<p>[MIT</a> Sues Frank Gehry Over Problems With Stata Center Design - Chronicle.com](<a href=“http://chronicle.com/blogs/architecture/950/mit-sues-frank-gehry-over-problems-with-stata-center-design]MIT”>http://chronicle.com/blogs/architecture/950/mit-sues-frank-gehry-over-problems-with-stata-center-design)</p>
<p>Why would any institution hire Gehry to design a building for them? It should know it is buying trouble!</p>
<p>All of my friends on MIT’s community IM service are laughing about this today.</p>
<p>This is waaaay more common than people think. There are lots of suits against famous architects whose roofs don’t keep the water out.</p>
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<p>Like Frank Lloyd Wright. Except you can’t sue him.</p>
<p>I have come to realize that architects may not be the most practical of people. The ones I’ve worked with are far more interested in how something looks than in how well it works. This is a gross generalization of course.</p>
<p>Well, the minute I clapped eyes on the Stata building, I predicted it would leak like mad. There are far too many seams joining (or, as the case may be, failing to join) different materials, and at angles that prevent water from falling down, instead accumulating in crevices.</p>
<p>Not only roofs but also walls. </p>
<p>Mom’s house is FLW inspired, a lot of trim work, a lot of cornors, a lot of buttjoints. </p>
<p>Great looking and modern house for a 1955 House but we are spending a lot of money to fix the dry rot.</p>
<p>JHS</p>
<p>Same with Paul Rudolph.</p>
<p>The Gehry building on the Case Western campus is all shiny and sloped. So, when it snows and ices in Cleveland (yes, it snows all winter in Cle), the ice/snow slide off the roof causing the sidewalk to be closed due to the hazard. Not the mention, the building is just plain ugly…</p>
<p>ah where is Howard Roark now that we need him?</p>
<p>You mean FLW, who was the model for Roark? His buildings leak. See post #8.</p>
<p>Well – the MIT building may not be practical… but it’s sure fun & original…</p>
<p>I have seen cakes with more originality. Drawing slopy weird buildings is hardly original. They have been in cartoons for decades.</p>
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<p>Haha, I will not trust a cartoonist to design and build my house from now on. :)</p>
<p>When I interview MIT applicants and ask them if they have had a chance yet to visit MIT and, if so, what they liked about the campus, probably more than 90 percent of them specifically mention the Stata Center, often by description rather than by name (in addition to the proximity to and view of Boston, the heterogenous collection of buildings, and obviously the students they meet). I do not know anything about this lawsuit, but as far as the “cool factor,” the building is a big plus for MIT in recruiting.</p>
<p>When I see that building I like the fact that someone had the courage to build a work of art. (Which, even if you don’t like it, it is art.) BUT – I’d hate to have to pay to maintain it. I guess it was never meant to be practical? </p>
<p>(It reminds me of people building all these foolish McMassions with their many peaks. We take roofs seriously in Rochester NY, and if you don’t, you’ll regret it in short order. LOL)</p>
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<p>That’s kind of funny, given that the students who were there when it was being built largely hate it. So, in my experience, do most of the people who work in it.</p>
<p>I’ll repost here what I said about the building on the MIT forum:</p>
<p>You can love the aesthetics or not, depending on your own taste, but it’s a hideous building from a functional perspective (the point I think iostream was making). You can’t find the second floor, there are conference rooms where all the diagonals cause meeting-goers to become physically ill, snow and ice fall from the heights of projecting roofs where they’ve collected onto passers-by, the alarms go off constantly, the place is full of leaks after only a few years, research groups are physically isolated from each other, the amphitheater can’t be used for actual presentations because Gehry refused to put in the necessary stuff to support audiovisual stuff - I guess he thinks the point of an amphitheater is to be looked at - the list goes on.</p>
<p>It seems to me to be contrary to MIT’s mission to have a building that doesn’t work. I love their new art major, and I would think the point would be that functionality is a part of the art of architecture. Ah, where is Mies van der Rohe when you need him?</p>
<p>“(It reminds me of people building all these foolish McMassions with their many peaks. We take roofs seriously in Rochester NY, and if you don’t, you’ll regret it in short order. LOL)”</p>
<p>Weenie, high-five! We in Western WA take our roofs seriously, too. FLW flat roofers do not do particularly well around here.</p>
<p>I thought Seattle held the record for the ugliest building in the world (EMP museum), but this MIT “structure” beats it for sure!</p>