Expanding from Wiesner building

The Media Lab expansion will be adjacent and attached to the Wiesner building (shown here), current home of the MIT Media Lab, whose research has yielded technologies such as a wearable computer, mesh networks and the $100 laptop. The Wiesner building, named for former MIT President Jerome Wiesner who founded the Media Lab along with Nicholas Negroponte, was designed by architect I.M. Pei (also an MIT alumnus).

In addition to various Media Lab groups, the two buildings together will house the List Visual Arts Center, the School of Architecture and Planning's Design Lab and Center for Advanced Visual Studies, the Department of Architecture's Visual Arts Program and the Comparative Media Studies program. It will also hold the Okawa Center for Future Children, a part of the Media Lab that concentrates on education for children in developing nations. The Okawa Center was established in 1998 with a $27 million donation from Isao Okawa, the late chairman of Sega Enterprises and the software company CSK.

September 27, 2006 9:21 AM PDT

Photo by: Candace Lombardi/CNET News.com