Described upon completion by Boston Globe reporter Robert Campbell as ‘the world’s most exquisite building’, the new Massachusettes Institute of Technology Media Lab has a lot to live up to as it opens its doors to the global media today. But the fact that the new 163,000 sq ft building has been designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect, Fumihiko Maki can’t hurt.

MIT's Media Lab was founded in 1985 with a remit of conducting unorthodox research to envision the impact of emerging technologies on everyday life. For a building with a loaded agenda to house the List Visual Arts Center, the School of Architecture + Planning's Design Lab and Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Department of Architecture's Visual Arts Program, MIT's Program in Comparative Media Studies and the new Okawa Center for Future Children, the six storey building maintains a generously spacious appearance. The floors are divided according to purpose around a two part atrium. The lower four floor-height atrium to the exterior of the building provides public exhibition space while the internal upper atrium rising at the third and fourth floors doubles as social space for the occupants within.

7 conference rooms are housed on the lower 5 levels, with an additional 2,500 sq ft conference room on the sixth level event space. As well as the conference room, the top floor event space boasts a 100-seat theater, 3,500-square-foot multipurpose space for exhibitions, demos or meetings, a 3,500 sq ft reception and dining area and a catering kitchen. Further coffee areas are spread throughout the building.