Kent Larson

Who is Kent Larson?

Kent Larson is Director of the Changing Places research group and co-directs the City Science Initiative at the MIT Media Lab. His recent work has focused on four areas:

Responsive Housing. Larson’s research group is developing strategies to create high-performance, technology-enabled personalized, places of living that respond to an aging population and new ways of living and working. In this approach, buildings are disentangled into four independently configured layers: high performance chassis, integrated infill, agile technology, and responsive façade modules. These concepts are being deployed in the CityHome: a compact, transformable apartment for urban dwellers that functions as if a much larger space.

Urban Mobility-on-Demand. Upon the 2010 death of William J. Mitchell, former Dean of the MIT School of Architecture and Planning, Larson's group continued work on the MIT CityCar and developed concepts for shared-use light electric vehicles and intelligent fleet management to provide high-levels of service through sensor networks, dynamic incentives, and intelligent charging. The group worked with automotive suppliers in Spain to develop a commercial version of the MIT CityCar called Hiriko: a folding two-passenger vehicle with robot wheels and drive-by-wire control for urban mobility and highly efficient parking.