The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is building an array of remarkable new facilities designed by some of the most distinguished architects in the world. The construction now underway will add up to something much greater than the sum of its parts-a vibrant, newly energized residential community. As critic Robert Campbell summed it up in The Boston Globe, “MIT is, quite simply, being remade as a campus.”

The Institute’s approach to campus planning and construction reflects a deep institutional commitment to excellence in design-built on strong relationships with outstanding architects, nurtured through highly collaborative design processes, and expressed in outstanding construction techniques. As MIT President Emeritus Charles M. Vest has said, “We have enlisted some of the world’s best architects to help us realize our goals. The bold individuality of the architecture will come as a shock to those with conventional ideas about the way a college campus should look. But I believe that the buildings on this extraordinary campus should be as diverse, innovative and audacious as the community they support. They should stand as a metaphor for the ingenuity at work inside them.”

History

Physically as well as intellectually, campuses evolve by a combination of planning and opportunity, probably in roughly equal measure. The development of MIT‘s campus since its move to Cambridge in 1916 has been dominated by two trends-waves of new construction approximately once every generation; and slow, steady evolution as a residential campus. There have been at least two great periods in the past when the design of the Institute’s facilities, buildings, landscape and services reflected the highest aspirations and values of its community of thinkers, teachers, students and graduates. These moments created excellent environments for work and reflection-dignified and efficient, robust and humane.

In the first period, with the construction of the many buildings designed by Welles Bosworth, MIT established an imposing physical presence that anchored the Institute’s identity through the establishment of “a great white city on the river,” in the words of President Richard Cockburn Maclaurin. These handsome buildings combine Beaux-Arts planning principles and neoclassical detail with rugged adaptability: they have served generations of teachers, students and researchers, their laboratories and classrooms accommodating changing uses with surprising ease.

A second series of remarkable buildings was produced after World War II, when MIT brought a group of outstanding designers to campus, including Alvar Aalto, Gordon Bunshaft, I. M. Pei and Eero Saarinen. (Both Bunshaft and Pei were MIT alumni.) The buildings they designed, such as Aalto’s Baker House and Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel, have become landmarks not only for the MIT campus but in American architectural history.

The Current Architectural Metamorphosis

Today, MIT is in another such vigorous period, with a considerable group of vital and brilliant structures just completed, in construction and on the boards. Professor William J. Mitchell, who served as Architectural Adviser to former President Vest, has said, “We must take this chance to create great spaces where wonderful things can happen.” Distinguished architects have been engaged to provide a group of adventurous new facilities, which will catalyze development around and between them, reinventing MIT to capture the spirit of this exciting era in science and technology. New facilities are strengthening residential and community life on the west campus (across Massachusetts Avenue from the original campus), while new academic facilities strengthen the presence of teaching and research along Main Street, which has traditionally divided MIT from East Cambridge.

The Institute is also engaged in a major effort to ensure that its great historic structures meet the challenges of new ways of teaching and learning. This entails substantial renovation projects and a major commitment to infrastructure renewal. In its major renovation projects, MIT seeks to accommodate new uses and technologies while preserving its unique architectural heritage. The Institute has taken a leading role in preserving the design legacy of modernist landmarks while ensuring that they meet today’s educational and technological demands. It is also developing a comprehensive approach to the future uses of the Beaux-Arts buildings constructed when MIT moved from Boston to Cambridge in 1916.

In 1998, a Presidential Task Force for Student Life and Learning stressed the need for more communal spaces on campus, and the design of buildings that would foster a more interactive learning community. As former Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education Rosalind Williams noted, “A sense of place is crucially important in the age of ‘information at a distance.’ Our students need places to gather, places to relax with one another, places to study in comfort and places to amuse themselves.” MIT‘s current building program includes a number of important facilities for campus residential life, while the design of academic facilities has also placed a great emphasis on student needs and environment.

As the current building program was taking shape, an intensive four-day workshop with participants including Charles Correa, Harry Ellenzweig, Frank Gehry, Steven Holl, Fumihiko Maki and Laurie Olin, helped shape a vision for the future of the campus. This planning charrette allowed the designers of important new facilities to conceptualize the entire campus and understand the relationships between the many significant projects ahead.

Bringing the new buildings into a coherent landscape fabric that will unify the campus and integrate its many components is a major priority. The framework for campus development established by The Olin Partnership provides for new pedestrian circulation routes, the redevelopment of Vassar Street and the creation of new commons facilities that will bring together the various constituents of the MIT community.

Modernism on the West Campus

Many of the Institute’s facilities for residential and community life cluster on the west side of campus. When MIT first developed this area as a residential campus after World War II, it commissioned a group of remarkable modernist buildings, including landmarks by Alvar Aalto and Eero Saarinen.

Half a century old, the modernist structures that set the tone for the west campus now require comprehensive modernization, and MIT has responded with a commitment to secure this exceptional architectural heritage for the future. Aalto’s Baker House, famous for an ingenious wave plan that maximizes the number of rooms with southern exposure, has been renovated by Perry Dean Rogers & Partners, associate architects for the original construction. The project carefully balanced the integrity of Aalto’s design with functional upgrades. Even Aalto’s birch furnishings have been restored or replaced with careful reproductions.

Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium and MIT Chapel were both recognized as masterpieces upon completion. Kresge, whose three-cornered dome floats free of the brick base of the building it protects, was an act of structural daring that led Architectural Forum to predict that “American architecture and building are not likely to be the same.” In contrast, with the moated, windowless brick cylinder of the Chapel, Saarinen sought and achieved a sense of “spiritual unworldliness.” Kevin Roche, John Dinkeloo and Associates have directed meticulous renovations of both structures, preserving the architect’s original designs while upgrading the buildings’ systems and materials.

Residential and Campus Life

The works of Aalto and Saarinen sets a very high standard, but two new projects in the same area-Simmons Hall, an undergraduate residence, and the Al and Barrie Zesiger Sports and Fitness Center, both dedicated in October 2002-demonstrate a comparable intellectual rigor and sense of place.

Designed by Steven Holl Architects, Simmons Hall was envisioned as a vertical slice of city life. Although ten stories tall and 385 feet long, it keeps the Vassar Street corridor visually permeable through openings at multiple scales. Although the grid of anodized aluminum covering the building’s precast panels gives it a silver appearance head-on, at an angle it reveals vivid, unexpected color, in the jambs of many of its more than 5500 windows. Simmons Hall has received numerous major awards for design, including most notably the 2003 Honor Award for Architecture of the American Institute of Architects, whose jury found it “a project of enormous power” that “locates architecture within the realm of the intellectual pursuit.” Perry Dean Rogers | Partners Architects were associate architects on the project.

Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates designed the Zesiger Center to link a number of existing athletics facilities. By visually connecting the south facades of the Howard W. Johnson Athletics Center and the Stratton Student Center, it completes the north wall of a quadrangle envisioned by Saarinen in his plan for the development west of Massachusetts Avenue; and in so doing, it provides a fitting backdrop for Kresge Auditorium. A curved glass wall that matches the height of the Johnson and Stratton buildings develops a sense of continuity, while its transparency, especially at night, reveals the activity inside. Sakaski Associates Inc. were executive architects for the Zesiger Center.

Simmons Hall and the Zesiger Center are the most striking manifestations of MIT‘s commitment to enhancing residential campus life, but a number of other new projects are also advancing this institutional agenda. Two additional residence halls, both north of Simmons Hall in the formerly industrial neighborhood between the original MIT campus and Central Square, have opened in the past two years. At 224 Albany Street, the S/L/A/M Collaborative has renovated for graduate housing a warehouse built in 1890; a new residence at 70 Pacific Street, designed by Steffian Bradley Associates, takes its architectural cues from the brick factory buildings around it. Nearby, MIT faculty member Wellington Reiter has given the MIT Museum a new facade treatment that livens up an old industrial building without denying its essential nature.

Academics and Research

New academic construction is transforming the areas to the north and east of the main campus along Main Street and on either side of Vassar Street. These projects are designed to support the state-of-the-art research that has made MIT one of the most important forces in modern science and technology. The first major project to be completed in this area is Frank Gehry’s Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences, which was inspired by the structure it replaces: MIT‘s legendary Building 20. Writing in The Boston Globe, Robert Campbell has called the Stata Center, “a work of architecture that embodies serious thinking about how people live and work, and at the same time shouts the joy of invention.”

The new Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex opens in December 2005. This bold and elegant facility - the result of a collaboration between two firms - reflects the extraordinary vision of the lead designer, Charles Correa, and the exceptional design of the laboratories and research spaces by Goody, Clancy and Associates. A model for the way disciplines will intersect on the emerging scientific frontier, it promises to become the world’s leading center for brain research, integrating the study of neuroscience, cognitive science, imaging technology, genetic science, and molecular and cellular biology. The project will also establish MIT‘s academic presence on Main Street on the northern side of the campus.

The Institute is also planning new facilities for academics and research for the east side of the campus. Design architect Fumihiko Maki and executive architects Leers Weinzapfel Associates have taken on the challenge of expanding the Wiesner Building (I.M. Pei and Partners, 1985), which houses MIT‘s legendary Media Lab and the List Visual Arts Center. The design for the expansion, which was included in a major traveling exhibition of Fumihiko Maki’s work co-sponsored by the Royal Institute of British Architects and London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, will support the idea-making for which the Media Lab has become famous.

Renovating Existing Facilities

MIT has set the same standard of excellence in renovations of its academic and research facilities as it has with Baker House, Kresge and the MIT Chapel. A comprehensive revitalization by Goody, Clancy & Associates has updated I. M. Pei’s Dreyfus Building, which houses the Department of Chemistry, with advanced research labs, enhanced safety and environmental systems, and a flexible space format that will allow for reconfiguration as needs evolve. The renovation has given the building a more open plan and increased natural light in the labs. To preserve the integrity of the building, the architects have worked with Pei’s office on such alterations to the facade as the addition of energy-efficient windows. R&D Magazine named the recently completed project the renovated laboratory of the year.

The recent restoration of the Massachusetts Avenue entrance to the campus, by Einhorn Yaffee Prescott Architecture & Engineering, P.C., has heightened appreciation for the great beauty of the interconnected Beaux-Arts buildings at the heart of the campus, which were recently the subject of a comprehensive assessment by Payette Associates and Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc. Renovation of offices and laboratories for the departments of Physics and of Materials Science and Engineering, designed by Payette Associates, will launch a long-term effort to restore and revitalize this historic complex.

A Collaborative Process

A campus transformation of this magnitude cannot take place in institutional isolation. The Institute is proud of its collaborative working relationships with the City of Cambridge, other local authorities and the Cambridge Historical Commission. And MIT recognizes its civic responsibility to educate the broader public about important design issues. The School of Architecture and Planning has been engaged in a major collaboration with the Boston Globe, the Boston Society of Architects and the Boston Society of Landscape Architects to raise the level of civic dialogue about the future of Boston after the Big Dig.

MIT is now building some of the most exciting projects in the country and helping to preserve significant examples of our architectural heritage. But the importance of its approach to campus planning and construction goes beyond any individual project, no matter how innovative, beautiful or historic. By demonstrating so persuasively the role that outstanding design can play in the pursuit of intellectual and community goals, the Institute has significantly advanced architecture and urban design.

Source:http://web.mit.edu/evolving/about/overview.html

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