Building Technology

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http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2008/macarthur-0923.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/23/arts/23fell.html?_r=1&ref=arts

Excerpt from MIT Web article:

Two MIT faculty win MacArthur ‘genius’ grants

Winners each get $500,000 in unrestricted funds

Anne Trafton, News Office
September 23, 2008

Two MIT faculty members — a physicist and a structural engineer who studies architectural history — have won 2008 MacArthur Fellowships, commonly known as “genius” grants.

Marin Soljacic ‘96, assistant professor of physics, and John Ochsendorf, associate professor of architecture, will each receive $500,000 in “no strings attached” support over five years from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

The foundation today named 25 new fellows who were selected for “their creativity, originality and potential to make important contributions in the future.”

Ochsendorf, 34, said he has been “walking on air” since getting the news last week. “It was like a lightening bolt out of the sky,” he said. “I kept saying, ‘It’s not possible, it’s just not possible.’”

Ochsendorf, who has been at MIT since 2002, studies building technology, evaluating the soundness of historical structures with an eye toward identifying ancient technologies for use in modern buildings.

His early studies investigated the construction of hand-woven, fiber-suspension bridges that spanned deep ravines in the Inca Empire. More recently, he has turned his attention to the causes of vault and buttress failures in French and Spanish Romanesque churches.

He and a group of students recently designed England’s Pines Calyx dome, an energy-efficient structure built from local resources using a tile vaulting system patented in the 19th century by Spanish architect Rafael Guastavino.

“In the 21st century, as we’re faced with climate change and diminishing natural resources, our buildings may look more like buildings from the past,” Ochsendorf said.

Ochsendorf said that of the five universities where he has studied and taught, MIT is the only one where his current work would be possible. “I never found a university where I could do such interdisciplinary work so easily,” he said. “At MIT it’s not the exception but the norm.”

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