🇺🇸United States·Seen from outside

Ralph Landau Building for Chemical Engineering (MIT Building 66)

Cambridge, Massachusetts

Sources checked November 2026

“A building with a triangular plan, one of four that Pei, an alumnus of the school, designed on the MIT campus.”

Year: 1976
Architect: I. M. Pei
Type: University chemical engineering building
Access: MIT campus building devoted to chemical engineering research, seen from outside

The Ralph Landau Building, or Building 66, is the main research building of MIT's Department of Chemical Engineering, in Cambridge. Designed by I. M. Pei, an MIT graduate of 1940, it dates from 1976. Its footprint is a 30-60-90 triangle.

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History

Building 66 was built in 1976. It is one of four buildings on the MIT campus designed by I. M. Pei, an MIT graduate of 1940, with the Green Building, the Dreyfus Building and the Wiesner Building.

The building has since been renewed: the undergraduate teaching laboratory has been upgraded, along with the spaces for professional mentoring and the offices and meeting rooms used by undergraduates and graduate students alike.

Architecture

The building's footprint is a 30-60-90 triangle. Its frame is cast-in-place concrete, and its single-pane glazing was set straight into pockets left in that frame.

Andrew Scott, a professor in MIT's Department of Architecture, counts Building 66 among his favourites: its triangular shape, he says, resolves the pressures of the surrounding urban geometry with great finesse, and it remains an outstanding laboratory type.