Building / Landmark · 1985
MIT Media Lab
The 1985 lab where computing got personal, expressive and wearable — e-ink, Scratch, LEGO Mindstorms and Guitar Hero all trace here; Maki’s 2009 glass annex made the invention visible.
Photograph · MIT Media Lab / CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Why it matters
A single canonical record that surfaces on 3 of the network’s properties — the same place, understood through 3 different civic lenses.
Open the full civic recordCurrent pulse, routes, recommendations, and memory
Living object
Now, then, future
Every object is temporal: what it feels like now, what it used to mean, and what it can become next.
Now
Thenquiet enough to notice details. Best now: one good detour.
1851: An 1851 East Cambridge house tied to Amory Houghton, the glass manufacturer whose ventures grew into Corning Glass Works after he left Massachusetts for New York.
Future2026: America’s 250th — July 4, 2026.
Current modemidday
Historical echoAmory Houghton House
Connected eventThe Vaccine Designed in Two Days (2020)
Pulse
How it feels right now
Current energyquiet enough to notice details
Best nowone good detour
Best timemidday
livelyserendipitousKendall Square
Rain scoremodest
Indoor escapes within a few blocks.
Laptop friendlinesslow
Coffee, libraries, bookstores, and campus edges.
Student presencelow
How strongly the nearby graph reads as campus life.
Tourist pressurelow
Fame, landmark pull, and visitor-facing assets.
Historic densitylight
Older records and historical edges around this object.
Serendipitypromising
Different kinds of things hiding within a short walk.
Turn this into a walk
Routes with a point of view
What should I see next?
Chosen moves from here
The editor's hand
Human recommendations
The Civic Graph Editorial DeskEditorial standard
Look for the older layer before you move on. This object is connected to more than its facade suggests.Biogen Founded (1978) →Cambridge History DeskLocal historian
Look for the older layer before you move on. This object is connected to more than its facade suggests.Biogen Founded (1978) →
Civic memory
What this meant before
19851985MIT Media Lab enters the civic record here.1861Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyPrivate research university founded in 1861 by William Barton Rogers; moved from Boston to its Cambridge campus on the Charles in 1916.1851Amory Houghton HouseAn 1851 East Cambridge house tied to Amory Houghton, the glass manufacturer whose ventures grew into Corning Glass Works after he left Massachusetts for New York.1874Sacred Heart Church, Rectory, School and ConventA Catholic parish ensemble from 1874 — church, rectory, school, and convent — built for East Cambridge's immigrant congregations near what is now Kendall Square.
- Established
- 1985
- Graph connections
- 2
Plan your visit
Get there
In the graph 2 relationships — first-class data, not links
Explore MIT Media Lab in the interactive Graph Explorer — click to expand every connection →Located in
Nearby what sits within a few minutes’ walk
Historical event · 4 min walk
Project MAC (1963)
Historical event · 4 min walk
Biogen Founded (1978)
Historical event · 5 min walk
Polaroid Founded (1937)
Historical context
Project MAC (1963)Biogen Founded (1978)Polaroid Founded (1937)The Vaccine Designed in Two Days (2020)MIT Crosses the River (1916)
An unexpected connection
MIT Media Lab is linked, through the graph, to Massachusetts Institute of Technology — university, 7 min walk away. The kind of thread you only find by following the connections.
Keep exploring graph-powered — every path below is a real relationship, not a guess
NearbyA few minutes’ walk away
Also in Kendall SquareShares a neighborhood
More landmarksOther landmarks in the graph
From the contemporary eraOf the same period
Visitors also exploreReached through the same connections
One record, 3 framings cross-property publishing — never duplicated
How we know graph confidence — we explain our certainty, not just assert it
○Source qualityBest source is unclassified
○Independent corroboration1 source
✓Human-reviewedEditorially verified
○Institutional backingNo primary source yet
✓Record completeness80% of canonical fields present
Sources, by tier
MIT Media Lab Unclassified
Graph scores — our north star is relationship density, not page count
Relationship density25
2 connections
Record coverage70
metadata completeness
Graph authority28
centrality + reach + trust
Schema.org JSON-LD — what answer engines read
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