Kent Larson

Kent Larson is an architect, entrepreneur, and Director of City Science at the MIT Media Lab, with research focused on compact transformable housing, ultralight autonomous mobility systems, sensing and algorithms to recognize and respond to complex human behavior, and advanced modeling, 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 10-Year Impact Awards from Ubicomp in 2017 and 2019 for recognition of work that, with the test of time, has had the greatest impact. Larson’s book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks, was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture 2000 by the New York Times Review of Books. He has co-founded and advises multiple MIT spinoff companies including ORI Living, an architectural robotics company creating systems for dynamically reconfigurable environments. He serves on the advisory board of the Norman Foster Foundation.