Campus buildings and architecture

New York Times Style Magazine reporter Zoë Lescaze explores the work of artist Agnieszka Kurant and her new installation at MIT. “Looping black lines composed of high-tech lights were designed to simulate the flow of ink scrawl across the facades of two new buildings, as though an invisible hand were repeatedly signing the walls,” writes Lescaze. “Kurant worked with computer scientists to create two collective signatures — one for the scientific and academic community at MIT and another for Cambridge residents.”

Fortune reporter Nicole Gull McElroy spotlights how the MIT Innovation Initiative and the Sloan School of Management are opening Innovation HQ, a 50,000 square foot space that will house a cross-disciplinary innovation and entrepreneurship lab. “Innovation HQ will offer students, alumni, faculty and staff a place to work, collaborate and create with six departments, lab space, an innovator’s lounge and a new space for music and arts innovation called Voxel Lab,” writes McElroy.

A coalition of students, faculty and alumni have come together to raise the funds necessary to replace the radome that sits atop the Building 54, reports Hiawatha Bray for The Boston Globe. “Once the overhaul is complete, MIT’s radio buffs, astronomers, and satellite researchers will have a tool that will serve them for decades,” writes Bray. “And they’ll have also preserved one of the school’s most famous landmarks.”

MIT has announced a new climate action plan aimed at helping the Institute tackle climate change, reports Kristina Chen for The Tech. The plan offers increased opportunities for student involvement and a new organizational structure. Maria Zuber, MIT’s vice president for research, explains that MIT feels “that it’s our responsibility and duty to try to make a genuine difference, and to do that, we’re going to need the help of everyone in the community.” 

A new climate clock developed by a team from the MIT D-Lab is being projected onto the side of the Green Building, reports Arianna MacNeill for Boston.com. “The MIT community, whether it’s students, faculty, staff or alumni, is already seeking ways to face the climate challenge,” according to the D-Lab team. “Our team created the MIT Climate Clock to signal the urgency of climate action to our community and beyond.”

Boston Business Journal reporter Catherine Carlock spotlights how MIT has submitted plans for the second phase of the Volpe redevelopment in Kendall Square. “The second phase could house a combined 1,400 residential units; 1.7 million square feet of lab, research and office space; a 20,000-square-foot community center; 3.5 acres of open space and other retail, entertainment and cultural facilities,” writes Carlock.

Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan writes about how MIT has submitted design plans for the next phase of its proposal to transform the Volpe Transportation Center into a dynamic mixed-use development, including “eight office and residential towers on the 14-acre site north of Broadway.”

Boston Globe reporter Sean Smyth spotlights how the work of the late I.M. Pei, a renowned architect and MIT alumnus, can be found throughout the MIT campus and around the world. Smyth notes that Pei’s portfolio included the Green Building at MIT, the Landau Building at MIT, the West Wing addition to the MFA in Boston and the Louvre pyramid in Paris.

MIT alumnus I.M. Pei, “who was widely recognized as the most prominent American architect of his generation,” has died at age 102, reports Robert Campbell for The Boston Globe. Campbell notes that Pei “charted his own course, remaining a canonical modernist and ignoring the fads and revolutions in taste.”

I.M Pei, an MIT graduate and architect known for designing some of the world’s best-known buildings, has died at 102, reports Kathy McCormick and Deepti Hajela for the Associated Press. Pei’s buildings “added elegance to landscapes worldwide with their powerful geometric shapes and grand spaces.”

Wall Street Journal reporter Brenda Cronin spotlights the work of I.M. Pei, an MIT alumnus and renowned architect, who died on May 16. Pei was “an architect whose graceful grids of glass and metal redrew skylines around the world,” writes Cronin.

New York Times reporter Paul Goldberger memorializes the life and work of MIT alumnus I.M. Pei, “one of the most revered architects in the world.” Goldberger writes that Pei, “maintained that he wanted not just to solve problems but also to produce ‘an architecture of ideas.’”

WBUR’s Mali Sastri highlights Olafur Eliasson’s art installation, “Northwest Passage,” on display in the MIT.nano building thanks to MIT’s Percent for Art program, which provides funds for art at new buildings or renovation projects on campus. Sastri explains that the piece aims to engage “viewers in the embodied experience of climate change.”

Boston Magazine featured Simmons Hall, the Stata Center, the Great Dome and the MIT Chapel in its list of the “100 Best Buildings in Boston.” “Simmons Hall is a Cubist’s dream,” write the editors. “The huge geometric masterpiece comes to life at night with the steady blinking of some 5,500 windows, almost like a huge computer modem.”

Boston Globe reporter Tim Logan writes that Roche Bros. Supermarkets will open a Brothers Market in MIT’s One Broadway Building. Steve Marsh, managing director of MIT’s Real Estate Group, explained that a grocery store was, “so important to those who live and work in Kendall that we worked to incorporate it in the earliest possible phase of our development.”