Academic Department
Ray and Maria Stata Center
32 Vassar St, Cambridge, MA 02139, USA
Tilting, fractured-looking academic complex by Frank Gehry, its jumbled walls hiding decades of student pranks preserved behind glass.
Ray and Maria Stata Center's guide opens with a life-size Dalek from Doctor Who found perched on the roof one April morning in 2012, one entry in MIT's long, unclaimed tradition of campus hacks. It traces the unwritten rules those hackers follow, and the props from past stunts still kept behind glass near the ground-floor cafeteria. Along the way it turns to Frank Gehry's design itself, built to look like it's already collapsing.
Audio guides are written and narrated by AI.