It doesn't matter what somebody else built someplace else with the same amount of money. MIT asked for this design and didn't want to pay for it; they liked the publicity but in the end they didn't want to pay for the proper waterproofing, gutters etc. Who will laugh their way to the bank are lawyers and architects will again be even more scared to challenge the status quo.
I do want to see that chapel though
i heard calatrava in milwaukee cost $1300/sf because
(1) the roof is a giant animatronic model of bird's wings
(2) the architect of record (kahler slater) didn't properly know how to represent the complex curvature of the forms to the contractor, so they had to sink a lot of time and money into figuring out how to do so. turns out they ended up having interns make models of the concrete shapes that the contractors could just measure on site.
agreed, LIG. but HOK level firms would not be able to make a gehry building. there are no firms of the commercial sort that could do this design. there simply are none. the mentality is not there.
i am not excusing frank, mostly because i don't know the facts, but most of the criticism above seems to be against his work as style, or against frank personally...just because.
at least vado is honest and simply says he doesn't like it. that is fair by me, but when it starts to claiming incompetence...well, i have seen too much of the biz to believe this is as simple as it is being represented.
me, i absolutely don't feel like architects are worthless. ever. we make the world better when we are good. we also make crap. but it is better to try and fail than to sit on our asses all the time.
then again i also think the space program is worthwhile...;-)
I agree with vado too
"even if the building was built perfectly it would still be ugly as hell."
But I do think Gehry gets criticized far too often on these boards. Too many unknowns to make any conclusion, and given the he's the Big Fish with the star status, its expected he'd be the #1 target.
Those problems seem like the trivial ones with many modern buildings.
------- What I don't like about them are, that they act as pictures of a new architecture, just pictures not a new architecture by core, as the core are just the trivial steel frames fiddled to support often hysteric forms ; I could understand it if he had invented 3dh as that would install a proper core and make the structures genuine, where now the old handicraft and fiddled pieces are just hidden under the spetacular panels.
pluck - skansa had to underbid it cause some whore fucker architect will give it to a couple malakas and a pick up truck if they didnt. Its a war - and the architects are the enemies people. Go back to the 50's and 60's, thats when this started, when the architects reigned supreme over the GC's and beat them up, then the "Im not responsible phase of the 80's and 90's but Im going to take a huge commission anyways, and now the "im not in control or really as relevant as I once thought" phase of the 00's.
trace, you must go inside. that’s where the real action is. From the outside i probably would have never ventured inside. but my girlfriend worked on it and insisted on giving me a tour...i was impressed.
"MIT is just going after my insurance" - frank gehry
but really. if cannon design or some other firm is the architect of record, then they should (operative word: should) be the focus of any lawsuit. because yeah, it's THEIR job to make the gehry building not leak
i bet, tho, that FOG's policy alone is probably like the size of the GDP of guinea-bissau or something like that.
on this one, i'm on frank's side. building leaks, sue the guy who did the CDs.
It realy do not matter ,the foults as described is no vorse than much gone wrong, architecture. Much of the paneling qill be the same with 3dh, but best thng about 3dh is that the frames are acturly shorter than you would emagine and, one material replacing hundreds various bits and pieces, to assemble a building structure, is realy an efficient way to do better than today, with the old perception , about how to eject a building structure. --- With 3dh it is the core structure --- how floors at varying level are a cheap option, not a huge challance, how furniture can be builld into the basic bulding structure, how it all offer the potential of a new architecture.
Making the forms to mimic that, a painting about what you would expect without the all important core of it, that Ifind wrong about it, as architecture shuld point in new directions, not staying with the old, -- realy, I find very few innovative, prograssive whatever, qualities in most of these buildings , basic steel structure.
Personaly I find it also primitive, to mimic building compoments, as in a puzzle , to assemble houses --- the right attitude must be to design the building, according to the huge savings it mean , when a skilled designer do the projecting.
I find it old fasion in a way, to build a ship, exactly as how it was done before the computers, when I know there are way's to do better both in costs and in vision --- also these new things are so good, thatthe house you build today, will easily last 200 years and then, opposit to now, easily restored with new framework, in maybe better sheet materials.
You generate a building structure, if you got a computer -- you don't put it together from flexible blocks of rigid steel beams , just becaurse this is the only thing you can, now you can do different, you can generate a 3dh framework, that is a difference while the 3dh work, where this is the first relevant suggestion, to revolusionise construction.
But true , what do I know --- except that MIT was among the first I contacted with 3dh and there, 3dh was reconised as a splendid new innovative angle --- still then I also hope, that this MIT thing realy now do the right thing, that is to scrap, not patching a wrong concept and spending the fonds there, keeping the old spetachle in reasonable shape, patching the impossible or sometimes silli details in working order, even it is ugly.
--- Forgive me, but beauty are something I take serious, and uglyness alone is for me, enough reson, to replace it all, but this time with the right thing, and that one would easily not be about stararchitects.
le Bossman.. Gehry did do their own CDs for the project, and then refused to let Skanska print them.. insisted that the whole thing be kept completely digital, 'cause that was the idea.. fabrication/paperless.. which was a problem for the way that the GC wanted to work.
"on this one, i'm on frank's side. building leaks, sue the guy who did the CDs."
statements like that frustrate me. there is this ridiculous disconnect in the profession between god almighty design and lowly construction. it even happens within a single firm by a departmental split. the sooner people can understand that design and construction (or constructablity) happen simultaneously, the better off we as a profession all be.
with that said, from what i know of gehry's office, fog is one of the few offices that believes in the synthesis of design and construction. it would not at all surprise me if they were the architect of record on the project and if not, were highly involved with the detailing of the building.
interesting. but gehry does do paper cds. i saw part of the set for the disney concert hall and flipped through them personally. it was easy to understand the drawbacks of working on paper as well, as i believe this was a 4 part set and i saw one part and it was two inches thick, also hard to understand the building in plan, elevation, and section. i can't believe that a gc like that would do a gehry project though. i would think a firm like FOG would be using the same GC over and over again as this would be the only builder who knows how to work this way.
look, fog has been operationg for what, 30, 40 years or more?
surely nobody here credits the idea that frank never learned to detail a building in all that time, and is a dipshit who doesn't understand the penalties involved if he fkucs up? i suspect there is more to this than we are being made privvy to. gehry's only real comment i have found so far on this suit is that the necesary detailing he had in the original dwgs was value-engineered out of the design. i guess he signed off on that, but who knows maybe it was only after he warned them in writing that it might lead to future problems and he wouldn't be responsible...who knows? too soon to call, but clearly this building was not built according to franks own intentions either...
and that building across the street, is if i am polite, merely banal, if i am being honest is vapidly horrid and would be better if it were made into a parking lot.
but that is a taste thing. it is my opinion and nothing more, just as much of the above is. whether it leaks or not is beside the point (leaks can be fixed; soul killing architecture can not) it would make me sad to have to go there every day if i saw the lovely place across the street my colleagues get to use.
the building across the street from the gehry is charles correa's brain and cognitive sciences complex. it's actually a pretty nice building and i hear well liked by the researchers who work there.
this thread should be obliterated. it's absurdly naïve for us to offer judgements on this case when the facts are unknown and we are all relying on little more than speculation. a leaky roof could be caused by any number of things (bad design, poor construction, deficient materials, improper maintenance) and who knows what mit's motivation for the suit might actually be.
we know only as much as the new york times has told us.
well, i stand by my statement: if the building leaks, sue the guy that did the CDs. if gehry did them, sorry. i too agree that the uncoupling of "design" from constructability is a major problem (certainly not a new one) but that stamp means, the buck stops here. if you can't detail it, they can't build it -- so don't design it. buildings don't leak at 1/2" = 1'-0", they leak at full scale.
the one thing that is true here, is that construction failures are children with many fathers. gehry's design getting ahead of (someone's) detailing ability, gehry's alleged refusal to communicate in a manner acceptable and relevant to a contractor (i.e., with paper drawings), value engineering "solutions" that are invariably suggested by the contractor and -- sorry -- almost NEVER "signed off" upon by the architect, partitioning of "design architect" and "architect of record", contractor that is doing the typical contractor thing and pointing that finger...oh yeah. the only winners here are the attorneys. barry lepatner's getting a new benz for christmas.
building across the street is nice. hmm, charles correa. i worked for a supervisor once who had worked in his office in the 1960s. a truly humane architect.
actually, the west side of the floor in the State Center beneath the R&D cafe has a good view of the Correa BCS building. That east-facing glass facade on BCS with the potted tree in it is really well done. Much nicer than anything on the Gehry-side of Vasser Street, in my humble opinion. I'll take Charles anyday of the week.
it'll be interesting to see how this plays out because, whoever is the responsible aor, the problems at stata seem to be inherent in his way of making a building. i don't fault him for it, though it seems that the in the design development discussions someone would have been made 'minister of checking for potential leak conditions'.
i'm all over the map with gehry. it's true we love to hate him, right? i wasn't as enamored of bilbao as i was with disney, primarily because i think the urban sidewalk over the top of it is sublime. i don't really love what i've seen of the stata center, but the vontz at cincinnati (which has its own issues) is an amazing work of architecture to me. i can't wait for this one:
can you imagine how exciting that space could be?
...but maybe they ought to assign someone to leak duty now?
btw, about the building across the street; my remarks were intended to be fascetious, mimicking the spite that gehry usually gets. it is true that it is not my cuppa, but i don't actually have an opinion beyond that.
Apparently, Princeton says it's not worried about the Gehry Science Library that they're getting. But they did fire the Skanksa contractor last year, the same one who had worked on the MIT project, for what that's worth.
From having worked in litigation and forensics side, Ochona is right in that there are usually numerous sources for the failure after construction - which is similar to having no one to blame. Surprisingly, there are usually less "errors" than most would think in the design itself, since as architects we design the ideal state. The problem arises when it comes to time to actually interpret the design and construct it. So when it is a difficult detail or more expensive detail than the contractor was expecting, is it the architects' fault for not detailing that "right"? All you need for a leak is a single weakpoint source. So what happens if it occurs at a specific point where the intepretation of the detail was different than intended, but technically be a valid interpretation of the detail? Nothing is black and white about it- its a gray area and they're trying to figure out the shade of the gray - although the lawyers will never explicitly say that. "Standard of Care" is harder to define in our field than most will assume. Its not under an Architect's standard of care to have leaks, but it is under an Architect's standard of care to not have to design every single nook and cranny.
All clients deserve a building that is not a maintenance nightmare of leaks, cracks, and voids. The client's building is supposed to function; it's not an enormous sculpture simply to be admired and you can't say "value-engineering is to blame". The real issue is a relative lack of accountability in the profession.
Ethically, Gehry and the other star-architects still owe their clients a functional building even if it's "star architecture". And they are still responsible for ensuring that structure, details, and skin enclosure all are properly detailed and that all "star architect" design features and conditions can be understood and fully detailed.
The poor client thinks it's buying "art + function" by awarding a large commission to a star-architect, with an architect-of-record and general contractor/contract manager to prop that star-architect's "vision". Instead, client gets a conceptual design that's somehow gets translated into a somewhat comprehensible but still incomplete and certainly not fully coordinated set of construction documents that are given to the GC to "go get built" starting in design development phase. When the building is completed, the ribbon is cut, the review is written and the project is published, and then shortly after initial occupancy the multiple problems are quickly identified. And no one in star architect's project team takes responsibility for that troubled building's issues, nor wants to be responsible for the numerous repairs needed. No wonder the client resorts to a lawsuit.
If anyone think this is art + function, then is it art to form a structure as a picture to mimic what you would expect of cutting edge engineering, is's hysteric angles a gurantie for art I hope so,as the structure underneath, cirtainly act dizzie ,as if one layer of rough standard universal fitting and pieces of overlength steel profiles is not enough, then to smooth the kettle something near chicken wire is the plaster , --- function newer innovation a joke, newthinking a Tin Hat, , only structural function ,reflect in that mess of rigid tradisional gadgeds that allow master steel workers to shape walls with huge wrong measures compared the 3D plans anyway, is not even visionary, it's backstriving Basta. --- It's making a fool out of engineering building structures Pronto !
If this shuld be art it would be engineering not architecture, and the engineering are Bad, Bad are the mixmatch with stupid brick foundations that save the monstrum, but offcaurse, these skin attitude spetakularies are so skin weak, with no calculated but a fiddled structure underneath, their vaste volumes are a joke ---- when there are no further meaning in the assembly and projecting -- then where are there any progress, but of this was to eject a picture of cutting edge Arts, then engineering must suffer badly.
------ It would not with 3dh, as there the framework could stand alone, carrying it's own form language, where if you remove the panels from the disney new concert hall, what will display will be ugly, and newer innovative.
Now they say this leak, now look twice, why would that be ...could there be more than one reson .... Please ; look at it ....
that would probably be fine if there was enough space for the valleys, just like any roof valley, but they probably have to have some kind of gutter there, unless there is a planter or something that prevents you from walking directly under it.
it leaked because there was poor detailing. the gc is ultimately responsible of hashing out any problems with the building via RFI's if the architect has not solved the issue in his cd's. the rfi will challenge the details, dwgs, specs, contracts to the point where, if there is no resolution, the paper trail has been created that is stating the gc's point and clearing them of any maldoing.
thats the key - if the gc has challenged the cd's which didnt resolve the matter of the "leakage"
there more than likely will be more problems in this building, because every gc takes shortcuts that ultimately fuck up something else in the building. the sub's subs come in and want to get out on a friday afternoon early and bam - you have a half assed waterproofing membrane application over an area that will, unbeknownst to the worker, get a large amount of moisture due to something that "isnt his responsibility".
its a lack of control that architects have on their construction. its been happening for a long time, which is why our profession is falling to the contractors.
stop complainin and get to your sites more often to stop this bullshit from happening
hm...i am beginning to wonder if that whole idea of architect as master of the domain is a myth...?
when did an architect ever know enough to do complete a modern building without using specialists who he gave responsibility to? is it only oversight that is changing? or something else is going on? maybe the old way was to have all the construction management in house too? what is actually different from 50 years ago, or 100?
i always reflect on chris wren, whom i admire immensely for his management skills more than his architecture...he did some amazing things, including some very funky bait and switch funkiness with st pauls...but he also worked out how to make the dome in a way that fixed structural problems encountered during construction. if he had not caught the problems and worked out a way to fix them the whole would have collapsed (the structure designed to take the load was filled with rubble stone and not solid...and the design was causing the interior to settle separately from the exterior facing material)...which would have been disastrous.
anyway, this was somehting he resolved, whoever was ultimately to blame for the problem...the architect, the builder, the craftsmen...but it reminds me very much of the kinds of things that are dealt with by architects every day even now...even more so if you think that wren was very nearly fired for going over budget a few times....
but look at the legacy he has left. at the very least...if he hadn't tried and worked and struggled to do all that he did there would be nothing for the tate modern to connect the millenium bridge to.
i do think great architecture takes some courage. that building across the street is fine and competent, but definitely not of the courageous type. i don't know if gehry's mit stuff is either, but it is certainly going in that direction. the bar may have been set to high for the budget, but it is better to aim high and fail than aim for the middle. or rather it is better if a few of us do that, at least.
and just think...if it wasn't for pioneers like corb and gropius and others who were equally reviled by their contemporaries, with LIG-like comments above, that steadfast building across the street would simply not be possible today. someone has to take chances, clients and architects alike.
competency is a good thing but being complacent and taking a stance that solid mediocrity is a morally higher position is not defensible in my book.
man, jump, you're being pretty tough on the correa building based off of a handful of images. frankly, in terms of a career, i would say correa has achieved a far more thoughtful body of work than gehry (and his buildings don't leak). perhaps it's just me, but i tend to respect a thoughtful competency more than an eccentric "genius."
yeh, that is true enough, jafidler. i am not being fair. i shouldn't compare apples to oranges.
correa used to be very appealling to me, but the pomo flavour makes me cringe now. his work is nice. and much better than average in terms of thoughtfulness i agree. i have a lot of respect for his work in generral
this project however is also a bit...corporate maybe? the interior is much nicer than out, and there are some very nice touches, but it is overall the kind of thing i would expect from corporate super builders here in japan. firms like takenaka, etc. incredibly well built even...but in the end the intention is not placemaking but money making, and it does litle for me. i find much of the detailing heavy handed to be honest and not thoughtful at all...correa's work in india is much better in my opinion. if he has a legacy to leave it will be there, with jawahar kala jendra and similar...or so i imagine anyway...
but i wasn't trying to raise gehry by bashing correa. i was making the point that risk taking is necessary for the art to move forward. i use the word loosely here to mean the art of engineering, design, landscape, building science, et cetera. without the ability to take a risk we end up with stagnation...and there is no chance for knowledge to accumulate.
i don't think the mit project by gehry will be a part of history like the bilbao or his own residence...but it is not a failure because of the technical issues. not even close.
jefferson had a leaky roof at monticello and spent years reworking it, but so many architects and critics conflate style with technical issues, when there really is no reason to do so, that i bet most think it never had any such problems at all...
and that bothers me. gehry has some issues with this particular project. lets talk about that. but when the argument comes down to 'gehry is a hack, of course it leaks' well...i don't know how to respond except to say so what? it doesn't leak because of gehry or his style in a kind of apriori fashion. it leaks because someone along the way made a mistake. maybe gehry, maybe not. we don't know.
and until we know i would prefer we stick to the facts about the project and have a little respect for a man who has done more for our profession than all of us combined.
apart from that there are things we can discuss about the building in an architectural sense or from a planning perspective...but there is not much of that going on. which is a shame. worse, it is embarassing. surely we have more to offer?
what's clear from this discussion (and thanks, jump, for the great historic examples of wren and jefferson) is that this is an almost eternal conversation among architects and their client/public.
our for happy hour last night and this lawsuit came up from a lawyer and computer programmer friend. THIS is how the profession gets recognition!
MIT sues Gehry
the physics one, Sean?
philarch, worry not I doubt the Phili roof will leak...more likely to fall down completely.
Ahh the price of fame, everyone wants a piece of you.
What was that the other Frank said about leaking roofs?
It doesn't matter what somebody else built someplace else with the same amount of money. MIT asked for this design and didn't want to pay for it; they liked the publicity but in the end they didn't want to pay for the proper waterproofing, gutters etc. Who will laugh their way to the bank are lawyers and architects will again be even more scared to challenge the status quo.
I do want to see that chapel though
i heard calatrava in milwaukee cost $1300/sf because
(1) the roof is a giant animatronic model of bird's wings
(2) the architect of record (kahler slater) didn't properly know how to represent the complex curvature of the forms to the contractor, so they had to sink a lot of time and money into figuring out how to do so. turns out they ended up having interns make models of the concrete shapes that the contractors could just measure on site.
agreed, LIG. but HOK level firms would not be able to make a gehry building. there are no firms of the commercial sort that could do this design. there simply are none. the mentality is not there.
i am not excusing frank, mostly because i don't know the facts, but most of the criticism above seems to be against his work as style, or against frank personally...just because.
at least vado is honest and simply says he doesn't like it. that is fair by me, but when it starts to claiming incompetence...well, i have seen too much of the biz to believe this is as simple as it is being represented.
me, i absolutely don't feel like architects are worthless. ever. we make the world better when we are good. we also make crap. but it is better to try and fail than to sit on our asses all the time.
then again i also think the space program is worthwhile...;-)
I guess Gehry did the Wright Thing!
I agree with vado too
"even if the building was built perfectly it would still be ugly as hell."
But I do think Gehry gets criticized far too often on these boards. Too many unknowns to make any conclusion, and given the he's the Big Fish with the star status, its expected he'd be the #1 target.
my problem with fog is that he uses too many notes. that simple.
Those problems seem like the trivial ones with many modern buildings.
------- What I don't like about them are, that they act as pictures of a new architecture, just pictures not a new architecture by core, as the core are just the trivial steel frames fiddled to support often hysteric forms ; I could understand it if he had invented 3dh as that would install a proper core and make the structures genuine, where now the old handicraft and fiddled pieces are just hidden under the spetacular panels.
--- As a picture of a new architecture.
pluck - skansa had to underbid it cause some whore fucker architect will give it to a couple malakas and a pick up truck if they didnt. Its a war - and the architects are the enemies people. Go back to the 50's and 60's, thats when this started, when the architects reigned supreme over the GC's and beat them up, then the "Im not responsible phase of the 80's and 90's but Im going to take a huge commission anyways, and now the "im not in control or really as relevant as I once thought" phase of the 00's.
metamechanic
are those exposed steel studs and insulation under that first picture? is that still under construction or was there no soffit at that location?
meta - you really think that is good architecture? Just wondering.
To me, that looks like what HOK or SOM would do (mind you, both have decent buildings here and there, but overall they suck).
Looks like a high budget generic building. There's a place for everything, of course.
trace, you must go inside. that’s where the real action is. From the outside i probably would have never ventured inside. but my girlfriend worked on it and insisted on giving me a tour...i was impressed.
per
does 3dh leak?
"MIT is just going after my insurance" - frank gehry
but really. if cannon design or some other firm is the architect of record, then they should (operative word: should) be the focus of any lawsuit. because yeah, it's THEIR job to make the gehry building not leak
i bet, tho, that FOG's policy alone is probably like the size of the GDP of guinea-bissau or something like that.
on this one, i'm on frank's side. building leaks, sue the guy who did the CDs.
It realy do not matter ,the foults as described is no vorse than much gone wrong, architecture. Much of the paneling qill be the same with 3dh, but best thng about 3dh is that the frames are acturly shorter than you would emagine and, one material replacing hundreds various bits and pieces, to assemble a building structure, is realy an efficient way to do better than today, with the old perception , about how to eject a building structure. --- With 3dh it is the core structure --- how floors at varying level are a cheap option, not a huge challance, how furniture can be builld into the basic bulding structure, how it all offer the potential of a new architecture.
Making the forms to mimic that, a painting about what you would expect without the all important core of it, that Ifind wrong about it, as architecture shuld point in new directions, not staying with the old, -- realy, I find very few innovative, prograssive whatever, qualities in most of these buildings , basic steel structure.
Personaly I find it also primitive, to mimic building compoments, as in a puzzle , to assemble houses --- the right attitude must be to design the building, according to the huge savings it mean , when a skilled designer do the projecting.
I find it old fasion in a way, to build a ship, exactly as how it was done before the computers, when I know there are way's to do better both in costs and in vision --- also these new things are so good, thatthe house you build today, will easily last 200 years and then, opposit to now, easily restored with new framework, in maybe better sheet materials.
You generate a building structure, if you got a computer -- you don't put it together from flexible blocks of rigid steel beams , just becaurse this is the only thing you can, now you can do different, you can generate a 3dh framework, that is a difference while the 3dh work, where this is the first relevant suggestion, to revolusionise construction.
But true , what do I know --- except that MIT was among the first I contacted with 3dh and there, 3dh was reconised as a splendid new innovative angle --- still then I also hope, that this MIT thing realy now do the right thing, that is to scrap, not patching a wrong concept and spending the fonds there, keeping the old spetachle in reasonable shape, patching the impossible or sometimes silli details in working order, even it is ugly.
--- Forgive me, but beauty are something I take serious, and uglyness alone is for me, enough reson, to replace it all, but this time with the right thing, and that one would easily not be about stararchitects.
i thought gehry did their own cd's, and has for years.
le Bossman.. Gehry did do their own CDs for the project, and then refused to let Skanska print them.. insisted that the whole thing be kept completely digital, 'cause that was the idea.. fabrication/paperless.. which was a problem for the way that the GC wanted to work.
"on this one, i'm on frank's side. building leaks, sue the guy who did the CDs."
statements like that frustrate me. there is this ridiculous disconnect in the profession between god almighty design and lowly construction. it even happens within a single firm by a departmental split. the sooner people can understand that design and construction (or constructablity) happen simultaneously, the better off we as a profession all be.
with that said, from what i know of gehry's office, fog is one of the few offices that believes in the synthesis of design and construction. it would not at all surprise me if they were the architect of record on the project and if not, were highly involved with the detailing of the building.
[/end rant]
oops, thanks for clearing that up, urbanist. didn't refresh before submitting.
I enjoyed your rant, jafidler, and agree with its spirit.
interesting. but gehry does do paper cds. i saw part of the set for the disney concert hall and flipped through them personally. it was easy to understand the drawbacks of working on paper as well, as i believe this was a 4 part set and i saw one part and it was two inches thick, also hard to understand the building in plan, elevation, and section. i can't believe that a gc like that would do a gehry project though. i would think a firm like FOG would be using the same GC over and over again as this would be the only builder who knows how to work this way.
look, fog has been operationg for what, 30, 40 years or more?
surely nobody here credits the idea that frank never learned to detail a building in all that time, and is a dipshit who doesn't understand the penalties involved if he fkucs up? i suspect there is more to this than we are being made privvy to. gehry's only real comment i have found so far on this suit is that the necesary detailing he had in the original dwgs was value-engineered out of the design. i guess he signed off on that, but who knows maybe it was only after he warned them in writing that it might lead to future problems and he wouldn't be responsible...who knows? too soon to call, but clearly this building was not built according to franks own intentions either...
and that building across the street, is if i am polite, merely banal, if i am being honest is vapidly horrid and would be better if it were made into a parking lot.
but that is a taste thing. it is my opinion and nothing more, just as much of the above is. whether it leaks or not is beside the point (leaks can be fixed; soul killing architecture can not) it would make me sad to have to go there every day if i saw the lovely place across the street my colleagues get to use.
the building across the street from the gehry is charles correa's brain and cognitive sciences complex. it's actually a pretty nice building and i hear well liked by the researchers who work there.
this thread should be obliterated. it's absurdly naïve for us to offer judgements on this case when the facts are unknown and we are all relying on little more than speculation. a leaky roof could be caused by any number of things (bad design, poor construction, deficient materials, improper maintenance) and who knows what mit's motivation for the suit might actually be.
how fitting... puddles.
anyway... i am sure gehry has indemnity insurance.
we know only as much as the new york times has told us.
well, i stand by my statement: if the building leaks, sue the guy that did the CDs. if gehry did them, sorry. i too agree that the uncoupling of "design" from constructability is a major problem (certainly not a new one) but that stamp means, the buck stops here. if you can't detail it, they can't build it -- so don't design it. buildings don't leak at 1/2" = 1'-0", they leak at full scale.
the one thing that is true here, is that construction failures are children with many fathers. gehry's design getting ahead of (someone's) detailing ability, gehry's alleged refusal to communicate in a manner acceptable and relevant to a contractor (i.e., with paper drawings), value engineering "solutions" that are invariably suggested by the contractor and -- sorry -- almost NEVER "signed off" upon by the architect, partitioning of "design architect" and "architect of record", contractor that is doing the typical contractor thing and pointing that finger...oh yeah. the only winners here are the attorneys. barry lepatner's getting a new benz for christmas.
building across the street is nice. hmm, charles correa. i worked for a supervisor once who had worked in his office in the 1960s. a truly humane architect.
actually, the west side of the floor in the State Center beneath the R&D cafe has a good view of the Correa BCS building. That east-facing glass facade on BCS with the potted tree in it is really well done. Much nicer than anything on the Gehry-side of Vasser Street, in my humble opinion. I'll take Charles anyday of the week.
it'll be interesting to see how this plays out because, whoever is the responsible aor, the problems at stata seem to be inherent in his way of making a building. i don't fault him for it, though it seems that the in the design development discussions someone would have been made 'minister of checking for potential leak conditions'.
i'm all over the map with gehry. it's true we love to hate him, right? i wasn't as enamored of bilbao as i was with disney, primarily because i think the urban sidewalk over the top of it is sublime. i don't really love what i've seen of the stata center, but the vontz at cincinnati (which has its own issues) is an amazing work of architecture to me. i can't wait for this one:
can you imagine how exciting that space could be?
...but maybe they ought to assign someone to leak duty now?
yeh that is definitely beautiful.
btw, about the building across the street; my remarks were intended to be fascetious, mimicking the spite that gehry usually gets. it is true that it is not my cuppa, but i don't actually have an opinion beyond that.
Apparently, Princeton says it's not worried about the Gehry Science Library that they're getting. But they did fire the Skanksa contractor last year, the same one who had worked on the MIT project, for what that's worth.
http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2007/11/08/news/19241.shtml
From having worked in litigation and forensics side, Ochona is right in that there are usually numerous sources for the failure after construction - which is similar to having no one to blame. Surprisingly, there are usually less "errors" than most would think in the design itself, since as architects we design the ideal state. The problem arises when it comes to time to actually interpret the design and construct it. So when it is a difficult detail or more expensive detail than the contractor was expecting, is it the architects' fault for not detailing that "right"? All you need for a leak is a single weakpoint source. So what happens if it occurs at a specific point where the intepretation of the detail was different than intended, but technically be a valid interpretation of the detail? Nothing is black and white about it- its a gray area and they're trying to figure out the shade of the gray - although the lawyers will never explicitly say that. "Standard of Care" is harder to define in our field than most will assume. Its not under an Architect's standard of care to have leaks, but it is under an Architect's standard of care to not have to design every single nook and cranny.
Frank Gehry is #2 in Yahoo's top searches today.
That's cool, right?
how could someone compare charles correa to HOK and still look themselves in the mirror? charles correa is a living god.
hey at least he used Rhinoceros
All clients deserve a building that is not a maintenance nightmare of leaks, cracks, and voids. The client's building is supposed to function; it's not an enormous sculpture simply to be admired and you can't say "value-engineering is to blame". The real issue is a relative lack of accountability in the profession.
Ethically, Gehry and the other star-architects still owe their clients a functional building even if it's "star architecture". And they are still responsible for ensuring that structure, details, and skin enclosure all are properly detailed and that all "star architect" design features and conditions can be understood and fully detailed.
The poor client thinks it's buying "art + function" by awarding a large commission to a star-architect, with an architect-of-record and general contractor/contract manager to prop that star-architect's "vision". Instead, client gets a conceptual design that's somehow gets translated into a somewhat comprehensible but still incomplete and certainly not fully coordinated set of construction documents that are given to the GC to "go get built" starting in design development phase. When the building is completed, the ribbon is cut, the review is written and the project is published, and then shortly after initial occupancy the multiple problems are quickly identified. And no one in star architect's project team takes responsibility for that troubled building's issues, nor wants to be responsible for the numerous repairs needed. No wonder the client resorts to a lawsuit.
...and one more reason architects will get paid less, have less respect and lose more talent.
Can I sue the architect for the leaks in my building now? They certainly aren't 'responsible' in my eyes, but hell, if I can sue...!
If anyone think this is art + function, then is it art to form a structure as a picture to mimic what you would expect of cutting edge engineering, is's hysteric angles a gurantie for art I hope so,as the structure underneath, cirtainly act dizzie ,as if one layer of rough standard universal fitting and pieces of overlength steel profiles is not enough, then to smooth the kettle something near chicken wire is the plaster , --- function newer innovation a joke, newthinking a Tin Hat, , only structural function ,reflect in that mess of rigid tradisional gadgeds that allow master steel workers to shape walls with huge wrong measures compared the 3D plans anyway, is not even visionary, it's backstriving Basta. --- It's making a fool out of engineering building structures Pronto !
If this shuld be art it would be engineering not architecture, and the engineering are Bad, Bad are the mixmatch with stupid brick foundations that save the monstrum, but offcaurse, these skin attitude spetakularies are so skin weak, with no calculated but a fiddled structure underneath, their vaste volumes are a joke ---- when there are no further meaning in the assembly and projecting -- then where are there any progress, but of this was to eject a picture of cutting edge Arts, then engineering must suffer badly.
------ It would not with 3dh, as there the framework could stand alone, carrying it's own form language, where if you remove the panels from the disney new concert hall, what will display will be ugly, and newer innovative.
Now they say this leak, now look twice, why would that be ...could there be more than one reson .... Please ; look at it ....
that would probably be fine if there was enough space for the valleys, just like any roof valley, but they probably have to have some kind of gutter there, unless there is a planter or something that prevents you from walking directly under it.
Shot this a few days ago.
FULL SIZE: modelmayhm-4.vo.llnwd.net/d1/photos/071107/14/473214fa56745.jpg
it leaked because there was poor detailing. the gc is ultimately responsible of hashing out any problems with the building via RFI's if the architect has not solved the issue in his cd's. the rfi will challenge the details, dwgs, specs, contracts to the point where, if there is no resolution, the paper trail has been created that is stating the gc's point and clearing them of any maldoing.
thats the key - if the gc has challenged the cd's which didnt resolve the matter of the "leakage"
there more than likely will be more problems in this building, because every gc takes shortcuts that ultimately fuck up something else in the building. the sub's subs come in and want to get out on a friday afternoon early and bam - you have a half assed waterproofing membrane application over an area that will, unbeknownst to the worker, get a large amount of moisture due to something that "isnt his responsibility".
its a lack of control that architects have on their construction. its been happening for a long time, which is why our profession is falling to the contractors.
stop complainin and get to your sites more often to stop this bullshit from happening
ugly ass buildings or not
here i am up on the stage
there i go playin the star again
here i go
turn the page
love sieger
hm...i am beginning to wonder if that whole idea of architect as master of the domain is a myth...?
when did an architect ever know enough to do complete a modern building without using specialists who he gave responsibility to? is it only oversight that is changing? or something else is going on? maybe the old way was to have all the construction management in house too? what is actually different from 50 years ago, or 100?
i always reflect on chris wren, whom i admire immensely for his management skills more than his architecture...he did some amazing things, including some very funky bait and switch funkiness with st pauls...but he also worked out how to make the dome in a way that fixed structural problems encountered during construction. if he had not caught the problems and worked out a way to fix them the whole would have collapsed (the structure designed to take the load was filled with rubble stone and not solid...and the design was causing the interior to settle separately from the exterior facing material)...which would have been disastrous.
anyway, this was somehting he resolved, whoever was ultimately to blame for the problem...the architect, the builder, the craftsmen...but it reminds me very much of the kinds of things that are dealt with by architects every day even now...even more so if you think that wren was very nearly fired for going over budget a few times....
but look at the legacy he has left. at the very least...if he hadn't tried and worked and struggled to do all that he did there would be nothing for the tate modern to connect the millenium bridge to.
i do think great architecture takes some courage. that building across the street is fine and competent, but definitely not of the courageous type. i don't know if gehry's mit stuff is either, but it is certainly going in that direction. the bar may have been set to high for the budget, but it is better to aim high and fail than aim for the middle. or rather it is better if a few of us do that, at least.
and just think...if it wasn't for pioneers like corb and gropius and others who were equally reviled by their contemporaries, with LIG-like comments above, that steadfast building across the street would simply not be possible today. someone has to take chances, clients and architects alike.
competency is a good thing but being complacent and taking a stance that solid mediocrity is a morally higher position is not defensible in my book.
man, jump, you're being pretty tough on the correa building based off of a handful of images. frankly, in terms of a career, i would say correa has achieved a far more thoughtful body of work than gehry (and his buildings don't leak). perhaps it's just me, but i tend to respect a thoughtful competency more than an eccentric "genius."
yeh, that is true enough, jafidler. i am not being fair. i shouldn't compare apples to oranges.
correa used to be very appealling to me, but the pomo flavour makes me cringe now. his work is nice. and much better than average in terms of thoughtfulness i agree. i have a lot of respect for his work in generral
this project however is also a bit...corporate maybe? the interior is much nicer than out, and there are some very nice touches, but it is overall the kind of thing i would expect from corporate super builders here in japan. firms like takenaka, etc. incredibly well built even...but in the end the intention is not placemaking but money making, and it does litle for me. i find much of the detailing heavy handed to be honest and not thoughtful at all...correa's work in india is much better in my opinion. if he has a legacy to leave it will be there, with jawahar kala jendra and similar...or so i imagine anyway...
but i wasn't trying to raise gehry by bashing correa. i was making the point that risk taking is necessary for the art to move forward. i use the word loosely here to mean the art of engineering, design, landscape, building science, et cetera. without the ability to take a risk we end up with stagnation...and there is no chance for knowledge to accumulate.
i don't think the mit project by gehry will be a part of history like the bilbao or his own residence...but it is not a failure because of the technical issues. not even close.
jefferson had a leaky roof at monticello and spent years reworking it, but so many architects and critics conflate style with technical issues, when there really is no reason to do so, that i bet most think it never had any such problems at all...
and that bothers me. gehry has some issues with this particular project. lets talk about that. but when the argument comes down to 'gehry is a hack, of course it leaks' well...i don't know how to respond except to say so what? it doesn't leak because of gehry or his style in a kind of apriori fashion. it leaks because someone along the way made a mistake. maybe gehry, maybe not. we don't know.
and until we know i would prefer we stick to the facts about the project and have a little respect for a man who has done more for our profession than all of us combined.
apart from that there are things we can discuss about the building in an architectural sense or from a planning perspective...but there is not much of that going on. which is a shame. worse, it is embarassing. surely we have more to offer?
what's clear from this discussion (and thanks, jump, for the great historic examples of wren and jefferson) is that this is an almost eternal conversation among architects and their client/public.
our for happy hour last night and this lawsuit came up from a lawyer and computer programmer friend. THIS is how the profession gets recognition!
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