Kent Larson
NFI Co-Director
Member of the Advisory Board, Norman Foster Foundation, Madrid, Spain; Director, City Science Group, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, United States
Director, City Science Research Group, MIT Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, United States
Kent Larson is director of the City Science research group at the MIT Media Lab, with research focused on compact transformable housing, ultralight autonomous mobility systems, sensing and algorithms to recognise and respond to complex human behaviour, and advanced modelling, simulation and tangible interfaces for urban design.
He has established an international network of affiliated City Science Labs in Shanghai, Taipei, Ho Chi Minh City, Toronto, Hamburg, Andorra and Guadalajara. He received a 10-Year Impact Award from Ubicomp in 2017 and 2019 for recognition of work that has had the greatest impact, proven by the test of time.
Larson’s book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks (Monacelli Press, 2000), was selected as one of the ten best books in architecture by the New York Times Book Review in 2000. He has founded or co-founded multiple MIT spinoff companies including ORI Living, an architectural robotics company creating systems for dynamically reconfigurable environments.
