MIT

METROPOLITAN

WAREHOUSE

Designed for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Metro­politan Warehouse, known as the Met, consolidates the departments, labs, and centers of the School of Architecture and Planning (SA+P)—previously buried within the Main Group complex — into a single unlikely host. The five-hundred-foot-long solid brick building, designed in 1894 by Frederic Pope and expanded in four subsequent additions by 1916, evokes the safety and security of a fortress, with its two-foot-thick walls, corner tower, crenellated corbeled cornices, and small slit windows. Advertised as “indestructible” and suitable for the storage of bronzes, pianos, carriages, and furs, the facility was built to protect the treasures of Boston’s wealthiest families. The Met’s prominent location at the heart of the expanding university campus allows for a symbolic extension of MIT’s Infinite Corridor from east to west, engaging the city and inviting the community to pass through the building.

Reconciling the SA+P’s pedagogical aspirations with this industrial-age monolith presented both opportunities and seemingly insurmountable challenges. While the building’s high loading capacity of 150 pounds per square foot and large freight elevators are robust enough to endure the everyday abuse generated by architecture students and faculty, the Met was designed for objects, not humans. Its low floor-to-floor heights, tight column grid, and absence of windows produce dark, cellular spaces without light or fresh air that are inhospitable for academic, much less creative, work.

Inspired by the artist Gordon Matta-Clark, the master of architectural surgery, the project uses a range of cutting strategies, from incising to coring to dismantling to severing multistory blocks. A series of carved-out voids accommodates 110,000 square feet of makerspaces, academic spaces, research spaces, and community spaces distributed across the five separate buildings that comprise the Met. Inserted within each is a long-span stack of studios suspended from the existing roof, which together break down the scale of the massive building. The residual cellular structure surrounding these stacks is used for offices, meeting rooms, classrooms, and other small programs. Neighborhoods within each building maintain a shared sense of intimacy and purpose. The Met houses the Department of Architecture, research units and studios for the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, the Center for Real Estate, the Leventhal Center for Advanced Urbanism, Project Manus, and the Morningside Academy for Design. The neighborhoods identify alliances within SA+P that can cross departments, labs, and centers, encouraging new forms of collaboration. A continuous linear stairway slicing through the Met acts as a central spine integrating these communities.

Aside from introducing light and views, the surgical interventions saw-cut into the building expose cross sections through its anatomy. The techniques used in this adaptive reuse project have a pedagogical objective — to expose layers of history and allow students to experience firsthand the possibilities of breathing new life into a discarded relic previously thought to be uninhabitable.

The MIT Metropolitan Warehouse is targeting LEED Gold certification.