Stata at MIT: Gehry's Great Geek Experiment

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.)

1 minute read

May 7, 2004, 8:00 AM PDT

By Abhijeet Chavan @http://twitter.com/legalaidtech

"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.

Thanks to Abhijeet Chavan

FULL STORY: Frank Gehry's Geek Palace

Thursday, May 6, 2004 in Wired

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