Baker House Invitation To Students!

Welcome to Baker House, socially and architecturally, an extraordinary place! The famous Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designed this beautiful dormitory building. He described the building design as a mix between a ski lodge and a ship. He succeeded, and it is a very exciting place to live. The creative design promotes communication and interaction among all residents on six floors by having open study areas and lounges as well as a luminous dining hall overlooking the Charles River. The rooms each have different and wonderful views of the river given the ‘w’–shaped design. Although the architecture is magnificent, the students are what make Baker House an enjoyable and dynamic place to live! Baker House has students who are very active in house government, sports, leadership, performance, and about every activity on campus. At Baker House you’ll find a history of great traditions that make life in this dorm a social adventure.

This will be our second year as Housemasters and we invite you to join us in becoming part of the Baker House family and community. We look forward to providing necessary support and guidance to students; working with the student government; and representing students’ ideas, concerns, and creative solutions to the administration. Although in our second year in this position we are not new to MIT or university communities. Dava is a professor in the Aeronautics and Astronautics Department and the Engineering Systems Division, Director of the Technology and Policy Program, and an affiliated faculty member in the Harvard-MIT Health, Sciences and Technology Program (and she lived at Baker House for five years during graduate school). Guillermo is an architect who runs his own firm and specializes in design for extreme environments (i.e., the space station, Antarctica, underwater, ecotourism). Guillermo has taught design at the undergraduate and graduate levels for many years.

Please come meet the students, graduate resident tutors (GRTs), and staff to experience Baker House first hand. We welcome you join the Baker House Community.

Dava Newman and Guillermo Trotti

Additional notes on Baker's design: The ingenious wave-shaped building maximizes the number of rooms with a sunny southern exposure, orienting them at oblique angles to soften noise from Memorial Drive. Hanging staircases serve as the vertical access, providing an increasingly dramatic view of MIT as one ascends, and the dining pavilion with its "moon garden lights" affords wonderful views of the Charles River.

In part because of the residential experience it provides and its proximity to student life facilities including the Student Center and Athletic complexes, Baker House is popular among its residents. Internationally recognized as a masterpiece of modernism,several years ago, Baker was renovated for its fiftieth anniversary.