12 ROOMS
12 Rooms sits between documenting the past and constructing the traces of a new possible space that is inhabited in the present, extracted from the private domain to be collectively occupied on the public MIT grounds.
The project is an invitation to reflect on the Built Stories that live within the buildings we inhabit — events, dialogues, discussions, and inventions that are part of the rooms’ memory — through the use of brick, a resource that is strongly tied to Cambridge’s history and built environment.
Sitting between the two Saarinen buildings — the Chapel and the Auditorium — 12 Rooms emerges as a brick line: a long, shallow wall at the Kresge Oval.
Walls make room for things to happen. They are solid and tangible; they are also political. Walls can enable or divide, conceal or project, separate or hold together.
12 Rooms reconstructs the spaces at MIT where pivotal inventions and research were born. From the telephone and the first digital computer to early prototypes of email, these innovations are inseparable from the labs, lecture halls, classrooms, and offices at MIT — some of which now exist only in memory, remnants of buildings that were unfortunately demolished.
12 Rooms assembles a selection of rooms, spanning time and space. By extracting the footprints of these rooms, we crafted a new spatial composition that allows visitors to step back into these spaces and learn about the groundbreaking inventions that took place within them. The installation is both a reconstruction of old spaces and the trace of a new possible collective space.
12 Rooms reflects on the many stories that live within the buildings we inhabit, as well as how new readings of the traces of those spaces — physically displaced into public space — can make room for other forms of collective and public engagement.
The bricks used in this project have been donated Spaulding Brick Company, Inc. a brick and masonry supplier based in New England since 1933. After the project was completed, the installation was disassembled and the brick were donated again to build a bike path in New Hampshire, US.
12 Rooms was designed and built at MIT Kresge Oval in April 2025 as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT, organized by the Office of the Arts.
