MIT provost Bob Brown has ready explanations for the delays and ballooning costs of the building. I think it may be the best thing he’s done.” Bill Mitchell, a longtime friend of Gehry’s and MIT’s outgoing dean of architecture, says of the aforementioned Gehry structures, “Stata is the one with the most complex program and intellectual agenda. MIT officials are fanatically loyal to the Stata building, which has been uncharitably dubbed the Institute’s Big Dig. It is no accident that MIT’s Department of Linguistics, which is slated to move into Stata, displays the famous Onion magazine satire - “Frank Gehry No Longer Allowed to Make Sandwiches for Grandkids” - on its Web site ( ). The current, faddish Gehry look has become a victim of self-parody, or at least of parody, to be sure. Guggenheim Bilbao begat Gehry’s similar-looking Experience Music Project in Seattle, whose lines are echoed in the just-opened Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. And what once appeared futuristic now looks like a jumbly rehash of existing Gehry piles. MIT brass now peg the budget at $300 million, although a June press release from a Stata Center supplier put the cost at $430 million. His Guggenheim Museum Bilbao had just opened to almost universal, fawning praise. At that time the intended completion date was 2000, the announced budget was $100 million, and Gehry’s swirling, off-kilter polished steel, glass, and brick facades still seemed avant-garde. The still-unfinished Stata Center has been awash in worshipful publicity ever since Analog Devices founder Ray Stata ’58 and his wife, Maria, announced their $25 million cornerstone gift to the institute in December of 1997. Will Frank Gehry’s wildly over-budget and years-behind-schedule Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences at MIT prove to be a well-intentioned embarrassment? Signs point to yes. Is MIT’s Stata Center already old before its time?
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PDF of This Issue The Boston Globe On MIT’s Stata Center By Alex Beam
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