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Abstract
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2000 initiated a billion dollar building program featuring buildings by world‐renowned architects, including Frank Gehry and Steven Holl. Gehry’s Stata Center, which houses computer scientists, and Holl’s Simmons Hall dormitory raise questions about the relationship of architecture to MIT’s values. Many MIT faculty, students, and administrators celebrate Gehry’s Stata and Holl’s Simmons as expressing the inventiveness, energy, and excellence of the people within them and as moving the campus into the twenty‐first century. Others ask if MIT has lost its way by choosing elite, costly buildings at an institution historically characterized by utilitarian and functional values.
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted for comments and interviews to Larry Bacow, Rodney Brooks, Mary Hill Caperton, Jonathan Himmel, William Mitchell, Joel Moses, Philip Khoury, Jeff Roberts, O. Robert Simha, Victoria Sirianni, Chris Terman, and Rosalind Williams. Keith Mendenhall of Gehry Partners and Tim Bade of Steven Holl Architects were also of assistance.
Notes
1. My owning one – Robert Venturi’s mother’s house in Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, probably shapes my reaction to these high profile buildings. I admire risk‐taking architects with highly developed aesthetic sensibilities.
2. Williams, Retooling, 32–33.
3. Members included professors Al Vezza of LCS, Alan Wilsky of the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS), and Rodney Brooks of AI.
4. Richardson, ‘Let’s play nicely together’, 18–19.
5. Mitchell to William Dickson, 14 April 1997.
6. Mitchell, Imagining MIT, 83.
7. Philip Khoury, Dean of School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences, urged Provost Joel Moses to include the Philosophy and Linguistics Department in the planning of Stata. Moses wanted increased interaction between Linguistics and Artificial Intelligence.
8. An ‘Institute‐Level’ Architecture Selection Committee included Dickson, who became chair, O. Robert Simha (Director of the Planning Office), Vicky Sirianni (Director of Department of Facilities) Robert Candela (Facilities), Nancy Joyce (Facilities), Professor Chris Terman (Client Committee Representative), and Mitchell. Obviously, it was weighted in favor of planning and facilities staff.
9. Chris Terman to Building Committee, 10 July 1997.
10. Terman to Dickson, 12 December 1997.
11. Terman to Dickson and Sirianni, 19 December 1997.
12. Boston Herald, 30 August 2001.
13. Dertouzos to Brown, 23 December 1997 with copies to Brooks, Terman, Guttag, and Mitchell.
14. Joyce, Building State, xvii.
15. Mitchell, Imagining MIT, 62, 70, and 72.
16. Henke and Gieryn, ‘Sites of Scientific Practice.’
17. American Sociological Association in Chicago. Earlier drafts were presented in colloquia at the University of Colorado, MIT, Stanford, New College, University of Pennsylvania, U.C. San Diego, and, of course, Cornell University.
18. Brand, How Buildings Learn, 52.
19. Mitchell, Imagining MIT, 83.
20. MIT Tech Talk, 16 December 1998.
21. Architecture Plus, July 1973.
22. It also included O. Robert Simha (Director of the Planning Office) and Vicky Sirianni (Director of Department of Facilities)
23. Roberts, ‘Creating Life from a Sponge.’
24. The Canadian Center for Architecture in Montreal held an exhibition entitled ‘Inside the Sponge,’ which dealt with student resident’s reaction to the building.