Kent Larson directs the City Science Initiative and the Changing Places Group at the MIT Media Laboratory, with research focused on strategies to enable high-performance, entrepreneurial, creative communities. 

Projects include advanced simulation and augmented reality for urban design, transformable urban housing to increase diversity and improve space utilization, mobility-on-demand systems and new vehicles as alternatives to the private automobile, and urban agriculture technology to efficiently produce food near the point of consumption.  

 Larson and researchers from his group received the “10-Year Impact Award” from Ubicomp 2014: a “test of time” award for work that, with the benefit of that hindsight, has had the greatest impact. 

Larson practiced architecture for 15 years in New York City, with design work published in Architectural Record, Progressive Architecture, Global Architecture, the New York Times, A+U, and Architectural Digest.

His book, Louis I. Kahn: Unbuilt Masterworks was selected as one of the Ten Best Books in Architecture of the year by the New York Times Review of Books.