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MIT Sues Frank Gehry Over Buggy $300M CS Building

Posted by ryuzaki0 on 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."

6 of 388 comments (clear)

  1. Re:architects vs civil engineers by stranger_to_himself · · Score: 4, Informative

    next time they should hire a civil engineer ...

    I think the trick is to get both.

  2. Re:flakey architects by Fast+Thick+Pants · · Score: 4, Informative

    Frank Lloyd Wright also has a college campus that's falling apart, but at least it held together for a little longer than Gehry's.

  3. No sympathy for Ghery in Minneapolis by murderlegendre · · Score: 4, 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.

    --
    There's a Starman, waiting in the sky / He'd like to come and meet us, but he hasn't got the time.
  4. Gehry by EveryNickIsTaken · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work for a fortune 500 luxury goods company that recently had Gehry design *jewelry*, of all things. Let's just say that the line is on the verge of being cancelled due to poor sales - many of the items are already discontinued. Sure, the stuff is interesting to look at, but much of it is impractical to wear. I'm not at all surprised that the guy's designed a building that's practically falling apart.

  5. Architecture vs. Engineering by ShatteredArm · · Score: 5, Informative

    At the very least, a civil engineer should've been hired to do a cursory check on things that the architecture might not have considered, such as gravity. Architects are like web designers, i.e., they design pretty interfaces rather than build infrastructures. They're artists, not engineers. I'm not too familiar with how these buildings are done, but don't they have a team of engineers involved to make sure things like this don't happen?

    1. Re:Architecture vs. Engineering by paanta · · Score: 5, Informative

      I don't think you understand how buildings like this are designed and constructed. Architects on projects like this always, always, always work with qualified structural engineers either on staff or from an outside consulting agency. This _isn't_ a failure of an individual architect. It's a failure of a full-service firm that coordinates activities across the full spectrum, from conceptual stuff to engineering all the way down the line to (presumably) the guys putting in the rivets. An architect can't do all the work, but neither can an engineer or a construction manager.

      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.