Introducing MapIT, an interactive map of MIT's many labyrinths

The day is August 19th, 2025. This morning, a swarm of young students got out of cars and deboarded planes, luggage in hand and hope in their eyes. They file into their dorms, sign documents, and get their keys. Some begin unpacking, others meet up with friends. They explore campus and the many activities the orientation program has to offer. The class of 2029 has begun to arrive.

When I was also a prefosh one year ago, I remember pacing down Simmons' halls back and forth to find my room for the first time. I struggled to find the Office of the First Year in MIT's Infinite to check myself in. And don't even get me started on the mess that is the Stata center; even after living and breathing MIT for a full year, I still couldn't tell you how to get anywhere in that living art exhibit. (Really. If you haven't been there, it's somewhat akin to those "ultimate treehouse" daydreams we had as kids.) I pride myself on my navigational ability and spatial intuition, and even I get lost in MIT's tunnel network on a frequent basis.

Well, we did something about that.

Introducing MapIT, an online interactive map of MIT's nearly 900 floor plans and 43,000 rooms across over a hundred buildings. We modeled the product after MIT's existing whereis map showing building locations. But oftentimes, whereis falls short when it comes to actually navigating hallways inside these buildings. This is the gap MapIT aims to fill; by painstakingly compiling floor plans and labelling room locations, we have built up a sizable database of rooms to help all students, not just incoming prefrosh, navigate around campus. They can use it to find their classes, where their friend's dorm rooms are at, or offices and resources around campus.

You can browse the map, with floor plan overlays and room labels showing up as you zoom in. Alternatively, you can search for specific buildings or rooms (and in the future, names and classes) to be taken directly to them.

MapIT is live right now at https://mitmapit.org. Note that unfortunately MIT's floor plans are only available to MIT community members for security reasons, and we abide by this policy. So unfortunately you cannot see the full extent of the app if you don't have login, but you are still able to search for buildings.

We hope launching MapIT helps everyone navigate through MIT, and especially right now, ease the transition for prefrosh into their new home!

Future work and roadmap

Active development on this project will continue for at least a full semester! There are many exciting features we plan to add, including

• A stronger search system, with autocomplete and suggestions, including names (e.g. Hayden Library) and classes
• Explicit enumeration of stairways, elevators, ramps, emergency phones, and public entrances
• Explicit enumeration of doorways, in particular locked doors that aren't accessible to the general MIT community
• A MITguessr game similar to Geoguessr

If you are a current student and any of this sounds interesting to you, we'd love for you to join us and contribute to the project!

Credits

The following members of AppDev worked very hard to make this project possible:

• Hailey Pan (team lead), (6-3, c/o 2027)
• Kao Anchaleenukoon, (6-3, c/o 2027)
• Jieruei Chang, (6-5, c/o 2028)
• Grant Hu, (6-3 & 18, c/o 2028)
• Alex Liang, (6-3, c/o 2028)
• Bhadra Rupesh, (6-3, c/o 2028)
• Samantha Shi, (6-3, c/o 2028)
• Eric Zhan, (6-4, c/o 2028)
• Jocelyn Zheng, (6-3, c/o 2027)