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MIT Sues Frank Gehry Over Buggy $300M CS Building
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Nov 07, 2007 09:13 AM
from the modern-architecture-means-modern-bugs dept.
from the modern-architecture-means-modern-bugs dept.
theodp writes "MIT has filed a negligence suit against world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, charging that flaws in his design of the $300 million Stata Center, one of the most celebrated works of architecture unveiled in years, caused leaks to spring, masonry to crack, mold to grow, and drainage to back up. The complex, which houses a Who's Who of Computing including Tim Berners-Lee and Richard Stallman, includes the William H. Gates Building."
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Just look at the building (Score:4, Insightful)
IMAO, this is as much MIT's fault as the architect's, because they approved this very experimental design.
Re:Just look at the building (Score:5, Insightful)
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Frank Gehry is not a proper architect (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Frank Gehry is not a proper architect (Score:4, Interesting)
You mean he's just like every other well know architect. Frank Lloyd Wright pull the exact same crap. His roofs were notorious for leaks and yet he's still Americas best known architect.
MG
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Architecture vs. Engineering (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Architecture vs. Engineering (Score:5, Funny)
Perhaps, on the MIT campus, they couldn't find one?
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I'm sure nobody thought of that! (Score:4, Insightful)
Just kidding, who do you think you are? Do you think architects do the welding and cement mixing themselves? Do you realize that buildings have been built for, oh, I don't know, thousands of years, and that maybe, just maybe, people thought of this before you?
The reason why MIT is suing the *architect* is, I believe, because he's responsible for choosing and hiring those engineering firms which were derelict in their duty, and failed to supervise them. Those firms are most likely not contracted directly by MIT, therefore have no direct contractual obligation to them. The architect will, in turn, sue the contractors, or his insurers will.
I'm not a lawyer, I'm not a civil engineer, I'm just a guy one of whose friends had to sue a real estate developer for the same kind of shit, and who used to have a civil engineer as a neighbor.
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Re:I'm sure nobody thought of that! (Score:5, Interesting)
Ultimately the GC will sub out all the real work to the contractors for each trade. They hire the workers who end up putting in the sweat. Gehry may have sketched the design, but a $15 per hour employee did the roof, did the drywall, did the framing, etc.
The architect draws the pretty pictures, and if an engineer says it CAN be done, he'll believe it. If the engineer can prove it, presumably. Most architects are fairly sharp with buildings, believe it or not.
I guarantee you, if the lawyers for Gehry have any common sense they will turn around and sue everyone else with their name on a drawing for that structure. THOSE people will then turn around and sue the subs who did the work, claiming they didn't follow the drawings or used sub-par materials or whatever. This will turn into a grand mess. The engineers and architects (I presume?) have liability insurance, and the only real winners are the lawyers.
I worked for an engineering firm who was named in a lawsuit where a building was designed right but parts were installed terribly. The fingerpointing was massive.
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Re:Architecture vs. Engineering (Score:5, Informative)
Challenging buildings like this work out all the time (see Arup) and there's nothing that says you have to have a boring building in order for the roof not to leak. It just costs more. Obviously someone was cutting corners in there somewhere.
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Re:Architecture vs. Engineering (Score:5, Interesting)
According to the article, both Skanska and an outside consultant formally objected to the design, requesting soft joints and drainage systems. Gehry told them to shut up and go ahead with his design.
"An architect can't do all the work"
Yes, that would be obvious to most people. Unfortunately, it appears that the architect in this case isnt 'most people'.
That said, personally I used to think it would be hard to design eyesores worse than 70's projects concrete horros, but frankly I'd say Gehry's work actually qualifies. Apart from the fact that they look like someones three year old got hold of a 3d modelling program (which, as far as I can tell, is more or less exactly how he makes them), they instinctively evoke the desire, not merely to fix them, but to actually tear the buildings down and start from scratch.
I guess it's the architectural version of Defective by Design.
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Re:Just look at the building (Score:5, Insightful)
They should be relieved it was so cheap to fix.
I have to disagree. If I am spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a building, I expect it to work. At the very least, I would want my $15 million back from the architects. The architects were hired to design a building - the design doesn't work - so they shouldn't be paid. If you hired someone to landscape your yard, and it turned into a river of mud after the first rain, wouldn't you want your money back?
Sure, to MIT $1.5 million isn't that bad. However, to say they should be relieved they only have to spend that much, (so far), is a little extreme.
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Re:Just look at the building (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Just look at the building (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Just look at the building (Score:5, Interesting)
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Oh, you want a turd? Here's a golden one! (Score:5, Insightful)
"Hi kids!, Today's Japanese phrase is 'Kin no unchi', which means 'The golden poop'." Since this is how the Japanese refer to the building, you can tell they see it the same way.
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flakey architects (Score:5, Insightful)
Mies Van Der Rohe designed houses in Connecticut that are unlivable due to terrible cold drafts.
I'll take a competent architect over a famous one any day.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:flakey architects (Score:4, Informative)
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Re:flakey architects (Score:5, Interesting)
You would be amazed at the details that archtects overlook. Do you know why houses in the north tend to have overhanging roofs? It's so the melting snow and ice will fall away from the foundation and not cause leaks in the cellar. The lack of overhang also causes unslightly stains on the ouside of the house from the dripping water. Those "modern" buildings they have in California look really stupid here with all their water damage.
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Re:flakey architects (Score:5, Funny)
Q: How can you tell summer has come to Vancouver?
A: They take the tarp off your condo roof.
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Re:flakey architects (Score:4, Interesting)
Spend a few days in the building and all of those quirks are less endearing. Wright not only designed far beyond his materials, the air flow within the building sucks so the environment is often uncomfortable, the restrooms feel like an afterthought, and I had to double-check that I hadn't just let my self into an electrical panel access closet at least once, there's no sense whatsoever of the changing needs of a building, traffic and work flows are stuck in 1960s procedures or modern lines and people management have been awkwardly introduced around his designs, and a fellow juror reaffirmed that the courtrooms make one feel like we're stuck in the midst of an ongoing alien abduction.
Wright, Gehry and their ilk are overrated hacks, but they're appreciated by the same pointy-haired types who spec a problem into oblivion and then blame the engineers when their hallucinations can't actually be built problem free, so the worship goes on. I think the poster up above who compared the divide between architects and structural engineers to that of web designers versus programmers is dead on. there are, indeed, great designers, but as anyone who has, say, tried to pay their bills on a service provider's web site recently can tell you, they're far less common than the hacks who talk a good line and will make the logo bigger while destroying usability.
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Tempting fate (Score:5, Funny)
Now the building is full of holes and needs lots of patching up.
Perhaps they were tempting fate there?
Form over Function (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Form over Function (Score:5, Insightful)
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architects vs civil engineers (Score:4, Funny)
Re:architects vs civil engineers (Score:5, Informative)
next time they should hire a civil engineer ...
I think the trick is to get both.
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Re:architects vs civil engineers (Score:5, Interesting)
Thankfully for every famous architect out there, there is a good 20-30 with a clue.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.fishercenter.bard.edu/about/ [bard.edu] - another Gehry monstrosity. A performing Arts Center with no shops nor dressing rooms directly accessible to backstage.
Re:architects vs civil engineers (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:architects vs civil engineers (Score:5, Insightful)
"a civil engineer is someone who has to take plans produced by an architect's drug-addled mind and correct it until the building will be able to stand without collapsing". Or "an architect lures customers with pretty-looking pictures, then a civil engineer has to make it actually work".
The article strongly suggests that she may be right...
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Re:Hire architect, engineer, builder, and peacemak (Score:5, Funny)
So you need three imaginary people and an engineer?
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KISS (Score:4, Insightful)
Kinda fitting for a building that covers Computer Science...
There are reasons why most buildings look generally alike for a few thousand years.... Ease of building, efficiency of design. This had neither. But they went for it anyways... It is structurally sound so don't blame the atchect. You need to do more maintenance on the building because you didn't pay $300M for a building but $300M for a work of Art... Art needs to be preserved...
If the Computer Science department learned about KISS design they wouldn't be in that problem... I don't know if I would want to hire a CS Student from MIT if they don't teach the KISS Concept...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, while I in no way defend doctors, I think that people have to be their own primary care physician, because NOBODY can know more about you than you can. You just delegate out technical shit to professionals, and when they tell you they need to cut off some dangly
Re:KISS (Score:5, Interesting)
For another, the extreme temperature changes from summer to winter, and the requirement that the building be heated and cooled from MIT's central steam plant.
Add into that the security, networking, and social interaction requirements, and you have a really complex building before the architect even picks up his light pen. Simplicity is just out. "Managed Complexity" is necessary.
MIT knows a lot about preserving its buildings. Many of its buildings are landmarks and are carefullly preserved. It used to let ivy grow on the outsides of some buildings, in the traditional manner, except the ivy destroys the mortar between the bricks. It's very expensive to replace, so they just ripped out all the ivy. Harvard has also done this.
The external form of a building is really a rather minor point and has little to do with how well it is designed or executed. MIT has parking garages with leaky roofs, You don't need Frank Gehry to design a building with a leaky roof.
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$300 million... (Score:5, Funny)
Hmm.. Buggy Ceiling. (Score:3, Funny)
Didn't they read the EULA? (Score:3, Funny)
"Not warranted to be useful for any purpose. Not intended for any critical or even any trivial functions, users assume all risks and will indemnify and hold blameless the architect and builders. User(s) also waive all right to recourse without the express written consent of the builders or architect. By reading this EULA you agree to all terms of the EULA. This EULA can be modified or revoked at anytime without notice by the builders or architect."
OK, a bit silly. Unless of course it has to do with software.
Construction? (Score:4, Funny)
TFA says MIT also sued Skanska, the GC. I'd be curious to know how much of the fault lies with Skanska and its subcontractors.
I live in Cambridge (actually about 4 blocks from the building in question). If there's one thing that's universally true in the Boston area, it's that the quality of construction is exceedingly shoddy. People don't know how to build things well here.
Re:Construction? (Score:5, Insightful)
On a related subject, I am an Architect who currently works as a technical design consultant, and I am very disappointed at what I've read in this tread so far. "It's schools fault for wanting a design design"? "KISS"??? "There is a reason why buildings need to look boring"?
Truly depressing... Some of my old school pals are slaving away in 'starchitect' offices, rarely getting a weekend off; trying to innovate; to improve on the built environment around us. I sometimes ask them do they know who they are doing this for? Have they ever seen their ultimate end user? Even your end user who may know how write perfect computer code written on just a roll of toilet paper is probably likely to dismiss years of your work in a heartbeat.
Most people just don't care. I am amazed that buildings such as Gehry's ever get built. It's especially demoralizing here in North America... It's burger and fries baby for life...
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Was it accidental? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't remember Building 20 leaking (Score:5, Interesting)
My recollection is that the famously shabby Building 20, built hastily as a temporary building during World War II and kept in service until the Stata replaced it, was a perfectly adequately functional building that did all the various things you'd expect a building to do. (That could be a sexist remark: I don't remember what the ratio of mens' to womens' bathrooms in building 20 was; they might have been unequal).
I do not remember anyone who worked in it ever complaining about it. There must have been some, but I think it was by and large very well liked by its inhabitants.
One of the things that seemed odd to me about the Stata is that it was often felt that something about Building 20 actually seemed to encourage creativity and collaborative work, and I've always wondered why MIT, Gehry at all didn't first make a serious study Building 20 to see how and why it worked before embarking on what frankly looks to me like a half-baked display of architectural egotism.
I think Building 20's lack of visual distinctiveness may have been a plus, because it did not feel as if you were living under the shadow of someone else's creativity.
Any person with even a touch of humility would have to feel intimidated by looking out the window of one of MIT's main buildings and seeing names like Newton and Lavoisier looming over them. I've never been in the Stata, but I think it would give one the impression of being subordinated to someone else's sense of play, instead of letting one free to express one's own playfulness.
Vision over Practicality (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, there are some things that buildings, especially public buildings, should do. They should make it easy to find things, especially central, shared resources like elevators, lobbies, cafeterias, and, especially, exits. The Stata Center fails on all counts. It is difficult-to-impossible to navigate to the uninitiated and, from what people who work there tell me, it is difficult for them as well.
The interior spaces are very architecturally interesting. But have so many bugs it is unbelievable. There is one meeting room where the walls are made with perforated plywood; this is a cool idea, but, regrettably, due to the mechanisms that human vision uses to fuse the images between the two eyes, the sea of holes makes people feel queasy in that room. The workspaces are part of a grand open-office design. The previous building where LCS/AI was housed was the antithesis of open design -- a series of small offices -- and it worked very well. With the new building, researchers and students spend more of their time at home, rather than in the building, because the lack of acoustic privacy in the open design makes it extremely difficult to get any research done. In another area, there are ledges high up in one two-story space that are visible only from the story above -- kind of interesting, but these ledges will never, ever be cleaned and are starting to accumulate a goodly layer of dust. This wouldn't be so bad, except that people entering that space from the elevator lobby are immediately faced with this grime.
From what people intimately involved with the planning have told me, Geary approached the design of this building with astonishing hubris and disregard for any of the actual needs of the occupants. Interactions with him were often tense and acrimonious. Geary's willing ignorance of the real use of the building, rather than his imagined fantasy, shows. It's a cool looking structure that works very, very poorly as a research laboratory. Although few people who work there are willing to state it out loud, the rumblings are being felt that the decline of computer science research at MIT has in no small part been due to this negative influence of the building on daily worklife.
A good building will not only be easy to use, but will inspire its occupants. The old building at 545 Tech Square wasn't showy at all, but had some fantastic vistas, and a reasonably efficient use of space. (I had a series of offices in that building over the span of 14 years.) It was perhaps no accident that the basis for much of Computer Science (time-sharing operating systems, language research, the internet, high-performance compilers, distributed computation, microarchitecture, multi-processor design, speech recognition, theory, and a host of other areas) was performed there. I hope that this illustrious history will be continued in the Stata center, but am beginning to wonder if it will.
Re:Vision over Practicality (Score:4, Interesting)
I was around when they first unveiled the building and no body liked it from the start. The administration thought it would be a neat idea to put this ugly red metal installation art piece in the grass in front of Stata. Some creative people over at EC decided to turn it into a giant swing. The administration got angry and took it down right away. I tried to find pictures of this hack, but I couldn't find any. However, in a related incident, some more MIT hackers did this [mit.edu] to the MIT sign sitting outside of Stata. I think that says it all.
The building has always had problems. During the first year, the fire alarm would randomly go off and everyone would have to evacuate. This was especially bad because the first floor housed a handful of classrooms (almost everyone had at least one class in 32-123, which held around 300 people, regardless of their major).
I held several UROPs (undergraduate research) in Stata and I can attest that the open work environment doesn't work. I usually ended up sitting around a bunch of people that weren't even in a related group so they became huge distractions. They would talk to each other a lot and brainstorm, but I was left trying to concentrate on my work. In the end, I just set up the software on my laptop and worked from my dorm room.
The floor layouts are definitely confusing. I always got lost when I had to find a professor's office for the first time. More importantly, I'd get lost trying to find a bathroom on a particular floor. Not cool.
Ironically, there is a huge water filtration system present just outside that harvests the tons of rainwater that we get and uses it in the toilets and stuff. I'm surprised that hasn't broken yet (maybe it has and I just don't know it yet).
And the only reason why MIT made such an odd looking building is for tourism. Tons and tons of people visit MIT every day for tours. They may be visiting MIT explicitly or they may just be visiting Boston and decided to take the trolley tour (which starts in Kendall Square, i.e. 2 blocks from the Stata Center) and they ALL take the same pictures. They pose in front of Building 7 or in Lobby 7 (77 Mass Ave.), they'll pose in front of the Great Dome in Killian Court and they all pose in front of the Stata Center (either the steps to the third floor or the, now reconstructed, amphitheater). I mean, without a few interesting sights, the tourists would get bored. While I agree that this sort of tourism doesn't necessarily generate MIT revenue, but it does generate attention and enough attention can be used to turn into money.
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Re:Vision over Practicality (Score:5, Interesting)
The seminar room you mention ("Kiva") is unbelievably disorienting; the problem goes far beyond perforated plywood, which certainly accentuates the problem. The walls jut in and out at odd angles, and lean inward and askew as they climb to an offcenter window. I find the room nauseating; visitors I've brought by don't believe that the floor is actually level, the effect is so strong.
Security in the building is a complete joke, as there is no logic to the organization and separation of space, requiring complex electronically controlled access policies that are fundamentally broken.
HVAC in the building is horrible, although I understand that this is the case in many places, and was certainly the case in our previous building, NE-43.
Navigation is a nightmare; when people are lost in the building, I often lead them to where they want to go. There's no point trying to explain it to them, because the layout is so nontraditional that it defies simple explanation.
Office spaces are a mixed bag; some are beautiful spaces with recessed windows that make nice sitting areas. Others are cramped cubicles or have columns jutting through the middle.
I don't object to daring design-- it's just that Gehry seems to go out of his way to make things unusable.
There's a brief interview with Gehry in the film "My Architect" about Louis Kahn, and Gehry was interviewed in his architectural office, and it's as traditional as you could imagine: a big rectangular room with drafting tables. That settled it for me: it's not just hubris; he's an asshole. He sits in his comfortable space and designs expensive torture chambers; there's a Gehry-designed level of hell awaiting him.
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No sympathy for Ghery in Minneapolis (Score:5, Informative)
Gehry won't be receiving much sympathy from the residents of Minneapolis, who are forced to live with the Weisman Museum. The 'tin man' as it's known is sore-thumb public eyesore #1 in the U of M campus area.
Eyesore - figuratively and literally. Not only is this one of the ugliest, most mis-placed pieces of architecture in the metro, its reflective stainless steel skin blinds drivers crossing the Washington Avenue bridge in the late afternoon, when the sun is behind them and they're headed eastbound. Nice planning, folks.
Oh, and about the skin.. it's badly wrinkled, due to "unforeseen" issues with thermal expansion and contraction. Basically, the building looks like a crushed aluminum take-out box, about to litter itself into the Mississippi river.
Gehry (Score:4, Informative)
Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm seeing a lot of posts like "hire civil engineers to make your building" or "I want a building that works, not some pretty thing". Please note first of all that you'd probably want a structural engineer. And probably wind up with a box similiar to a hospital (90% of which is designed by structural engineers). You'd probably also wind up with a box with problems like doors opening over toilets and drawers in bathrooms, shelves for various applications in labs and kitchens being spaced in a way as to not be as convenient as you'd first like them, a more expensive house as HVAC is either not minimized or not as efficiently used or as the lighting uses no outside sources...I'm not saying structural engineers break any laws; they just usually design quickly and to the code, ignoring the needs of the inhabitants which takes a trained eye and education as a designer to properly see these minute details.
Yes, architects design. Sometimes their designs fail. But they know when they take up the pencil (or, most likely, CAD) that they are most likely to get sued or, worst of all for a designer, people will die AND they'll get sued, if they don't do their job properly.
Finally, I agree that sculpture buildings, while pretty, are best left to case studies and studio designs in Grad schools. There's a reason minimalism, modernism and post-modernism is so popular with modern architects. But this doesn't mean that your building would be "better" if it was just designed by a structural engineer. And this doesn't mean all architect's design like Gehry, who is considered a bit of a joke in the architecture world to be honest (at least among my professors).
Re:Hmm... (Score:5, Insightful)
Of course, "engineering" is a pretty broad dicipline. There are many specific types of engineers: Civil work mostly with the people and environment - making them the obvious choice for building design since they WILL take into account the "people factor" in their design.
Then there's structural, who will be more concerned that the building will stay standing. I would not designate a structural engineer to design the overall layout since it is outside of their specialty. (Not to say they are incapable, but part of engineering ethic is to not deliberately take on tasks you're not actually aquainted with)
As an MEP (Mechanical/Electrical/Plumbing - or simply Mechanical) engineer, my "specialty" is pipes, ducts and wires. My concern is the physical comfort and utility of the space: Temperature and humidity, lighting, noise (from my equipment), power and data systems, life safety systems. I would not consider myself to actually be qualified to design an entire building, but like other engineers I have an eye for the practical. I frequently find myself fighting with the architects for space to place equipment and rum pipe/conduit, and I DO consider aestetics in that process. I don't want the building to look like crap either...
Fact is, though, than an architect is generally not trained in any of the concerns that engineers are. Nearly every one of the 80-something job I've seen in the past ten years have had some very drain-dead design elements. These are not even radical designs, either... I'd give examples but I don't want to get carried away right now, but the bulk of them involve not accounting for climate, weather, actual use of the space and behavioral patterns, or constructability.
There's a reason why an Engineer can put his seal on an architectural drawing, but an architect can not put his seal on an engineering drawing.
=Smidge=
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It's not buggy, it's mousy (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Who's Who of Computing (Score:5, Funny)
mailto: webmaster@csail.mit.edu
That's world class brains for ya!
No way a spam harvest bot is going to decode that.
That's why they get the big bucks.
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