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Kresge Auditorium and Chapel

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  • Modern Movement
  • Identity of Building/Site
  • History of Building/Site
  • Evaluation

Kresge Auditorium and Chapel

Site overview

The MIT Chapel was designed by famed architect Eero Saarinen and dedicated in May 1955 alongside Saarinen’s Kresge Auditorium. The cylindrical building’s unique and graceful design was intended to meet the needs of all faiths and continues to serve as a place for worship for a diverse MIT community. The building’s unique appearance was new to a campus that had previously employed a more classical architecture style. After some criticism, Saarinen explained that the chapel’s windowless cylinder “implied the self-contained, inward-feeling which was desirable” for a place of worship. He noted that its undulating interior walls promoted good acoustics as well as an “enclosed feeling.” A stained glass entryway leads to the chapel, the centerpiece of which is a solid marble altar placed in the center of a circular marble platform. A metal sculpture by Harry Bertoia reflects light from the only window in the chapel, a beautiful domed skylight. The Chapel also features a 1300-pound bell cast at MIT in the Metals Processing Laboratory and a 768-pipe organ designed by Walter Holtkamp. (Adapted from the website of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

How to Visit

Private university building

Location

48 Massachusetts Avenue
Massachusetts Institute of Technology Campus
Cambridge, MA, 02139

Country

US
More visitation information

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Designer(s)

Herbert Lynes Beckwith

Architect

Eero Saarinen

Architect

Nationality

American, Finnish

Other designers

Harry Bertoia (altar sculpture); Theodore Roszak (bell tower)

Related chapter

New England

Related Sites

Completion

1955

Commission / Completion details

Commission unknown, completion 1955(e).

Current Use

MIT chapel and auditorium.

General Assessment

The pure geometric form of the auditorium√.s shell as well as the perfectly cylindrical brick drum of the chapel testify to Saarinen√s interest, following the acknowledged influence of Mies van der Rohe, in the expression of structure. The two buildings are only a partial realization of Saarinen√s intent to provide MIT with a public space. Such an intent is clearly present in the civic and communal functions of the two structures, and their introduction in an university environment can be directly associated with modernist ambitions to reshape social and urban life. The MIT projects are part of the architect√s lasting attention to the university campus which he considered a privileged place to experiment with restored civitas. The building ensemble was part of the emerging self-expression of the Institute as a community with spiritual and cultural needs. It constitutes one of the first examples of an association between modernist architectural vocabulary and representative, symbolic functions.
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