Slantytown
I read this evening that M.I.T. is suing Frank Gehry over a building on their campus called the Stata Center. One of my favorite television programs, This Old House, profiled the cartoonish complex during last season’s East Boston project. I remember thinking at the time, “this place is bizarre and inconvenient”, with office supplies falling behind file cabinets that didn’t touch the slanted walls.
The suit alleges that the Stata Center is plagued by drainage problems and dangerous accumulations of snow and ice. Forgive my ignorance, but doesn’t the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have any engineers?
It serves them right as far as I am concerned. Walt Disney Concert Hall has received good reviews from people I know, and its design is certainly distinctive, as are many of Frank Gehry’s other museums and public spaces, but he seems to me to be marketing novelty over utility with many of his inhabited structures, to wit, the “Dancing House” in Prague and the Gehry Tower in Hannover. I hope the judge in this case laughs in the faces of M.I.T.’s lawyers and dismisses the suit. They should have known better.
I don't like going places, doing things or seeing people.