by Michael J. Crosbie
The latest installment in a billion-dollar construction program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has just opened on the Cambridge campus, and it's unlike anything else MIT has ever built.
The Ray and Maria Stata Center, designed by Frank Gehry, is a rambling collage of odds and ends that now houses three MIT departments: the Computer Sciences and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
The researchers and scientists who work here pull apart the mysteries of language, intelligence, and human decision making, so Gehry's puzzle palace seems just the right setting for "pushing the envelope" of what we know. At Stata, the envelope is folded, torn, punched, warped, shredded, and crinkled.
Historians in the next century might conclude that this particular Gehry creation was a reflection of our collective social anxiety — a building with twists and tilts suggesting explosive alteration.
Gateway to Something New
The nearly three-acre (1.2-hectare) Stata Center is located at the northeast corner of the campus, which MIT has planned as a new gateway to the institute at the corner of Main and Vassar streets. This 720,000-square-foot (67,000-square-meter) assemblage announces MIT's presence and its renewed commitment to building landmark architecture.
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