Building E15, the Wiesner Building designed by Pei on the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, houses the MIT Media Lab, founded in 1985. Founded in 1985 by Nicholas Negroponte and former MIT President Jerome Wiesner, the Media Lab grew out of the Architecture Machine Group in the School of Architecture and Planning. Its work deliberately refuses fixed academic borders, drawing from technology, media, science, art, and design.
By 1988 Stewart Brand had written The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at M.I.T., and its projects were a regular feature of technology journals through the 1990s. In 2009 the lab expanded into a second building, and by 2014 its research groups included neurobiology, biologically inspired fabrication, socially engaging robots, emotive computing, bionics, and hyperinstruments. The lab also came under scrutiny in 2019 because of accepted donations from convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a controversy that led to the resignation of its director.
Stand here and imagine the long, curious experiment that this place represents: a campus lab, an architectural statement, and a living collection of ideas. Notice the 2009 addition standing beside the original Wiesner Building where the lab first began.