October 24, 2004
Frank Gehry's MIT Stata Center
The Ray and Maria Stata Center in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus in Cambridge, MA designed by Frank O. Gehry:
I have posted on this building before in relation to the dreariness of architecture in Adelaide. I would add now, that Australian city's have a deep resistance to architectural innovation.Our cities remain encased in blocks of modernist knockoffs of the Miesian corporate glass box, built by developers who leveraged the economic benefits of standardization whilst skipping most of the original thought.
Gehry launches a direct assault on the restrictive and linear logic of Miesin two ways. First, all the elements that Mies threw out to create his final language - curves, color, reflection, caprice - are now embraced.
It makes for great interiors.
Secondly, Gehry's irregular pearl flaunts the traditional modernist rules of design and proportion in the Miesian tradition, as illustrated by this stata, Robotics Lab and cascade:
A good article from somone who has exoplored this landmark piece of celebrity architecture, which cultural institutions and cities now increasingly define themselves with City of Sound. Doubts are raised.
Are the angled, stacked shapes functional in terms of packing in computers and desks in the internal space?
An answer.
Modernism failed when it was used by developers as faceless, corporate towers that lacked the human scale. Is this human scale recovered with the Ray and Maria Stata Center? Read the account at City of Sound.
It is difficult to assess how this artistic architecture relates to the public spaces of the street in Cambridge. Or does it treat the making of the city street and the public realm as less important than the expression of the individual building by a celebrity architect?