Wednesday, November 28, 2007

LensDay: Futuristic

Futuristic
The Stata Center at MIT

Take a good look at this building. To me it looks like something out of Dr Seuss. The construction was not easy. Many of the techniques were untested. You can read about the construction in Building Stata.

MIT is frustrated with what they have called "design flaws" in the building. Frustrated enough that they are suing the architect, Frank Gehry. You can read about the suit here. What gets me about this is that I expect MIT chose Gehry because he pushes the envelope. This building is eye-catching, particularly in the sea of red brick that is Kendall Square. So, MIT chose this design and architect so that they could get a building which will be written about in architecture magazines and texts for years to come. They went into the process knowing that the construction would be tricky and would require the development of new techniques, or at least they should have. Now a couple of years later the building is leaking. MIT is suing the architect because their cutting edge building isn't holding together like a standard rectangular box. It seems to me that if you ask for cutting edge you should expect to need a few bandages, but that's just my opinion.

The good news is that I can just sit back and enjoy the building without worrying about the suit, or the leaks.


More LensDay here.

2 comments:

Kathe said...

It DOES look Seuss-ish!

Rhea said...

Form should follow function. Otherwise you get leaks.