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Stata at MIT: Gehry's Great Geek Experiment

Posted by: Abhijeet Chavan
Thanks to: Abhijeet Chavan
7 May 2004 - 8:00am

Architect Frank Gehry's new research center for the Massachusetts Institute of Technology pushes the envelope for architecture, academia, and science. (Includes links to photos, plans, and webcams.)

"Love it or not, the two-tower, 2.8-acre Stata Center symbolizes everything the institute wants to be....it may be more than a bit Bilbao for some of MIT's engineers, but the interior is hackable, rack-mounted, and user-friendly. It has space for everyone from hardcore theoreticians and linguists to robot-builders.

What Stata is not is 'smart' - no arrays of sensors or touchscreens in the walls, no biometric infrastructure...Roughly 40 percent of the total floor area is devoted to collaborative space, an experiment in supply-side behavior modification...

Stata has 370 lockable offices for 1,000 people...The other great whine is wasted space. The four-story atriums at the bottom of each tower are explained in design specs as accommodating 'experiments that require tall spaces, such as those involving remote-control helicopters.' You don't need a PhD to spot a rationalization...For a great 21st-century research institution, architecture turns out to be marketing."

The official website of the Stat a Center includes architectural plans, construction photos, and a live webcam with spectacular time-lapse sequences.

Full Story: Frank Gehry's Geek Palace
Source: Wired, May 6, 2004
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