Participation Opportunities

What’s going on?

Remember the MET Warehouse on Vassar and Mass Ave? MIT is renovating the Metropolitan Warehouse to create a vibrant interdisciplinary hub for design and education and to house the School of Architecture and Planning, a new makerspace for Project Manus, and the new MIT Morningside Academy for Design.

Enhancements including the MET are part of the MIT’s Maker Revolution in the Campaign for a Better World. If you are in the MIT community and want to make something, come on in… research, class work, personal projects, entrepreneurship.

The goals for the new MET makerspace are as follows:

• The Project Manus makerspace will be a campus-wide makerspace. Every MIT student, staff member and faculty member from any DLC/course will have equal access. It is affiliated with no single school or department.
• The makerspace will be available for people to use for their own purposes, be it research, class projects, personal use, etc. It is an all-welcoming, community-based makerspace, with open access to all qualified and certified makers. It will be viewed like a campus library or gym, not a classroom.
• Project Manus staff will run the new makerspace. Other makerspaces on campus will not close — this new space will be in addition to all current spaces on campus.

How can you help?

The perspective of our alumni brings important insight that we want to use to build the best makerspace. This makerspace will play a key role in preparing our students to make the kinds of impact that you have/will make. If you would like to offer us any insights or advice about making and makerspaces from your perspective as an MIT alum, contact Project Manus (via project-manus@mit.edu).

This project is a massive undertaking, and it will transform the way making is done on our campus for the next 20 years. MIT is a leader in the field, therefore, this will also serve as a ‘gold standard’ for next generation makerspaces. This also ushers in a new paradigm, the integration with makerspaces into residential dorms. We are looking to our alumni to give and support the technology and themed areas of the space. If you would like to speak to someone at MIT about philanthropic support, please contact Catherine Qin Shi in MIT’s Office of Resource Development. Help us make MIT and the world a better place.