On a crisp afternoon in early September, seven MIT freshmen set out on a campus tour with their faculty advisor, John Ochsendorf, the Class of 1942 Professor in Architecture and Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering. Their first stop was “The Big Sail,” the 33-ton steel sculpture by Alexander Calder that stands in McDermott Court.
“We tend to think of art, architecture, and engineering as separate disciplines,” says Ochsendorf, who taught the first edition of freshmen seminar 4.A06 (Art, Engineering, and Architecture) this fall. “But they are more closely linked than we can ever imagine. And the barriers between them are extremely porous. Calder, for example, is one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. But his mobiles and sculptures are also explorations in equilibrium. And while he’s definitely an artist, he was trained as an engineer.”
Ochsendorf’s weekly two-hour seminar was conceived to help students explore the fertile intersections of art,...
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