Campus buildings and architecture

Prof. Behnaz Farahi speaks with GBH’s The Culture Show host Jared Bowen about her new eye-catching work “Gaze to the Stars,” an exhibit that will transform the MIT Dome into a living canvas, showcasing video projections of eyes gazing at the stars, as part of the Artfinity art festival. “We are very excited about the possibility of bringing the community at MIT together and the question was how the community, MIT and beyond, can get the sense of community, the sense of unity, the sense of connectedness,” says Farahi on the inspiration behind her work.

As part of MIT’s Artfinity festival - a new festival of the arts at MIT featuring 80 free performing and visual arts events, celebrating creativity and community – this month’s After Dark event on Thursday, March 13^th at the MIT Museum will be free and open to the public, reports Marianna Orozco for The Boston Globe. Attendees will be able to enjoy “a night of activities, including a ‘Flash Portrait’ drawing and textile design, as well as live DJ sets, open exhibits by faculty, and a talk from Behnaz Farahi, the interdisciplinary designer behind ‘Gaze to the Stars,’ which has brought the MIT dome to life,” explains Orozco. 

The nondenominational MIT Chapel was named by Financial Times readers as one of the best places of worship in the world. “The Eero Saarinen-designed chapel at MIT is otherworldly,” they write. “This is what spiritual contemplation probably looks like in another galaxy.” 

MIT’s Artfinity festival kicked off with a performance of “SONIC JUBILANCE” at the newly opened Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, reports Maddie Browning for WBUR. The campus-wide festival, which runs through May 2, is open to the public and features student, faculty and staff participation in “concerts, augmented reality experiences, exhibitions, films and more,” writes Browning. Artfinity is an opportunity "to show that the arts are very important and very central to the lives of people at MIT,” said Prof. Marcus Thompson, festival co-lead.

MIT’s Artfinity Festival kicks off on Saturday, February 15^th with a celebration of the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building and Thomas Tull Concert Hall featuring a free afternoon open house and evening concert, writes A.Z. Madonna for The Boston Globe. “What this building brings to us is support for performance of all different types of music, whether it’s classical or jazz or world music, and then the ability to support various functions with our students,” says Keeril Makan, associate dean of SHASS. 

Cambridge Day reporter Susan Saccoccia spotlights the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, which opens to the public on Saturday, February 15^th, with a celebratory concert called “Sonic Jubilance,” the start of a “monthslong festival of 80 events across the campus, free and open to the public.” Prof. Marcus Thompson notes: “The extent of art-making on the MIT campus is equal to that of a major city. It’s a miracle that it’s all right here, by people in science and technology who are absorbed in creating a new world and who also value the past, present and future of music and the arts.”

Boston Globe reporter Malcom Gay spotlights the new Edward and Joyce Linde Music Building, a “new hub for music instruction and performance” for MIT’s 30 on-campus ensembles and more than 1,500 students enrolled in music classes each academic year. Gay notes that: “The more than 35,000-square-foot structure offers a variety of classroom, performance, rehearsal, and studio spaces.” He adds that there will be “more than 25 concerts at Tull Concert Hall that are open to the public this spring.”

Boston Globe reporter James McCown highlights the architectural design of the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, noting that it is, “the most exciting work of academic architecture in Greater Boston in a generation.”Dean Daniel Huttenlocher adds: “The building was designed to be the physical embodiment of the college’s mission of fortifying studies in computer science and artificial intelligence. The building’s transparent and open design is already drawing a mix of people from throughout the campus and beyond.”

Writing for The Architect’s Newspaper, James McCown describes the glass curtain wall at the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing. “Artificial intelligence will be one of the chief research initiatives taking place at Schwarzman,” McCown notes. With all of its transparency, here MIT and SOM have created a powerful gesture of openness and accountability—a crucial perspective as AI technology advances in ways that are both exciting and foreboding.” 

Architectural Record senior editor Leopoldo Villardi spotlights the new Kendall/MIT MBTA gateway. “Falling under the jurisdiction of the MBTA are three precisely canted volumes—one enclosing a staircase, another accommodating an escalator, and the last housing an elevator—that peek up above the ground plane and lead to the station below," writes Villardi. "But beyond these access points, the street level is ostensibly MIT’s campus. A sleek, streamlined canopy, supported by a field of 26-foot-tall columns, hovers over the three prismatic kiosks to unify the composition.”

MIT students have created a “countdown clock” to help conceptualize how close the globe is to reaching a concerning level of warming, reports Paula Moura for WBUR. “There’s only 60 Bruins games, six Patriots games and 30 Red Sox games scheduled — or about six months — until scientists estimate the globe reaches a point of no return for extreme weather and species loss,” writes Moura. “Everyone is really alarmed because even college students at a very technical university have trouble conceptualizing how soon this is,” says second-year student Norah Miller. “Even though a lot of us are not Boston natives, these kinds of statistics in terms of sports really hit home.”

Boston Globe reporter Vivi Smilgius spotlights the MIT Climate Clock, a massive clock being projected onto MIT’s Green Building that uses Celtics, Patriots and other local sports teams as a means to count down to the projected date and time that the planet is expected to have warmed by 1.5 degrees Celsius over preindustrial levels. “Someone might get that there are six Pats games until this event. That makes a lot more sense to people,” said second-year student Norah Miller. “It’s a sense of personal urgency.”

Boston Globe reporter Steve Annear spotlights MITHenge – a bi-annual occurrence where the sunset aligns with the Infinite Corridor. “A blast of orange sunlight spills through a window, lighting up the lengthy space with a warming glow,” explains Annear. “The phenomenon, which has amassed ‘a cult-like following,’ has been highly celebrated for years by both members of the school community and the public.”

Boston Globe reporter Macie Parker spotlights the new John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center in Kendall Square, the first building to open in MIT’s redevelopment of the 14-acre Volpe site that will ultimately include “research labs, retail, affordable housing, and open space, with the goal of not only encouraging innovation, but also enhancing the surrounding community.” Parker highlights the green technology included in the new Volpe Center: solar panels; triple-paned glass; electric vehicle charging stations; a rainwater reclamation and reuse system; and green and cool roof technology to lower energy use. 

In an article for U.S. News & World Report spotlighting U.S. universities that offer students access to the latest cutting-edge technologies, Cole Claybourn spotlights MIT’s maker culture. “‘Maker culture’ permeates the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where students work in collaborative settings to innovate and create,” Claybourn writes.