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Artist Janet Echelman will discuss her new book, Radical Softness: The Responsive Art of Janet Echelman, in a conversation with art historian Gloria Sutton and John Ochsendorf, MIT professor and structural engineer. Together, they'll explore the intersections of art, architecture, and responsive design in the urban landscape.The MIT Museum's newest exhibition Remembering the Future (coming soon), is the culmination of the book's narrative which spans the past twenty-five years of Janet Echelman's monumentally scaled public sculptures using unlikely materials, from atomized water particles to engineered fiber fifteen times stronger than steel. She weaves ancient craft and computational modeling software into an utterly unique art form.
Radical Softness is a comprehensive sourcebook that unpacks Echelman's vital practice and her ongoing commitment to Taking Imagination Seriously, the title of her TED Talk which has been translated into thirty-five languages and has more than two million views. It features mesmerizing color photographs, a foreword by fellow creative Swizz Beatz, and contributions from a diverse range of internationally recognized scholars, engineers, designers, architects, and curators contextualizing the interdisciplinary impact of Echelman within the fields of global art history, architecture, computation, and landscape architecture.
Copies of Radical Softness will be available for purchase and signing after the talk, courtesy of the MIT Press Bookstore.
October 15, 2025
6-7pm, followed by a book signing
$5
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Event Venue & Nearby Stays
MIT Museum, 314 Main Street, Gambrill Center,Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States
Tickets
