Stata center

STATA

The Ray and Maria Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences at M.I.T.

GEHRY

“Imagining MIT”

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MIT Campus

MIT campus is architectural playground that can excite every architect no matter what his or her tastes may

be. The school is comprised of many well-known buildings by a myriad of well-known architects. Each building is a design lesson in which one can study controlled geometric forms, a collage of forms that appear to be placed in pure chaos, sustainability, and so on. It is said, “MIT’s buildings are a series of bold experiments. A perfect metaphor for a research centered campus” (Campbell).

Out of MIT’s 158 buildings, 9 will be mentioned in the following paragraphs because of their notable

features (MIT Facilities). One of the most interesting aspects of MIT’s campus is that noticeable design was not just saved for the academic buildings but is also present in the residences and athletic facilities located on campus. The individual buildings will be focused on and not the campus design as a whole because of the way MIT became to be what it is today. Robert Campbell, an architectural columnist said, “universities today grow not as an integrated complex but one building at a time.” MIT is a great example as the campus seems to best viewed as a series of parts rather than as a campus whole.

The MIT campus itself is located on a 168-acre piece of land in Cambridge, Massachusetts (wiki). The north

side of the campus is bordered by the Charles River across which lies the Back Bay of Boston (wiki). Buildings on campus are labeled by number and often called by that number even when that particular building has been given an official name. The numbering of the building helps guide one through the campus grounds with little confusion (wiki).

The campus was built in four main eras: Pre WWII, War and Post War, Second Century Fund, and

the Evolving Campus (wiki). The dozens of buildings built represent diverse architectural styles and shifting campus priorities (wiki). Each era is marked by distinct building styles: neoclassical, modernist, brutalist, and deconstructivist (wiki).

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Pre WWII (1910-1940) The main complex

William Welles Bosworth, Beaux-Arts Style. The main building on campus went through many designs and many architects before the final proposal was chosen (Mitchell). The resulting building is more of a collection of buildings. Bosworth used elements from previous proposals to come up with his own design. The complex is a large, multi-armed building with a large central court known as Killian court (Mitchell). The court, oriented to Charles River, is used for commencement ceremonies (wiki). The Great Dome sits on top of Building 10 and is often used as a symbol of the university (wiki).

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4. Mitcham War and Post-war (1940-1960) Building 20

1942-1996. Building 20 was a temporary building used during WWII to develop radar (Campbell). The radiation laboratory was “a huge, ugly warehouse of timber framing and asbestos siding” (Mitchell, Campbell). It was a pre-fabricated, modular building that made no gestures to the Beaux Arts style of earlier campus architecture (Mitchell). When the war ended, so did the buildings function as a radiation lab and so the offices were taken over by computer science, artificial intelligence, and other disciplines. The quality of research conducted within its walls gave Building 20 the nickname, “magic incubator” (Campbell). The greatness of the building was thought to be the lack of architecture. “You could bang holes in walls or ceilings or invent crazy experiments, because nobody cared what happened to Building 20” (Campbell).

Building 20 was eventually torn down to make way for the new computer science building, the Stata Center. “Gehry says he hopes researchers will treat the Stata as disrespectful as they treated Building 20- that they’ll take it over, mess it up, and modify it as they like.” The question remains, “will the buildings inhabitants be willing to mess with such an expensive iconic building?”(Campbell)

“

They loved Building 20 because they could beat it up.

-Gehry

”

Baker House

Alvar Aalto 1949, modern. Aalto taught at MIT from 1940-1945.

After he left his teaching position, he was asked to design a dormitory in his modernistic style (Mitchell). The Baker house was completed in 1949 and is still recognized as a masterpiece of modernism (MIT Facilities).

The building is famous for an ingenious wave plan (MIT Facilities).

Many diagrams and massing options were analyzed and the final for was chosen because it provided the best light, views, and privacy from the busy street (Mitchell). The undulating shape give many views out to the Charles River. Aalto designed the furniture specifically for this dormitory because the curve of the building made wedge shaped dorm rooms. The custom designed furniture maximizes the use of the limited amount of space (wiki).

“

All the buildings is has to go with are brick walls punctured with little windows. The chapel was a building that did not need that kind of window.

The buildings immediately around that are no damned good and may come down. I hope so.

”

-Eero Saarinen MIT Chapel

Eero Saarinen 1955, modern. The chapel is located on the western part of the campus, surrounded by housing and recreation (MIT Facilities). On the exterior, the chapel presents itself as a plain, brick cylinder (wiki). The concept was to bring in natural light into a dark interior creating a spiritual space (Mitchell). The building is surrounded by a moat to separate it further from the urban landscape and into its inner world of contemplation (MIT Facilities). The interior is quite magical with undulating brick walls that would never be imagined to be found within such a simple form. Light enters the space by reflection off the moat and plays against the pulsating walls (wiki). A second source of light highlights a shimmering, golden sculpture that hangs above the chapel’s altar (MIT Facilities).

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Kresge Auditorium

Eero Saarinen 1955, modern. The Kresge was designed in tandem with his MIT Chapel as a small scale urban project (Mitchell). The two buildings separated by a small green space is referred to by students as the “Kresge Oval” (wiki). Kresge was seen as an experiment to Saarinen in which he “explored new technologies for the ancient problem of long-span vaulted space” (Mitchell). The Auditorium was where MIT students and faculty could gather for formal events, the chapel was intended for marriages and memorial (wiki).

The auditorium is defined by an elegant thin-shell structure of reinforced concrete, one-eighth of a sphere rising to a height of 50 feet, and sliced away by sheer glass curtain walls so that it comes to earth on only three points (wiki).Every seat in concert hall has an unobstructed view since there are no interior supports for the overarching dome. Working with renowned acoustical architects Bolt, Beranek and Newman, architect Saarinen employed free-hanging acoustic “clouds” that absorb and direct sound, instead of a traditional plaster ceiling. These clouds also contain lights, loudspeakers, and ventilation (wiki).

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There is no color on the outside of the building. There is no color on the inside. It is only in the thickness of the wall that you find the color, in the no-man’s land between inside and outside.

�

-Steven Holl

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The Evolving Campus (1990-present) Simmons Holl

Steven Holl 2002, Post Modern. After the death of a freshmen student in off campus housing, MIT settled the resulting lawsuit under the condition that all freshmen will be required to live in campus housing (wiki). This event led to the need for more residential buildings to be built on MIT grounds to accommodate the increasing number of students who would need housing. Steven Holl was chosen for the project (Mitchell). Holl designed a “ten-story dormitory for 350 undergraduate students and faculty is punctuated by terraces and atria and includes a computer cluster, fitness center, music rooms and street-level dining” (MIT Facilities). The “porous” dormitory has 5,538 windows that are 2-foot square (wiki).

Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex

Charles Chorrea, 2006, modern. The brain and cognitive sciences complex was the first building on campus to receive a LEED-Silver certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (MIT Facilities). The complex uses high-performance exterior materials and incorporates gray-water recycling for toilets, heat recovery on the exhaust air stream, and interior finishes that impose a minimal impact on indoor air quality (MIT Facilities).

The largest neuroscience center in the world, this interdisciplinary research and teaching facility integrates three pioneering institutions devoted to uncovering the mysteries of the brain: The Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences, the McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory (MIT Facilities).

The Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex was born of a collaboration between two architecture firms and reflects the extraordinary vision of the lead designer, Charles Correa, and the exceptional design of laboratories and research spaces by Goody, Clancy and Associates (MIT Facilities). A triumph of urban design and engineering, the complex sits on top of an active freight rail corridor and is built around a soaring five-story atrium (MIT Facilities). Classrooms, offices, conference rooms, wet and dry laboratories, imaging centers, libraries, tearooms, an auditorium, and a five-story atrium coexist with—and contribute to—the life of the surrounding community (MIT Facilities).

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“

A lot of the buildings at MIT are like rabbit warrens--fine for the rabbits who live and worke there, but difficult for someone comming in.

�

-Charles Correa

11.

MIT Hacks

While most are used to thinking of hackers as criminals on computer networks, at MIT the word “hacker” has a completely different connotation. The word refers to “someone who does some sort of interesting and creative work at a high intensity level. This applies to anything from writing computer programs to pulling a clever prank that amuses and delights everyone on campus” (Hack Gallery). The letters IHTFP has been the unofficial motto of MIT hackers for years.

It usually stand for “I Hate This F* Place” or nicely put “Interesting Hacks To Fascinate People” (Hack Gallery).

Paper Airplanes:

During CPW 2007, students in the Aero/Astro class “Unified

Engineering” placed large paper airplanes in Lobby 10 and Stata. The planes appeared to be made out of huge Athena laser-printer header pages.Aero/Astro’s Unified Engineering is considered to be one of the more challenging classes at MIT. In “Unified”, students are presented with a broad survey of topics relating to aeronautics and astronautics. As such, building giant paper airplanes must have seemed like a great way to let off steam. Athena laser-printer header pages contain a username as well as some form of graph or lined paper to make them be more reusable. One plane bore the name joe_b. “Joe B” is the name of a fictitious person who determines how tests in Aero/Astro are graded. The plane on the west side of Lobby 10 bore the name “punt” on it. “Punting” is MIT jargon for avoiding doing work. The plane in Stata bore the name “xvi”, the course number of the Aero/ Astro department in Roman numerals.

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Broomstick Parking:

July 20, 2007. A broomstick parking area, complete with broomsticks, appeared in the Stata Center on the day before the release of the seventh Harry Potter novel.

Where’s Waldo?

December 15, 2006. He’s on the Stata Center.

UFO:

April 13, 2008. On the last day of MIT’s Campus Preview Weekend 2008, a UFO appeared atop one of the Stata Center’s protrusions complete with a “hole” through the large white wall behind it. The UFO featured a stuffed “alien” crawling out through a hole smashed in the windshield and color-changing LEDs around the circumfrence of the half-spherical top.

VOMIT:

February 9, 2006. Hackers prepended a matching “V” and “O” to the chrome “MIT” sign in front of the Stata Center, perhaps to express their opinion of the architecture, or perhaps as a commentary on the start of term.

13.

Frank Gehry: The “Starchitect”

Frank Gehry is considered a modern architectural icon and celebrity. The term “Starchitect” is given to architects with similar fame. Starchitects are known for dramatic, influential designs that often “achieve fame and notoriety through their spectacular effect” (wiki). Gehry himself is the epitome of this term. He has appeared in Apple Commercials and in cartoons such as the Simpsons and Arthur. In 2005, a documentary was released called Sketches of Frank Gehry where he and others gave commentary on his work (wiki). His buildings have become tourist attractions not for what is in them but for what they are (wiki). Gehry’s architectural fame has also helped sell his other designs of sculpture, jewelry, furniture, and even a hat for Lady Gaga (wiki).

Gehry’s style of architecture is often referred to as Deconstructivism. Define. DeCon architecture is not required to reflect specific social or universal ideas; they do not reflect the belief that “form follows function” (wiki). Gehry’s own residence is an example of DeCon as it is so drastically divorced from its context (wiki). One critic of Gehry’s Deconstructivism style is that his works “seems unfinished or crude” (wiki). Gehry buildings are “characterized by unconventional or distorted shapes that have sculptural, fragmented, or collage like quality.” In design, Gehry “tends to cluster small units within a larger space rather than creating monolithic structures, thus emphasizing human scale.” Gehry is also often associated with the Los Angeles School or Santa Monica School of Architecture (wiki). The modernistic style is a response to the prevalence of “commercial stuccoed cubes” found in the area.

Gehry sitting in the Las Vegas Cleveland Clinic during construction.

“

”

I approach each building as a sculptural object.

-Frank Gehry

Gehry studied at University of Southern California’s School of Architecture where he received his bachelors in 1954 (Futagawa). After a short period spent away from the architecture

field, he attended Harvard Graduate School for a year in 1956, but left before receiving his degree (Futagawa). The lack of a master’s degree has not slowed down the architect’s career and today he has received honorary doctoral degrees from many institutions (Futagawa).

In 1962, Gehry founded his own firm and practiced an architecture style that most would not connect to his name (Futagawa). In 1978, Gehry used his own home as an experiment in developing a new style. This brought Gehry attention in the architectural world and he began receiving larger more noticeable projects.

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Gehry Partners, LLP

“A full service firm with broad international experience in academic, commercial, museum, performance, and residential projects.

The Gehry partnership, Gehry Partners, LLP, was formed in 2001 and currently supports a staff of over 120 people. Gehry Partners employs a large number of senior architects who have extensive experience in the technical development of building systems and construction documents, and who are highly qualified in the management of complex projects.

Every project undertaken by Gehry Partners is designed personally and directly

by Frank Gehry. All of the resources of the firm and the extensive experience of the firm’s partners are available to assist in the design effort and to carry this effort forward through technical development and construction administration. The firm relies on the use of Digital Project, a sophisticated 3D computer modeling program originally created for use by the aerospace industry, to thoroughly document designs and to rationalize the bidding, fabrication, and construction processes.”

-Gehry Partners

“

Gehry Technologies

“The process of designing and constructing a building is complex. Innovations guiding productivity, advanced cost analysis and quality improvements in other industries – such as rapid and iterative design, concurrent engineering, cycle time management, and supply chain optimization – are now being utilized by the architecture, engineering, and construction industries” (Gehry Technoloogies).

Building information modeling, 3D construction logistics program values offer many tangible and intangible benefits: • Better overall project comprehension for project analysis, estimates and proposals.

• Reduction in quantity take-off preparation time, error, and unanticipated change cost.

• Reduction in project schedule delay risk with better communication, and identification of optimal construction sequences and object spatial clashes in advance of construction.

• Reduction of injury and cost through highlighting and resolving safety issues in advance.

Dancing House in Prague 1995 <<<The Experience Music Project in Seattle, Washingoton 2000 >>>Walt Disney Hall

2003

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”

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Throughout varying project phases, a 4D model can be compared against actual site conditions to validate that work is on time and complete.

-Gehry Technologies

List of Buildings Gehry Residence

Santa Monica, California

1978

Air and Space exhibit building, California Museum of Science and Industry

Los Angeles, California

1984

Vitra Design Museum

Weil am Rhein, Germany

1989

Chiat/Day Building

Venice, California

1991

Disney Village

Disneyland, Paris France

1992

Frederick Weisman Museum of Art

University of Minnesota, Min- 1993 neapolis

Dancing House

Prague, Czech Republic

1995

Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Bilbao, Spain

1997

Der Neue Zollho

D端sseldorf, Germany

1999

DZ Bank building

Pariser Platz, Berlin, Germany 2000

Experience Music Project

Seatle, Washington

2000

Walt Disney Concert Hall

Los Angeles, California

2003

Ray and Maria Stata Center

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

2004

Jay Pritzker Pavilion

Millennium Park, Chicago Illinois

2004

Jay Pritzker Pavilion and BP Pedestrian Bridge in Millennium Park, Chicago, Illinois 2004

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BP Pedestrian Bridge

Millennium Park, Chicago Illinois

2004

IAC Building

Chelsea, New York City

2004

Art Gallery of Ontario

Toronto, Ontario

2008

Peter B. Lewis Library

Princeton University, Princeton 2008 New Jersey

Novartis Pharma A.G. Campus

Basel, Switzerland

2009

Lou Ruvo Center for Brain Health

Las Vegas, Nevada

2010

New York by Gehry at Eight Spruce Street

New York City, New York

2011

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Frank Gehry has been called the Industrial Adhocist, the Father of Botched Joint, the Son of Bruce Goff, the Leonardo of Galvanized Sheet Metal, the Malevich of Lighting, the Rodchenko of the Non-Sequitur, the Noble Savage of Santa Monica, Daniel Boone, and -worst of all- the First Decontructivist Architect.

And he was called all these things not by an enemy but by a sympathetic critic.

-Robert A.M. Stern

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The IAC Building, New York City 2007 Art Gallery of Ontarion in Toronto 2008 Renovation

“

What makes Gehry’s work so compelling is its capacity to raise the level of the real to the realm of the ideal, to transform ordinary raw materials into essential formal elements of an intriguiging architecture.

”

-Robert A.M. Stern

Beekman Place: New York City

<<< Las Vegas Cleveland Clinic, 2008 >>> 8 Spruce St.

Beekman Tower

New York City 2011

“Building Stata”1

A new era of building on MIT campus was driven by “a need for academic buildings as diverse, innovative and audacious as the community in them” (Hughes). Several buildings were built in the past 10-15 years to meet these needs including Simmons Hall, the Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, the Stata Center, and more. MIT president, Chuck Vest, wanted a MIT architecture to “reflect the boldness and confidence in our future” (Campbell). The school was specifically in need of a new computer sciences building to replace Building 20.

“The way computer scientists work is changing” and MIT needed a building that reflected this change; a new building that offered a fresh look at networks, collaboration, and even architecture for such spaces (Hapgood).

Frank Gehry was chosen to take on this new project because his design would “expresses the inventiveness, energy, and excellence of the people within (its walls)” (Hughes) The playfulness of Stata has led to descriptions of building looking “like the freeze frame of a Disney animation” (Campbell).

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Stata appears to be about to collapse. Columns tilt at scary angles and walls teeter, swerve, and collide in random curves and angles. Materials change wherever you look: brick, mirror-surface steel, brushed aluminum, brightly colored paint, corrugated metal. Everything looks improvised, as if thrown up at the last moment.

-Robert Cambell FIA

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Design Development

Designing Stata was a new challenge for Gehry Partners. Project Designer, Craig Webb said, “It is one of the most in depth and contentious program processes the firm has ever been involved in.”

Gehry’s team built dozens of study models to structure critical discussions in order to lead their design in the right direction. “Unexpected metaphors to shake up preconceptions” were used in the initial concept (Mitchell). The team sought out new ways for the scientific community to interact. Analogies from other cultures were used to “illustrate possible social models of research” (Russell). The concepts ranged from the moveable Japanese Shoji screens to the fixed spaces of a Colonial mansion to a prairie-dog town where “the private spaces are below and you would pop your head up to see what others are doing in the communal space.” (Russell) The final concept was drawn from an orangutan village where “family groups spend their days together on the ground but sleep in separate nest trees.” This idea equated to quiet, private workspaces placed above areas for meeting, relaxing, and conversation. (Russell)

The architecture supports three levels of interaction: first among team members, then among members of adjoining teams, and final among all the teams, in a town center on the first floor. (Hapgood).

“

We study in models alot.

When we make a specific element on a model, we are trying to break down the scale and shift the scale of the pieces in order to avoid its becoming big and monolithic.

–Frank Gehry

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“

Am I able to visualize what happens? Welll in the design phase, when I am looking at the models, I have an intuition that set things in motion. It’s like a ripple effect-when you throw a rock into the water, the ripples go out. I am confident that those ripples are going to be what they ultimately become. Not that I know exactly each and every picture, but I follow the details of the materials.

–Frank Gehry

”

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Organization of the Bldg 420,000 square feet on top of a 300,000 square foot garage 1st floor- student street and classrooms, day care, fitness center 2nd floor- warehouse 3rd floor-warehousevv4th floor- faculty dining, pub, terrace, seminar rooms 5th floor- two c-shaped towers The complex program includes a fitness center, day care, classrooms, a dance studio, amphitheater, and food service as well as pubs for relaxing. (Hapgood, Russell)

Though it may not seem obvious, every move Gehry makes has a purpose. The folded canopies on the outside of the building denote entry into the student street, a space that is open and accessible to the whole MIT community (Russell). The student street is broken up with nooks and crannies that invite students and faculty to stop, mingle, and stay awhile (Russell). Amenities such as vending machines, automatic teller machines, telephones, information kiosks, seating areas, and student club booths can be found along the street (Joyce).

The overall building is made up of several smaller pieces articulated with different shapes and colors.

“Each one given names inspired by their shape: the Star, the Kiva, Achilles, Buddha, Pisa, the Heart, the Helment, the Giraffe, the Nose, the Twins” (Campbell). Kiva is the yellow cylinder that shows up in many Stata photographs. It is a chapel like seminar room that rises up 45ft to a skylight that allows natural light to flood the space (Campbell).

The Warehouse, located on the 2nd and 3rd floors, stretches over more than 40,000 square feet of the building and is separated from the student street by vestibules so that researchers can circulate freely within the building. (Russell) It is intended to house programs that require large, open laboratory space (Joyce).

The two brick towers offer in a “finer-grained gradation of privacy” than the Warehouse area (Joyce).

The c-shaped towers curve to focus their attention on double height lounges which research neighborhoods share. Gehry’s concept for this are was “a neighborhood hub-and-spoke arrangement (Hughes). The two towers make little sense functionally, but it was essential to getting the project funded (Mitchell). Naming of buildings give opportunity to recognize large donations and these two represent the donation given by Bill Gates and Dreyfoos (Mitchell).

“

We push the trades. Skanska and Cannon will go out and use CATIA from now on. They got trained here. Some of the trades are open minded and view this as a real chance to go to the next level. There will be tremendous change in the construction industry and we are way at the head of it –Frank Gehry

”

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“Stata couldn’t have been designed or built without computers. Gehry’s office is a pioneer in computer technologies. During construction, it trained members of the contracting firm, Skanska USA and the associate architects, Cannon Design of Boston” (Campbell) The use of computer technology in design, fabrication, and on-site operations allowed a complex, non repetitive building, like Stata, to be produced within normal budget and schedule restraints” (Mitchell)

Gehry’s team worked in physical models in initial design stages. Once they were happy with what they had, the model was “digitalized, refined in Rhino, then imported into CATIA for engineering and fabrication.” The CATIA model was subdivide by building element (exterior skin, windows, concrete structure, steel structure, framing devices) and used by different specialist to build their part of the building (Russell). The digital models also allowed for building analysis to determine “day lighting, acoustics, and computational fluid dynamics for sizing the HVAC system” (Russell).

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Cost and Delays

The Stata has been criticized for being over budget and taking too long to build.

(Campbell). But like all criticisms one must see the larger picture in order to understand the outcomes of certain events. The initial price tag for the Stata was $100 million, but the program was much smaller when that price was set (Campbell, Silber). MIT added on numerous amenities over the course of the project including a 700-car underground parking garage (Campbell).

Another factor that effects both time and budget is the availability of a work force. At the time Stata was being built, one of the largest construction undertakings in the world was happening right next door. The Big Dig was giving Boston builders more work than they could handle and finding extra hands that werenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t already over their heads in engineering feats was quite difficult (Campbell). But in the end, both projects were finished in 2004. If MIT was willing to hold off construction just 4 years, then the labor expense would have decreased significantly (Mitchell).

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MIT was competng with the Big Dig for skilled tradespeople. Bidding for the project took place in 2000 and 2001, the height fo Boston-area construction activity.

-Nancy E. Joyce

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Critics Like all of Gehry’s work, the Stata has received its fair share or criticism. Some of the opposition is merely from traditionalists who don’t understand the new style of architecture.

John Silber in Architecture of the Absurd attacks many of Gehry’s buildings, but saves Stata for a closing argument in his book. In an interview, Silber said Stata “really is a disaster.” He says Gehry “thinks of himself as an artist, as a sculptor. But the trouble is you don’t live in a sculpture and users have live in this building” (Silber). In his book, Silber identifies Gehry’s two main strategies and how both of these have failed to do anything good for the building.

The first strategy was to open up the space with minimal usage of walls in order to encourage social interaction. The lack of walls was eventually changed to installing glass walls that still gave a visual openness to the space. scientists who didn’t like this openness have taped up paper in order to gain a little bit of privacy. “Gehry’s design has given Stata Center the worst aspects of small town life. Talk to a colleague about a work issue or personal problem and the whole town knows with whom you are speaking” (Silber) For some the openness of the design made them feel that they were put on display and have compared Stata to a zoo (Hughes).

“

When Gehry is hired, the partnership of client and architect is virtual except when it comes to paying the bill.

–John Silber Architecture of the Absurd

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The second strategy was to “place a pedestrian street through the heart of the building to give the center the feel of a friendly neighborhood” (Silber). The street is lined with huge blackboards and walls of cork for the passerby to write down their spontaneous inspiration.

Unfortunately, these boards are not used by serious scientists but by children, graffiti artists, and advertisers (Silber).

The final critic is the same for almost every building: Cost Overruns. “It takes a whole lot of money to look this cheap” (Silber). While looking only at numbers, Silber has a point.

The original estimated cost was $232 per square foot making it a $100 million building. The final cost was $442 per square foot setting the total at $315 million (Silber).

After the Stata was built, Gehry and Robert Venturi were invited to MIT in order to debate the styles of Architecture appropriate for Universities (Campbell). Venturi was adamantly against the Gehry design for scientist and “wishes that Gehry had left the interior vanilla instead of difficult-to-alter and complex” (Campbell, Hughes). For Venturi, “a building should be a place where the cutting edge happens in the activites of the users, not one where it has already happened in the architecture” (Campbell).

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Lawsuit

On October 31, 2007, MIT filed a negligence suit against architect Frank Gehry and the construction companies, Skanska USA Building Inc. and NER Construction Management (Murphy). The lawsuit claim that Gehry and Skanska “provided deficient design services and drawings” which caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, drainage to back up, and falling ice and debris to block emergency exits (Dey). A Skanska spokesperson said that prior to construction Gehry ignored warnings from Skanska and a consulting company regarding flaws in his design of the amphitheater, and rejected a formal request from Skanska to modify the design (Murphy).

In an interview, Mr. Gehry, whose firm was paid $15 million for the project, he said construction problems were inevitable in the design of complex buildings (Murphy). “These things are complicated,” he said, “and they involved a lot of people, and you never quite know where they went wrong. A building goes together with seven billion pieces of connective tissue. The chances of it getting done ever without something colliding or some misstep are small”(Gehry). “I think the issues are fairly minor,” he added. “M.I.T. is after our insurance.” He also said, “value engineering—the process by which elements of a project are eliminated to cut costs—was largely responsible for the problems (Dey). “There are things that were left out of the design,” he said. “The client chose not to put certain devices on the roofs, to save money” (Gehry).

According to the suit, it cost MIT more than $1.5 million to hire another company to repair the amphitheater (Dey). The lawsuit was reportedly settled in 2010 with most of the issues having been resolved (Dey).

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