There are staircases at both the east and west sides, whose exterior facades present a vast windowless expanse relieved only by one-story-tall concrete recessed panels.

Its roof supports meteorological instruments and radio communications equipment, plus a white spherical radome enclosing long-distance weather radar apparatus.

[11] Students and staff pointed out the company's involvement with climate change denial and questioned the ethics of accepting Shell's donation, labeling the use of fossil fuel money to fund environmental research as "greenwashing".

[12] Large wood panels were temporarily erected in the open concourse to block the wind, and revolving doors were later installed at the ground floor entries to somewhat ameliorate the problem.

[13] A popular but incorrect myth states that Alexander Calder's sculpture La Grande Voile (The Big Sail) was installed in front of the building to deflect the strong winds.

[15] In 1993, one widely viewed hack repurposed the nine top-floor windows as an enormous digital VU meter for the traditional Fourth of July concert of the Boston Pops orchestra.

[16] Several other simpler hacks have used the entire window array for stationary displays; this practice is sufficiently commonplace to have acquired the term greenspeak[17][18] (which should not be confused with the famously obscure pronouncements[19][20] of former Federal Reserve Bank chairman Alan Greenspan).

An understanding has been reached with the Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences (EAPS), which is headquartered in the Green Building, to allow the light display hardware to remain installed in each window.

[24][25] After the shooting death of MIT Campus Patrolman Sean Collier by the alleged bombers a few days later, a 250 foot (76 m) black ribbon pattern was displayed in his memory.

[27][28] Launching of projectiles from the roof is strongly discouraged, risking deflection by the unpredictable high wind gusts and posing a serious danger to passersby and to residents of nearby East Campus dormitory.

At midnight on the last Saturday of October, First West (the smallest hall in the East Campus dorm) drops a large number of pumpkins (up to the low hundreds) off the roof of the Green Building.

[35] This grassy area is flanked by the 33-ton metal sculpture La Grande Voile (The Big Sail), one of Alexander Calder's "stabile" artworks.

Designed by Meejin Yoon, an Associate Professor of Architecture, Wind Screen was an array of wind-driven micro-turbine generators that would light up whenever there was enough air movement.

On May 18, 2013, a night-time projection on the radome on the rooftop of the Green Building by artist David Yann Robert beamed the image of Bengali polymath and biophysicist Sir Jagadish Chandra Bose during a lecture-performance on plant signaling and behavior.