MIT Expansion Plans | MIT/Kendall Square | Cambridge

^ Ohhhhhhhh, whoops.

So this building is getting a penthouse addition?

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Looks like the MIT.nano project is starting to gear up:

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MIT/Kendall is my favorite part of Cambridge. Not because of what it looks like but for what gets produced here, that is to say technologies and medicines that evolve humanity, a place that is truly world class in the most important ways. It makes me livid when activists and NIMBYs scream for smaller development here. Give the institutions as much space as they are willing to build with as few strings attached as necessary.
 
kz1000ps said:
I don't believe this but my clueless-to-architecture girlfriend just informed me that MIT has made the recommendation to tear down...Bexley Hall?!?!?! I do NOT like this report: http://newsoffice.mit.edu/2013/bexley-hall-recommendation-1017

You all know Bexley Hall...it's THAT building at the corner of Memorial Drive and Mass Ave.

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I get that the building is old and needs a lot of work but thinking about some lame glass box here makes me mad. I will do what I can to fight this.
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As cozzyd said the picture is not bexley, which is a little crappier and one more building into Cambridge. But it is one of the most culturally significant dorms.... LSD in the basement, got the Grateful Dead to play MIT in '69. Still was an extremely cool and unique dorm, my cousin lived there and it was not like any dorm Ive ever been to...

Anyway, it's happening.
http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N44/bexleyupdate.html
 
What???! They just ripped out the insides and re-did the whole building! Talk about waste, and not only architectural/contextural. Sad day....
 
Padre -- You are confusing two buildings both of which have been used as dorms on Mass Ave.

Specifically:

1) the building shown in the photographs is on the corner of Mem & Mass -- MIT-speake Building W1, 305 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139 -- used to be called ASHDOWN HOUSE when it was a Graduate Dorm -- the Ashdown building has been substantially renovated and repurposed into an undergraduate dorm now called Maseeh Hall [after the major donor] http://housing.mit.edu/housing/undergraduate/maseeh_hall

2) Building W13 located further down Mass Ave -- 50 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139 -- which is called BEXLEY HALL -- it was an undergraduate dorm until it was declared structurally unsound and closed in 2013
http://housing.mit.edu/housing/undergraduate/bexley_hall

Meanwhile -- since this is MIT -- the Ashdown name has reappeared in the guise of a new Graduate Dorm -- ASHDOWN HOUSE -- located further into Cambridge -- Building NW35 @235 Albany Street, Cambridge, MA 02139
http://housing.mit.edu/housing/graduate/ashdown_house

While not officially acknowledged -- I suspect that the name BEXLEY HALL will reappear phoenix-like on some new dorm and meanwhile the site will either become another dorm or something else -- this being MIT after all
 
stellarfun said:
Nano building cost $350 million.

"Twenty years ago, 75 people worked in nanotech at MIT. The new building will accommodate 2,000 researchers. It will be the most occupied, most used space on campus."

http://www.wbur.org/2014/08/05/mit-nanotechnology-facility
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This building a resurrection of the historic name of Building 12 [and built on the existing footprint] -- will be known as MIT.nano

http://capitalprojects.mit.edu/projects/mitnano-building-12
MITnano_InfCorrTerraceView_label.jpg



Surely it deserves its own thread, as it will be one of the most interesting construction projects in the US for the next few years:

PROJECT TEAM
Architect: Wilson Architects, Boston, MA
Construction manager: Turner Construction, Boston, MA

SCOPE
200,000 gsf

DESIGN FEATURES

A 200,000 square-foot facility that more than doubles MIT’s shared fabrication and imaging capabilities
Two floors of high-performance cleanrooms optimized for energy efficiency, safety, and future flexibility
Spaces for prototyping and packaging synthesis, imaging and microscopy, materials and thin film growth, and numerical design
The most environmentally quiet space on campus, a basement level optimized to meet the most stringent nanoscale imaging requirements for low-vibration and low electromagnetic interference (EMI)
Meeting spaces for collaboration and conversation, as well as offices for research staff
New undergraduate chemistry teaching laboratories, to support the hands-on experimentation that is critical to training future leaders in science and engineering
A new outdoor courtyard nestled between MIT.nano and the main group, providing an informal setting for the MIT community to congregate and collaborate

SUSTAINABLE DESIGN ELEMENTS

Creatively designed air filtering systems will maintain cleanroom standards while providing sustainable benefits. A few features include:
Heat recovery on building exhaust
Variable frequency drives on motors that save energy by powering devices up or down based on needs in the space
Lowest pressure drop ductwork and filters
Rightsized exhaust devices that minimize the amount of exhaust needed to maintain the cleanroom air purity and filtrati

Demolition of the existing Building 12 is targeted for early 2015.
Construction is scheduled to begin late-2015
Building occupancy will commence in 2018.

All to be shoehorned into a very tight, very busy work space -- necessitating novel design and construction process
 
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FK4 said:
As cozzyd said the picture is not bexley, which is a little crappier and one more building into Cambridge. But it is one of the most culturally significant dorms.... LSD in the basement, got the Grateful Dead to play MIT in '69. Still was an extremely cool and unique dorm, my cousin lived there and it was not like any dorm Ive ever been to...

Anyway, it's happening.
http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N44/bexleyupdate.html
Click to expand...

The article says it will be a park before it is anything else and I think this an excellent use. This area get so much foot traffic from students and tourists that a park with art and benches and food/coffee trucks will be very nice. From a non-MIT perspective, those trucks might be our only opportunity to get a little retail on this stretch of Mass Ave. If anything is built on this site, opposite the grand entrance, it is unlikely to have a retail component.
 
Park? So much for that site ever getting redeveloped...
 
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