Mind Space: A Haveli At MIT by Charles Correa

Architect Charles Correa has returned to his alma mater, the renowned Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), with a gift.

His latest creation, the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Building, has brought to Cambridge, the sedate New England town with its elite institutions of learning, a touch of the Indian haveli-its play of harnessed light, its muted sounds.

The structure is a seven-storey affair of Portuguese limestone and glass, covering a floor area of 4,11,000 sq feet.

It houses three of the world's foremost cutting-edge centres for brain science studies-the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, the Picower Center for Learning and Memory and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences.

The building, located at the intersection of Vassar and Main Streets, rises from what was once a rundown area of Cambridge, a neighbourhood Correa has been familiar with since his days as a young man studying architecture at MIT, in the early 1950s.

It was inaugurated on November 4 by Massachusetts senator John Kerry.

"I wouldn't have done a building just anywhere," Correa says, standing across the street from his creation.

"A place must speak to you. I know and understand the MIT campus, I knew you had to change the mood of this street."

Across the street is the work of another celebrated architect-the Stata