In 2006 we launched the Research Centre ®MIT (Modification, Intervention Transformation) at the Faculty of Architecture at Delft University of Technology. ®MIT was founded to respond to the need for an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to the transformation of the built environment. ®MIT aims to bring momentum to the renewal of education and research and sees improved relations between the scientific and the professional community as a key step in this process. The ®MIT research programme stands at the epicentre of the current debate on continuity and change in architecture and construction. The conservation and transformation of existing objects is becoming more and more of a necessity, with social, economic and cultural implications.
Historical awareness is one of the distinguishing features of ®MIT. A crucial role is played by the way in which people relate to history. It is essential in transformation projects – regardless of whether buildings, building ensembles or urban terrain are involved – to carry out (design) research which recognises the historical development. After all, each (design) intervention in existing constructions constitutes a further step in development. The change is geared to continuity. Inventories and analyses give the parties in the transformation project (owners, designers, developers and policy-makers) insight into the history and the successive developmental phases of the object or ensemble. This set of facts forms the backdrop for each new development. An analysis of this backdrop gives shape and direction to the intervention.
®MIT was founded to respond to the need for an integrated, multi-disciplinary approach to the transformation of the built environment. ®MIT aims to bring momentum to the renewal of education and research and sees improved relations between the scientific and the professional community as a key step in this process. A support base is needed inside and outside the university if the founders are to achieve their ambition to position ®MIT as a network organisation.
The ®MIT research agenda has been compiled with a view to better coordination between supply and demand in the scientific knowledge of modification, intervention and transformation in the built environment. A study has been conducted which formed the basis for an inventory of the societal demand for scientific knowledge in the various domains and of ways in which it could be satisfied by the research centre in association with various networks in the Netherlands and abroad.
®MIT started to renew the education program. It is time to think about how to become a real ®MIT-Architect. The focus will be on an entire program were construction, environment, urbanism, interior and architecture are integrated. Starting point will always be the context of the existing build environment. 60% of the architects commissions are about re-use, re-development, re-generation, etc. of existing building.
Research topics, generated by the society, have been and will be worked out by students. ®MIT builds the bridge successfully between the profession, the society, education and research.