Not everyone loves the Stata Center - curmudgeon James Howard Kunstler has nominated it as his May 2004 Eyesore of the Month: www.kunstler.com/eyesore.html Bet Seattle Library is his June nomination.

Good to see Loomis in the House. Get ready...

Take a look at Kunstler's comments about Abu Ghraib! Shocking.

I think he does have a point, though, concerning the base of the building. The landscape planters block the view of the building base. That's a first year studio mistake!! Gehry+co should know that this is perceptually disturbing and it creates a dank walkway between the planter and the building to collect candy-wrappers.

The exposed rain gutters also seem like an afterthought.

That's definitely one ugly building. The worst thing to me with Gerhy is the total boredom of the inside spaces when you compare them to the enveloppe. When you enter Bilbao fro instance. I bet this one is even worst, since it's not even spectacular but just ridiculous from the outside...

a lot of the forms seem like re-do's.
fog takes a vacation.

re-do's? ha! you my friend, need to understand the soul. the spirit of architecture is in you, a beam of light from heaven. i need you to need to feel the ways of the spirit-ual uplift. you need to comprehend that we are all blood-brothers, and that frank gehry makes sharp metal things for this to accomodate us in our quest for the bloody truth.

Huh? What the hell did you just say?

Gehry's buildings are not the most difficult things to design from the exterior. thus, inappropriately configured interior spaces. Note: his sketches are not that entailed. detailed. wispy lines and curves. all exterior forms. he's reached a level of normalcy in his own extensive array of whimsical designs. kind of an oversaturation of insane angles, curves just becomes.....boring.

overrated.

MIT arch students are probably not very excited about their new "masterpiece"

because the "administration" wanted adulation, attention, and ultimately the evil in us all- more MONEY- they vouched for a "gehry masterpiece" as a part of their campus- giving him full reign on how to totally fuck up this great school's image with commercial starchitecture...

needless to say- my opinon. the mit "village" should be pelted and burned down by the archies on a drunken late night.

so kyll...

gehry is the only piece of starchitecture on mit's campus?
holl, i.m. pei, aalto, saarinen, ...i can't disagree more...i don't
necessarily like the building and see it as a rehash in some
ways, but the city of boston hasn't built much star architecture except
for this campus...at least not lately..i mean there's copley sq...
pei's tower, pei's christian science center and johnson's library...
the carpenter center by corb, a few michado silvetti, office da,
kennedy/violich, shwartz silver projects...
but for the most part a project of this type hasn't been built since
the seventies...if you want to criticize some buildings..look at the
developer monstrosities in kendall sq...at least this got built which
i think reflects a mindset switch (hopefully) in boston...think of
the harvard projects that have been crushed...piano's museum..
a hollein building...

i can agree with you that gehry has been getting stale...but mit
bringing in gehry is more of a continuation of an architectural
tradition than an attempt to get a building from one star...

jmo

my friend lars

pei would never consider himself a "starchitect". nor would aalto, saarinen, or steven holl. no matter how large their buildings get.

if the task by mit is to continue a tradition stellar architect's work, then why not go after calatrava, Rem, or Herzog&Dem., or even to stick with the complete turn of the esoteric design- Diller+Scofidio? Why go with Gehry? not for his latest buildings that are either blinding their neighbors (Disney hall)or pissing off the inhabitants (Bilbao)- couldnt be for his low budgets- nor his spatial planning capabilities. definitely not for his widely accepted and understood aesthetic appeal. (World hockey trophy design- when unveiled the room stood silent, and not from awe)

look- its a status symbol. like someone who's winning 80K a year and has to buy a 2 family house to pay the mortgage yet they drive an S-class 2004 Mercedes. a "gehry"- just like nyc is drueling for (especially after the fateful guggenheim was nixxed), and every other major city & state- heck- even country.

commercial status architecture. something to look at. not be inside of. which negates the definition of architecture altogether.

but- to make this argument viably fair:

ANY MIT STUDENTS/GRADS - PLEASE POST AS TO WHAT YOU THINK OF YOUR NEW "GEHRY" VILLAGE

kyll,

i guess i don't understand the definition of 'starchitect'...
what other architect would you put in this same category with gehry?
especially once you exclude rem, pei, h&m, diller, scofidio & renfro,
even calatrava...(i disagree with rem and pei btw...pei at the time was
exactly what gehry is now...)

i guess what you disagree with in 'the village' is the form which
is clearly gehry...or his work in general which i understand...although
i disagree with the examples that you site..or at least the slight problems you site with these buildings...
...the 'bilbao effect' is not an architectural phenomena or categorization..
but one that has attracted many..and i don't know how you can hate
on the disney hall...or at least only because the titanium reflects sun..

i think that it could be likely that in the future mit may hire firms like rem and ds&r and calatrava once they have a few more buildings and
a bit more experience...although mit's experience of working with
holl may taint them from future work...

do you know something i don't where gehry's building has been
way over budget?...i saw him speak on this project and part of his
presentation talked about how he convinced mit to get more money
before he started...

you also know that the gehry building is a science building right?..
i don't believe the architecture school has been moved into it..

Kyll, you're looking on the wrong discussion. For MIT students, try Slashdot. Ex.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/05/09/1852207

to le boss man, >>>>> i think you're right dude, cool !! :o)

An MIT computer scientist who (I presume) works at the Stata center has phlogged a bunch of pics from the Stata.

http://grorg.org/photos/2004/04/stata/

too funny.
well, now that i'm in this discussion...here are some flickr pics tagged with stata:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/stata/

amadeus are you saying that frank gehry is gay?

a theme park on angel dust. classic.

also in an issue of boston architect read a piece written by residents of simmons. they no likey. rooms are too cold movable furniture so heavy that one student broke leg when bed fell on him. etc.

I see that mr. Javier has sence of humor.I am glad

Well see mr.Vado....Lot's of them are, or where, gays.But in this case i am not sure.Nedles to say that it is a ticket pass to some of the

I feel invited to discus ,from aestetic point of view, this complex.
On the first look the courage that is demostrated in constructive way,was left behind with selecton of colours.That kind of compesation didnt reflect too good on complex,because it looks douptful.In this case one tone is too much,Two is less,three is more and litle bit over is just wright.Now it looks empty,like it has no enterior,or maby it dosen't need one.If that was an idea,than all wright.
I coul say that i "likey",but i haven't had the chanse to see it for real.
So regarding that if any one is willing to grant me a scholarship for master i want complain.

Pictures are ok ,but my liver could also look nice on photograph.
So my opinion is not competetive.

Excuse one foreigner for gramatics

Frank's superficial (of the exodermis) and gratuitously exu(A)berrant forms have always troubled me because of the near total disconnect between the interior volumes and the sculptural/ topographic gymnastics of his exterior. He is but a fanciful and tired Hollywood false front stage designer-his millenium park shroud is exposed for what it is if seen from the back of stage, minus brown stainage, for the time being.

One of the wonderful things about ascending the stairs up Lady Liberty's skirt up to the torch ( in pre 9-11 times) was the ability to viscerally experiece how the structural skeleton was both a rational and irrational system when needed that gave form to the exterior. Both systems work together in dramatic fashion.

For someobody who advocates the virtues of CATIA and the possibilities of high technology, we should expect more than shiny wrinkled foreskin architecture.

An rather revealing image from the Archinect galleries:

a glorified if expensive billboard deep as the plastic its printed on

Fair enough
Perchance i misunderstood you about giving and taking form around Eiffel's constructive system, and parallel with Garydermis MIT village

okay, i'm an MIT arch student (but please don't think i can speak for all of us)... i love/hate the stata ctr. first, it is ugly as sin, but then i don't think it's arch's responsibility to necessarily be beautiful, so i don't write the bldg off that easily. i am weary to admit that i like the bldg more each time i go there (i was very skeptical when it was under construction)

to clear up a couple misconceptions:

the bldg went WAY over budget (ended up something like 1/2 a billion) but that was not the architect's fault (for once) unlike with holl's bldg. after the design was finished the university requested a mega parking garage go underneath without starting back from scratch with the design, so you can imagine the structural gymnastics involved in sinking a multi storey parking garage with a regular column grid into a muddy river (MIT is all reclaimed land) below a bldg with no regular column grid. i have never heard anyone here complain about the budget over-runs on the bldg, they weren't over-runs, just changes in scope. that is not to say the bldg is cheap, even pre-garage it is hideously expensive (and maybe questionable at a time when professors salaries have been frozen).

for the first time in a gehry bldg the inside is the outside. this is the main reason i like the bldg, it represents some pretty incredible advances in construction. the bldg was produced using a local GPS system straight from computer drawings--no paper. the exterior cladding is a purpose-built panel system that gives you the same thing on the interior that you see outside (ugly, though that may be). in fact, the interior is the redeeming feature of the bldg, there are (though sometimes i hate to admit it) some really great spaces in there. also, the bldg was a social critique of the school (as requested by the university), so there are many many generous public spaces and open lab and office interiors and program mixing to facilitate communication. a lot of people who work there hate it, but it is for the very reasons the school asked for it to be the way it is... MIT has a strong culture of people climbing into holes to do their research and never coming out to play with others.

the bldg either has LEED certification and the university touts it as a green bldg. this is absurd and reveals the essential problem with the LEED program--you can gain points, but you can't lose em. so, despite using enough concrete to build a small city, the bldg gets certified b/c its close to the subway, has lots of bike racks, a shower for employees and recycles its grey water. (for a real green bldg see behnisch+behnisch's genzyme built on campus at the same time).

last semester my performance art class with art star joan jonas used the stata as the site for our performances, and interacting with the building on that level was actually fantastic. this semester my design studio is beginning with a short project using the stata as a site in which we'll steal space. i guess i'm just trying to say the bldg is having an unexpected life as provocateur for classes on campus.

why didn't the school go for calatrava, Rem, or Herzog&Dem., or Diller+Scofidio? c'mon, calatrava? please, thank god they didn't. i'm not sure how he is not in the same class as gehry. as for the others, i would've greatly preferred it but they aren't so less established either. the question should be why didn't they go with R&Sie... or someone else equally unproven and avant-garde. but at the end of the day they had to get bill gates (think EMP) and dreyfoos and the other big donors on side and gehry is still pretty far out there compared to kendall square as lars pointed out (thanks lars, i wish everyone would complain more about the tonnes of banal crapchitecture out there rather than the relatively few bldgs with some aspiration, misguided or otherwise).

at the end of the day, the building seems to me like a gawky adolescent--very awkward, kinda ugly, but hopefully with something welling up inside that makes them lovable all the same (this also functions as a description of what most students here look like, the bldg really is in the right place). this bldg broke a lot of ground in a construction sense and i hope it feeds back into the industry and results in more graceful buildings in the future will probably free us up a little more as designers in terms of what is possible. should MIT have dropped half a billion on the stata? if universities aren't going to take risks and step outside the tried and tested with architecture, who will?

I happen to like Kunstler's eyesores of the months !

all i have to say is - ARDS.