The building is very box-like, a motif that is consistently repeated in both the interior and exterior design evoking a sense of boxes packed within each other.

It stands apart from the surrounding neighborhood with its flat, gridded skin make of white, modular metal panels.

The building's exterior was designed by Kenneth Noland is meant as a metaphor of technology through the grids of graph paper and number matrices while also quoting the corridor-like morphology of the rest of the MIT campus.

[1] Scott Burton, Alan Shields, and Richard Fleischner also collaborated extensively in the final design of the internal atria and external landscaping.

It is named in honor of former MIT president Jerome Wiesner and his wife Laya and was dedicated in 1985.