William J. Mitchell, the former dean of MIT's School of Architecture and Planning, who pioneered urban designs for networked, smart cities and helped oversee an ambitious building program that transformed MIT's physical campus, died on June 11 after a long battle with cancer. He was 65.
Mitchell, considered one of the world's leading urban theorists, led programs that developed the CityCar, a light-weight, electric, shared vehicle that folds and stacks like supermarket shopping carts. A prolific author, his most recent co-authored book was Reinventing the Automobile.
As dean of architecture and planning, he championed the importance of the visual arts to MIT and recruited young, innovative faculty members. As a professor in the MIT Media Lab, Mitchell explored the new forms and functions of cities in the digital era. He was particularly interested in the relationship between real space, virtual space, and human communities. Read more about Bill Mitchell.
A memorial service will be held at the new MIT Media Lab Complex, 75 Amherst Street, Cambridge, MA, on Wednesday, June 16, at 10 a.m.
Did you take a course or do research with Bill? What was that experience like?
Comments
Nancy DuVergne Smith
Wed, 06/16/2010 10:48am
The Media Lab is hosting a memorial page for Bill--you can leave comments and photos there:
http://www.media.mit.edu/people/remembering-bill-mitchell
Scientella
Tue, 06/15/2010 2:02pm
Rest in peace Bill. You were a positive force.
patricia Bourque
Tue, 06/15/2010 12:25pm
After 30 + years of practice, Bill Mitchell's books kept me wide eyed and unwilling to become cynical, or worse, saddened by the sense it might be impossible to communicate the complexity of architecture and practice, to clients, least of all, ourselves. I learned more about the man, born in a self-described 'flyspeck' of a place, that from a great distance the chance to see the complexity necessary to start to simplify. Bill Mitchell's books, all of them, constitute the ultimate library of the autodidact architect-long may they rein!