Green Building (MIT)
Encyclopedia
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
, Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Cambridge is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, in the Greater Boston area. It was named in honor of the University of Cambridge in England, an important center of the Puritan theology embraced by the town's founders. Cambridge is home to two of the world's most prominent...
, United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. It was designed by noted architect I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...
, who received his bachelor's degree from MIT in 1940. Principal donor Cecil Howard Green
Cecil Howard Green
Cecil Howard Green was a British-born American geophysicist who trained at the University of British Columbia and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology....
received a bachelor's degree and master's degree from MIT and was a co-founder of Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments
Texas Instruments Inc. , widely known as TI, is an American company based in Dallas, Texas, United States, which develops and commercializes semiconductor and computer technology...
.
Architecture
The Green Building was constructed during 1962-1964, in reinforced concreteReinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
. It is 21 stories or 295 feet (90 m) tall, with a concrete facade that more or less matches the limestone
Limestone
Limestone is a sedimentary rock composed largely of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate . Many limestones are composed from skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral or foraminifera....
and concrete of the older MIT buildings near it. The basement of the building is below sea level
Sea level
Mean sea level is a measure of the average height of the ocean's surface ; used as a standard in reckoning land elevation...
and connects to the MIT tunnel
Tunnel
A tunnel is an underground passageway, completely enclosed except for openings for egress, commonly at each end.A tunnel may be for foot or vehicular road traffic, for rail traffic, or for a canal. Some tunnels are aqueducts to supply water for consumption or for hydroelectric stations or are sewers...
system. Three elevator
Elevator
An elevator is a type of vertical transport equipment that efficiently moves people or goods between floors of a building, vessel or other structures...
s operate in the Green Building. There are staircases at both the east and west sides, whose exterior facades present a vast windowless expanse relieved only by one-story concrete recessed panels. On the "Lower Level" (actually one story above ground level), is 54-100, a large lecture hall
Lecture hall
A lecture hall is a large room used for instruction, typically at a college or university. Unlike a traditional classroom with a capacity from one to four dozen, the capacity of lecture halls is typically measured in the hundreds...
. The second floor formerly housed the Lindgren Library, part of MIT's library system, but this facility was removed in 2009.
The Green Building is the tallest building in Cambridge. When it was built, there was a limit on the number of floors. Thus, it was designed to be on stilts with the first occupied floor approximately 30 feet above grade in order to "circumvent" this law. Currently, no building in Cambridge is allowed to be taller than the Green Building. However, the footprint of every floor measures only 60 by 120 feet (18 by 36m), which research groups quickly outgrew, forcing some of them to disperse elsewhere on campus.
The tower's height has some functional purpose, since its roof supports meteorological instruments
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
and radio communications equipment, plus a white spherical radome
Radome
A radome is a structural, weatherproof enclosure that protects a microwave or radar antenna. The radome is constructed of material that minimally attenuates the electromagnetic signal transmitted or received by the antenna. In other words, the radome is transparent to radar or radio waves...
enclosing long-distance weather radar
Weather radar
Weather radar, also called weather surveillance radar and Doppler weather radar, is a type of radar used to locate precipitation, calculate its motion, estimate its type . Modern weather radars are mostly pulse-Doppler radars, capable of detecting the motion of rain droplets in addition to the...
apparatus. This technical equipment all requires a line-of-sight
Line-of-sight propagation
Line-of-sight propagation refers to electro-magnetic radiation or acoustic wave propagation. Electromagnetic transmission includes light emissions traveling in a straight line...
vantage point for optimum range and accuracy, and would have required construction of some kind of tower to function as intended. To minimize interference with radio signals, other buildings on MIT's central campus are less than half the height of the Green Building, and the dormitory towers of Eastgate, Westgate, and MacGregor House are at least 1500 feet (450 m) away.
Occupancy
The Green Building is the main facility of the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Science (EAPS), also known as Course 12. The departmental headquarters is on the 9th floor of the building. The lower floors of the building contain the Planetary SciencePlanetary science
Planetary science is the scientific study of planets , moons, and planetary systems, in particular those of the Solar System and the processes that form them. It studies objects ranging in size from micrometeoroids to gas giants, aiming to determine their composition, dynamics, formation,...
section. The middle floors have the Earth Science
Earth science
Earth science is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth. It is arguably a special case in planetary science, the Earth being the only known life-bearing planet. There are both reductionist and holistic approaches to Earth sciences...
section (Geology
Geology
Geology is the science comprising the study of solid Earth, the rocks of which it is composed, and the processes by which it evolves. Geology gives insight into the history of the Earth, as it provides the primary evidence for plate tectonics, the evolutionary history of life, and past climates...
, Geophysics
Geophysics
Geophysics is the physics of the Earth and its environment in space; also the study of the Earth using quantitative physical methods. The term geophysics sometimes refers only to the geological applications: Earth's shape; its gravitational and magnetic fields; its internal structure and...
, and Geochemistry
Geochemistry
The field of geochemistry involves study of the chemical composition of the Earth and other planets, chemical processes and reactions that govern the composition of rocks, water, and soils, and the cycles of matter and energy that transport the Earth's chemical components in time and space, and...
). The upper floors house the Atmospheric Science section (which also includes Oceanography
Oceanography
Oceanography , also called oceanology or marine science, is the branch of Earth science that studies the ocean...
and Climatology
Climatology
Climatology is the study of climate, scientifically defined as weather conditions averaged over a period of time, and is a branch of the atmospheric sciences...
).
Problems
Charles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
basin increased wind speeds in the high open archway at its base, preventing people from entering or leaving the building through the hinged main doors on windy days. Large wood panels were temporarily erected in the open concourse to block the wind, and revolving door
Revolving door
A revolving door typically consists of three or four doors that hang on a center shaft and rotate around a vertical axis within a cylindrical enclosure. Revolving doors are energy efficient as they prevent drafts, thus preventing increases in the heating or cooling required for the building...
s were later installed at the ground floor entries to ameliorate this problem somewhat. Several windows cracked, and at least one large pane popped out on upper stories at least in part due to the effects of wind, eventually requiring all the windows to be replaced. A few years later, a similar-appearing problem was repeated in Boston's John Hancock Tower
John Hancock Tower
The John Hancock Tower, officially named Hancock Place and colloquially known as The Hancock, is a 60-story, 790-foot skyscraper in Boston. The tower was designed by Henry N. Cobb of the firm I. M. Pei & Partners and was completed in 1976...
located in Back Bay across the river, a 60-story skyscraper which happened to be designed by the same architectural firm.
It is incorrectly rumored that Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
's monumental sculpture The Big Sail , was situated in front of the building to deflect the high winds. The sculpture is located too far from the building entryway to have much effect on wind velocities there.
Hacks
Because of its height and visibility from the Boston Back Bay neighborhood across the Charles RiverCharles River
The Charles River is an long river that flows in an overall northeasterly direction in eastern Massachusetts, USA. From its source in Hopkinton, the river travels through 22 cities and towns until reaching the Atlantic Ocean at Boston...
Basin, plus its rectangular grid of large single-pane windows forming a crude 9 x 18 dot-matrix display, the Green Building has been the site of many hacks
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics. The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively...
or pranks. In 1993, one widely-viewed hack repurposed the 9 top-floor windows as an enormous digital VU meter
VU meter
A VU meter is often included in audio equipment to display a signal level in Volume Units; the device is sometimes also called volume indicator ....
for the traditional Fourth of July concert of the Boston Pops orchestra. Several other simpler hacks have used the entire window array for stationary displays; this practice is sufficiently commonplace to have acquired the term greenspeak (which should not be confused with the famously obscure Delphic
Pythia
The Pythia , commonly known as the Oracle of Delphi, was the priestess at the Temple of Apollo at Delphi, located on the slopes of Mount Parnassus. The Pythia was widely credited for her prophecies inspired by Apollo. The Delphic oracle was established in the 8th century BC...
pronouncements of former Federal Reserve Bank
Federal Reserve Bank
The twelve Federal Reserve Banks form a major part of the Federal Reserve System, the central banking system of the United States. The twelve federal reserve banks together divide the nation into twelve Federal Reserve Districts, the twelve banking districts created by the Federal Reserve Act of...
chairman Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan
Alan Greenspan is an American economist who served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve of the United States from 1987 to 2006. He currently works as a private advisor and provides consulting for firms through his company, Greenspan Associates LLC...
).
In September of 2011, hackers installed 153 custom-made high-power wirelessly-controlled color-changing LED
LEd
LEd is a TeX/LaTeX editing software working under Microsoft Windows. It is a freeware product....
lights into every window above the first floor. They displayed a waving flag throughout the evening of September 11, 2011 in remembrance of the September 11 attacks in 2001. For a short time in the early morning of September 12, the lights displayed a Tetris
Tetris
Tetris is a puzzle video game originally designed and programmed by Alexey Pajitnov in the Soviet Union. It was released on June 6, 1984, while he was working for the Dorodnicyn Computing Centre of the Academy of Science of the USSR in Moscow, Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic...
game, thus realizing a long-standing hack proposal. The display had occasional glitches, and was removed as of September 13, but is likely to reappear in the future once some of the glitches are worked out.
As a prototype feasibility demonstration, the Tech Model Railroad Club
Tech Model Railroad Club
The Tech Model Railroad Club is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and one of the most celebrated model railroad clubs in the world, because of its historic role as a wellspring of hacker culture...
, located in Building N52, had earlier added a scale model of the Green Building to its HO scale
HO scale
HO or H0 is the most popular scale of model railway in the world.According to the NMRA standard S-1.2 predominantly used in North America, in HO scale, represents 1 real foot ; this ratio works out to about 1:87.1. According to the MOROP standard NEM 010 predominantly used in Europe, the scale is...
model railroad layout. Passersby inside Building N52 can play a monochromatic version of Tetris via remote control, accompanied by authentic-sounding music, even when the Club is closed.
Other hacks utilize the height of the building, such as a 1974 failed attempt to operate a giant yoyo from the roof of the tower. Launching of projectiles from the roof is strongly discouraged, due to the unpredictable high wind gusts, posing a serious danger to passersby, and residents of nearby East Campus dormitory.
Artworks
The Green Building faces McDermott Court (also known as the dot). This grassy area is flanked by the 33-ton metal sculpture La Grande Voile (The Big Sail), one of Alexander CalderAlexander Calder
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing mobile sculptures. In addition to mobile and stable sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry, jewelry and household objects.-Childhood:Alexander "Sandy" Calder was born in Lawnton,...
's "stabile" artworks.
In May 2011, a temporary artwork was installed in the arched "breezeway" at the base of the Green Building, to take advantage of its legendary wind gusts. Designed by Meejin Yoon, an Associate Professor of Architecture, Wind Screen was an array of wind-driven micro-turbine generators that would light up whenever there was enough air movement. This installation was featured in the FAST (Festival of Art, Science, and Technology) celebration, part of the MIT 150 commemoration of MIT's 150th anniversary.