12 Rooms
Authors: Balsa Crosetto Piazzi & Giorgis Ortiz
Team: Farnaz Seyed, Jonathan Lira, David Lafond, Catherine Yu, Geoffrey Hazard, Yuyang Li
(Sunnie) & Sabrina Tian
Bricks: Donated by Spaulding Brick Company, Inc.
Location: Cambridge, MA, United States.
Photos: Balsa Crosetto Piazzi, Qingyang Xie and Jabari Canada.
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.
Year 2025
Authors: Balsa Crosetto Piazzi & Giorgis Ortiz
Team: Farnaz Seyed, Jonathan Lira, David Lafond, Catherine Yu, Geoffrey Hazard, Yuyang Li
(Sunnie) & Sabrina Tian
Bricks: Donated by Spaulding Brick Company, Inc.
Location: Cambridge, MA, United States.
Photos: Balsa Crosetto Piazzi, Qingyang Xie and Jabari Canada.
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.
Year 2025