)
By Adesola Akinleye, research affiliate in the Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT and a CAST Visiting Artist

Generated from a year of exchanges of movement ideas in cross-practice conversations and workshops with dancers, musicians, architects, and engineers, Akinleye engages with dance’s offer of perspectives on being in place. Themes addressed include how dance and city-making cultures engage with female bodies and non-white bodies in today’s era of #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter.

“Architecture of Coexistence: Building Pluralism” (Architangle, 2020)
Edited by Azra Aksamija, associate professor of architecture, Art, Culture, and Technology program at MIT

This book investigates how architecture can shape an open-minded and inclusive society, highlighting three internationally renowned projects: the White Mosque in Visoko, Bosnia-Herzegovina (1980); the Islamic Cemetery in Altach, Austria (2012); and Superkilen park in Copenhagen, Denmark (2011). Essays and interviews provide intriguing insights into architecture’s ability to bridge cultural divides.