Imagining New Technology

When MIT President Rafael Reif and Cambridge Mayor E. Denise Simmons place small replicas of MIT's Dome and Cambridge's City Hall into a collaboratively built 3D model at the new exhibition at the MIT Museum, they will be launching a project that the combined MIT/Cambridge community will help to create over the life of the exhibit—a crowd-sourced 3D printed model of the MIT campus and surrounding community.

The anniversary celebration will host a range of activities including this unique exhibit. Rarely seen architectural drawings, photographs and artifacts will show the dramatic impact the design of the Institute has had on the physical, economic, and social development of Cambridge, Massachusetts, now entering its fourth century of educational renown.

The Cambridge campus developed into a new kind of educational campus, one which, through its architecture, was able to promote the cross-fertilization of ideas and concepts. Today, multidisciplinary work continues—from bioengineering to ocean science to inventions coming from the Media Lab; new fields have emerged because of the physical and collaborative space students and professors inhabit.

Imagining New Technology: Building MIT in Cambridge includes a 3D Community Model. If you have access to a 3D printer at your home, school, library, or maker space, you can contribute a building to the model.