MIT Alumni Association

The MIT Alumni Association (MITAA) reached out to us to design and develop a digital installation that boosts engagement with the office and alumni network and inspires students. Located in MIT’s Infinite Corridor, a multi-screen interactive installation tells the stories of alumni for past, present, and future students to see and engage with easily. 

The installation exhibits a collection of mathematical shapes that overlap and expand in response to a passerby’s presence. When someone stops in front of the screens, stories of how today’s alumni are making the world a better place are revealed through images, quotes, facts, and a QR code that links every story back to the MIT Alumni Association website.

We took our inspiration from the generative structures of science and engineering as a metaphor for individual MIT Alums joining together to build a better future. We designed a geometric, engineering-inspired system of interlocking shapes and contours that assemble in a satisfying mathematical fashion to reveal the alumni and represent the groundbreaking work done by MIT alumni worldwide. 

The display perpetually shifts and reconfigures to generate an evolving graphical representation of the MIT alumni community. After a minute, the viewer becomes “invisible,” and the screen returns to its normal cycling of content to keep the flow of traffic moving in the corridor. 

Our work for MITAA provides new opportunities for students to learn more about the school’s alumni and their impact, while visually celebrating MIT’s math, science, and engineering spirit in a contemporary and human way.

Client

MIT Alumni Association

Collaborators

Utile Architecture & Planning