MIT Self-Guided Audio Walk: The Great Dome, Stata Center and the Smoots on Harvard Bridge

Your Experience

MIT never settled on one look. For over a century it has built its ideas about science in public, each generation in a new material, and kept them all standing a few minutes apart along the Charles River.

Begin on the Harvard Bridge, measured by students in smoots, one freshman's height at a time. Follow the river to Alvar Aalto's wave of brick at Baker House, then Eero Saarinen's brick chapel in its moat and his concrete shell that touches the ground at three points. Face the Great Dome across Killian Court, then walk past Calder's forty-foot Big Sail, past the Media Lab's aluminum veil, to Frank Gehry's tumbling Stata Center and the glass towers of Kendall Square.

Nine stops, about 2.4 km and 85 minutes, in English, at your own pace, outdoors on public sidewalks and open courts. Start whenever you like; entry to the MIT Museum is not included.