Bigpicture --- Quad one of those losely defined academic terms [not to be confused with Academic Semesters]
whose connotation depends on you and your particular frame of reference
It a bit like the somewhat associated and similarly unspecific term of College --- which can range from:
an organization of students living together [almost like a Frat] with some support aspects --- e.g. Oxford's various colleges where there is no formal academic component just residences [what MIT calls Houses]
an organization of professors doing something together as in MIT's newly minted Schwartzman College of Computing -- no one except for some clandestine grad students are likely to be sleeping here [what MIT used to call a Lab e.g. Research Lab for Electronics the granddaddy of all interdisciplinary labs]
or something else as in Harvard College within the greater Harvard University -- where Harvard College is defined in terms of the program of study undertaken by undergraduates and while it encompasses student living on campus it is not tied to any particular structure
or something else such as Smith College -- encompassing the totality of a kind of mini-university
or something even stranger such as MIT Building E25 (Whitaker College) located at 45 Carleton St and which houses: MIT-Harvard College of Health Science among other things and which in turn is not related to Building 56 [Whitaker Building] except by the name Whitaker [which houses the HQ of the Dept of Biological Engineering]
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a bit of architecture on another scale -- the "chip" in the picture is about the size of match book
Linda Griffith, the School of Engineering Professor of Teaching Innovation and a professor of biological engineering and mechanical engineering