The MIT Office of Sustainability (MITOS) utilizes MIT itself as a test bed and incubator for sustainability in an effort to transform the campus into a powerful model that generates new and proven ways of responding to the challenges of our changing planet. While MITOS is a separate office, it is a close partner in mission and action to the Climate Project.
By leveraging the campus as a test bed for sustainability, faculty, staff, students and researchers alike are able to grapple with sustainability challenges at the local level as they seek to solve for them globally. And MITOS staff provide access and insight to these everyday challenges in the process.
MIT has embraced this unique place-based research platform as a platform for sustainability innovation and the co-production of knowledge. The "living lab" concept may be thought of as a variant of the experiential learning model that involves concrete experience followed by observation, reflection and the formation of new concepts and testing in new situations.