MIT student Jean Li in her room in Baker House.
Dwell has a great peek inside MIT's Baker House student housing — one of two Alvar Aalto designed buildings in North America!
Baker House was built in 1949 and is known for it's wavy shape, cantilevered staircases, skylights and wedge-shaped rooms — all progressive design elements for a building that is 60 years old!
The other North American Aalto building? — the library at Mount Angel Abbey in Oregon.
See the full post and more pictures at Dwell Blog | "I Live in an Alvar Aalto".
(Images: Philip Greenspun, Flickr user rucativava licensed for use under Creative Commons)
The Roeders' Modern Life is Beautiful 
Kitchen Transformation: Photos of a Step-by-Step Renovation Process
Good Food to Share 
The Big Book of Small, Cool Spaces 
Apartment Therapy Presents 
The Eight-Step Home Cure 
Hunter Bennie Garde...
Make Chocolate Magic Shell Ice Cream Topping with Only 2 Ingredients
How to Cook Moist & Tender Chicken Breasts Every Time
Comments (6)
it needs a little updating...
I used to live in Finland so I have a special place in my heart for all things Alvar Aalto...this makes me happy!
I would have loved a dorm like that!
Great dorm. Aalto is great, and it looks so cool for a 60-year old building. I like the form, and the way it's modern but not to modern.
Aalto's furniture isn't that great, but his building and some other designs (for Iittala) are really great.
That's so weird... I lived in Baker for my first two years at MIT, from 2000-2002. I never got to live in a wedge room, though, because I moved out before I had enough seniority to earn one. If you've seen the other strange buildings at MIT, you wouldn't think that Baker House was so unusual. My other dorm, Simmons, that was strange. We had a constant stream of US and foreign architects trying to get access to that building.
However, the furniture in Baker was pretty cool, and because of the waves of the building, each room was definitely different. It was all very classy.
I lived in Baker House from '98 to '02 both before and after renovations that took it from dark dungeon to liveable. I tried every type of room -- quad, double, coffin and wedge. It was a very unique space to spend 4 years in. Loved it!