M.I.T. Sues Frank Gehry, Citing Flaws in Center He Designed

[csintexas]

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/07/us/07mit.html

Just as soon as this suit is finished the public needs to sue M.I.T. for being stupid enough to buy that building. Isn't M.I.T. the place that also bought that butt ugly dormitory? They must make a lot of money to be wasting it so freely.

Oh yeah here it is:

Eyesore of the Month
February 2004


You would think there would be someone around there with a little since. Poor M.I.T. they can't figure out architecture themselves and had to rely on Gehry.

[djswan]

OMG There are no architects anymore, just sales people selling snake oil. Bring back order and tear that crap down.

MIT got what it deserves.

[lekizz]

Reading the article, it sounds like the new Centre is liked by its occupants. But I have read about complaints from the students in Steven Holl's dormitory building, which definitiely sounds like it was designed for architecture magazines rather than for its occupants.

[csintexas]

Yes I read that also.
I'm sure they would like it even more without all the problems. The question would be -do we know how to design a building that is both liked by it's users and also efficient and functional? I think the answer is yes.

[djswan]

I blame this crap on the AIA. Inbreed architects. Bubble architecture. Building your dreams. House of cards. What happens in Vegas should STAY in Vegas. Frank Wrong.

This architecture is falling fast. Put your hard hats on. This crap is embarrassing to our country. Please somebody set the clock back to before Sullivan hired Wright.

[P.C.]

"Bubble architecture."

Yes the perception of the structure as a skin, no thought about the importaint issue, how to keep the panels in the air --- what sense in a floor plan with a spetacle like that ; if you remove the panels the structure underneath uncover what "cutting edge" and "innovation" is about --- skilled fiddeling of tradisional rigid universal fittings and easy gadgeds in multible layers , not much sale in that, not much new thinking either, and if the looks are just a painting of spetacular effects, where the structure is in a way, just in the way, ---- but there, that's what under the clotches, now start bleed to just keep it that way, sorry but I can't "see" that sort of architecture in any other way, sure people want something spetacular, but there are a world out there, waiting for the cheap safe new houses, that was newer delivered with those sorts of Icons.

[djswan]

It's sad, you can only fix this architecture with lawsuits not commom sense. Common sense was lost with the craftspeople.

[lekizz]

For fecks sake, why all the anti architect aggression?! Why not attribute some of the blame to cheapskate cut-price-at-any-cost Skanska or the client that demanded a "Gehry"?

[P.C.]

True -- but when things start to show in all it's absurd --- then please allow those of us who has been pointing to these things for years , to glow just a moment, from me there are no evil joy in this realy, and mind that my first reaction was, that this sound as what happened in so many new houses ----

But that still leave the absurd fact that what they get is not the cutting edge architecture, --- these things havn't changed for a decade allmost, and then think about it ; would'n you think computers have changed, that methods has changed , offcaurse they has , but these tin hats are all made from the same premature attitude towerds computing, that MIT then become one of those spetacles that's what is funny, that architecture that has to yield hysteric forms to present something new, while the basic structure --- what everything shuld be about --- is still the same old fiddeling ,and that this sort of architecture more and more became a picture of how you would emagine future architecture --- without the drive structural mastering would efford, that is the sad part of it.

And yes it is more sad than funny.

[csintexas]

Actually in my opening statement I was more critical of MIT
I said that MIT ought to be sued for buying it. They are a private institution though and get to waste all the money they want.

Skanska is a co-defendant and so are not cleared yet either.

Certainly if others changed the design beyond Gehry's control he should not be liable for that.

[P.C.]

"I said that MIT ought to be sued for buying it."

Exactly , by buying it they said that architecture are a Tin Hat, that architecture is a picture of what we expect of future architecture , by buying it MIT bought the Emporors new clotches , and now they has to look under the clotches to see what is there to hold the hysteric forms in the air.

Now those forms would be mastery if they was not fake --- they would be visionary if what counted would be the structure not the skin , if what it was about was not fiddeling metal sheets with whatever steel beam structure that would hold it.

But now we maybe will get a peep underneath the spetacular panels, I know what that will uncover, but I think architects today will be to arogant to learn, and any fonds that could expand a better vision, will be used to patch the bulking spetacle.

[P.C.]

Now those foults are trivial --- many modern buildings suffer the same problems, and the architect can be arogant and point to the fact, that many post modern Icons also was leaking , so this is a sculpture it is cutting edge architecture , what do you expect .

My offences are more serious, as I claim it is a result of an architecture that is and has been at a standstill for 20 years. That it's origine in the flexible polymesh structures was a mistake and that this is obvious in these structures, structures that brag with borrowed feathers and is a mess in terms of structure. ----- There was simply nothing to gain by architecture, even these structures are highly praised by architecture historians , they delivered nothing , their impac on construction are Nil. --- and now it leak.

Architecture became a Roadshow, hysteric forms where investigating and experimenting with new structural methods, would have Delivered structures with a life span of hundred of years . Instead architecture became juice for the gloss magazins, silli questions about anything else than what it shuld be about --- grandious words taken strait from architectural hstory to cover the fact, that there are a reson for the leak, ---- the fact that these "cutting edge" structures are all compromises ,where most often a tradisional brick structure deliver the basic structure, and the fancy paneling are there for the architecture magazins -- and newer one word about what this profited architecture.

[TJCaine]

[P.C.]

Now I hope you understand that I can not be intirely oposed curtain wall elements. They are a sense solution in those concept of structure --- but yes .
And yes this also freeze the attitude of average architecture Icons, but offcaurse, isn't it the matter, what and how the house are build that allow these structures so low a span of years --- well what can I say, 3dh will offer you a house that last 500 years, if you are prepared to care for the detail, it can even make one that go 1000 years, just like the old wooden ships could in theorie last forever and we can document chinese ships of more then 500 years of age, sure it's only a question about the right method. You get what you pay.

[csintexas]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB119578134568501693.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

BOOKS

When Buildings Stopped Making Sense
By FRANCIS MORRONE
November 23, 2007; Page W6

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just filed suit against the architect Frank Gehry, whose wavy, odd-angled metallic forms infiltrate the skylines of many American cities and not a few abroad (like Bilbao, Spain). The suit seeks unspecified damages for "design and construction failures" at the Stata Center, a two-towered structure that opened three years ago, housing computer-science labs on MIT's Cambridge, Mass., campus. Mr. Gehry's response? "M.I.T. is after our insurance."