This interview was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "MIT on the Frontier: An Interview with Hashim Sarkis."

Brussels Foodmet. A large, mixed-use market building in the immigrant neighborhood of Anderlect, Belgium by ORG Permanent Modernity. The ORG project team includes MIT professor and ORG partner, Alexander D?Hooghe, and MIT alumnus Kobi Rutherberg. Image Courtesy of Filip Dujardin

This interview was originally published by Metropolis Magazine as "MIT on the Frontier: An Interview with Hashim Sarkis."At this year's Biennale, "Reporting from the Front," MIT will have an unusually widespread presence. Ten full-time and visiting faculty, six alumni, and a handful of other MIT-affiliates (many invited by curator Alejandro Aravena himself) will contribute to over 15 installations, including "Rwanda Droneport," a full-scale earthen masonry shell designed by Norman Foster, which will serve as a small airport for drones delivering supplies to inaccessible areas of Rwanda, and "Courtyard House Plug-In," a prefabricated building system designed to be inserted into Beijing's dilapidated courtyard houses. To discuss MIT's significance on the architectural stage today, we spoke with the Dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, Hashim Sarkis, who, it was recently announced, will also serve on the Biennale jury.
Hashim Sarkis, Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning. Also ...