On June 3, 2019, the MIT School of Architecture and Planning’s DesignX venture accelerator program held its first event on the West Coast – MITdesignX Innovation in Housing: San Francisco Workshop, in the downtown San Francisco office of Gensler, a distinguished global architecture, design, and planning firm recently recognized as one of the “Most Innovative Companies 2018”.
More than 50 alumni and guests joined Professor Dennis Frenchman, founder and Faculty Director, MITdesignX, and Director, MIT Center for Real Estate, and Gilad Rosenzweig, Executive Director, MITdesignX, for an evening that included presentations and an interactive workshop. MITArchA Vice President of Programs, Pamela Tang M.Arch ’83, SM Civil Eng. ’85, worked closely with Gilad and Elizabeth (Libby) Seifel SB ’78, MCP ’79, Chair, ULI’s Housing the Bay Summit 2019, to invite alumni and friends from key leadership positions in public and private organizations to channel the conversation on housing that is of vital interest to Bay Area communities to ‘co-create challenges for students back in Cambridge’.
The workshop format was introduced in San Francisco to facilitate the brainstorming and development of new ideas that can evolve into new ventures. To set the stage, Gilad introduced MITdesignX and promoted the need to nurture innovative approaches to solve the pressing problems in housing. Two MITdesignX ventures – Frolic, providing Revolutionary New Financing Model for Homeownership, presented by co-founder Tamara Knox MCP ’19 and Airworks, providing Aerial Intelligence for Construction, presented by co-founder David Morczinek MBA ’18 – energized the room and sparked the discourse among the thoughtfully composed interdisciplinary teams of local professionals and thought leaders.
Recorded presentations from the workshop and important links and articles can be viewed at http://designx.mit.edu/housing