Architecture and Use

This is not something out of an Alice in Wonderland script, it is the Stata Center at MIT for EECS. I spent a few years in there and got to know the place a bit. I also spent years in its predecessor, Building 20, the old MIT Rad Lab, the wooden shacks used during WW II to house the radar development group. The old wooden building gave one a sense of past and connection. The new one is a mess. Just look at the above entry, it snows in Cambridge, often quite a lot. The entry ways pile up with ice and snow and then when it is sunny it comes down like a guillotine on whoever is walking by.

The rest rooms are designed to have several stall for women and one for men. Now that is not really important at say 3 in the AM but it could cause a problem during the flu season. The windows leak, and you must bring bread crumbs to find one's way about.

So why the ranting, well its designer seems to be lashing out at his critics. In an article in the New Yorker it states:

“Let me tell you one thing,” (the architect) said, according to the Guardian: “In this world we are living in, ninety-eight per cent of everything that is built and designed today is pure shit. There’s no sense of design, no respect for humanity or for anything else.” He added, pleading, “Once in a while, however, a group of people do something special. Very few, but God, leave us alone.”

Well as one who has used his design shown above, it may fall into his set of human waste designs in my opinion. Form follows function, or something like that. But I also wonder who washes the windows and at what cost. Frankly it is monstrosities like this that drive up university costs. MIT actually sued him for the design. But it remains.