BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI:
12 ROOMS
One of six installations for the online exhibition by winners of the 2025 League Prize.
12 Rooms sits between documenting the past and constructing the traces of a new possible space.
Through a series of mediums—built installation, video, photographs, and drawings—the installation explores the presence and history of brick construction in Cambridge, and the stories embedded within it, particularly those connected to the MIT campus.
It is an invitation to reflect on the built stories that live within the buildings we inhabit—events, dialogues, discussions, and inventions that are part of the spaces’ memory.
Walls delineate spaces. They act as physically built lines that make room for things to happen. They are solid and tangible; they are also political. Walls can enable or divide, conceal or project, separate or hold together.
This exhibition is composed of a series of parts. Firstly, an installation designed and built at MIT Kresge Oval in April 2025, as part of Artfinity, an Institute-sponsored event celebrating creativity and community at MIT, organized by the Office of the Arts. Secondly, a video produced by BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI for the Architectural League Prize Exhibition, which reflects on brick construction in Cambridge in relation to our installation, alongside a series of photographs and drawings that document this work.
12 Rooms reconstructs the spaces at MIT where pivotal inventions and research were born. From the telephone and the first digital computer to early prototypes of email, these innovations are inseparable from the labs, lecture halls, classrooms, and offices at MIT—some of which now exist only in memory, remnants of buildings that no longer stand.
12 Rooms assembles a selection of rooms spanning time and space. By extracting the footprints of these rooms, we crafted a new spatial composition that allows visitors to step back into these spaces and learn about groundbreaking inventions that took place within them. The installation is both a reconstruction of old spaces and the trace of a new possible collective space.
This exhibition reflects on the many stories that live within the buildings we inhabit, as well as how new readings of the traces of those spaces—physically displaced into public space—can make room for other forms of collective and public engagement.
Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Image credit: Jabari Canada
12 ROOMS inventory of plans. From upper left: Woman’s Chemical Laboratory, George Eastman Research Laboratory, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Building, Dover House, Parsons Laboratory, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Building, Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Building, Rogers Building Huntington Hall, Ray and Maria Stata Center, Barta Building Computer Room, Whitehead Institute, McCormick Center. Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
12 Rooms plan. Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Image credit: Qingyang Xie
Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Isometric close-up. Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Isometric close-up. Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Construction module detail. Image credit: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Installation opening at MIT Kresge Oval. Project credits: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, & Leandro Piazzi) & GIORGIS ORTIZ (Adriana Giorgis & Evan Ortiz). Installation Team: Farnaz Seyed, Jonathan Lira, David Lafond, Catherine Yu, Geoffrey Hazard, Yuyang Li (Sunnie) & Sabrina Tian. Photo credits: Qingyang Xie
Bricks ready for donation and reuse after installation closing. Photo credits: BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI
Credits
INSTALLATION AT MIT
This project was designed and built by:
BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi)
GIORGIS ORTIZ (Adriana Giorgis and Evan Ortiz)
Installation Team:
Farnaz Seyed, Jonathan Lira, David Lafond, Catherine Yu , Geoffrey Hazard, Yuyang Li (Sunnie), and Sabrina Tian
Host institution/organization:
MIT Arts Festival
Location:
Killian Court, Cambridge, MA
PHOTOS
BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi)
Jabari Canda
Qingyang Xie
VIDEO & DRAWINGS
BALSA CROSETTO PIAZZI (Juan Manuel Balsa, Rocio Crosetto Brizzio, and Leandro Piazzi)