The first MIT Media Lab Summit devoted to design, Knotty Objects will gather designers, scientists, engineers, makers, writers, curators, and scholars around the discussion of four complex and omnipresent objects, along with the rich stories they can tell. The objects–brick, bitcoin, steak, and phone–will become lenses through which we examine the transdisciplinary nature of contemporary design.The MIT Media Lab’s antidisciplinary approach to research positions it to interrogate design and technology’s relationship: the tensions; their affinities and entanglements; their closeness and distance. Together, the event’s speakers will tackle concepts and products; prototypes and series; manufacturing and construction methods and their relationship with tradition and material culture; designing with bricks, circuits, and cells; and imagining a future that is based on science and fueled by design.