Photos I took of Frank Gehry’s Ray and Maria Stata Center at MIT, in 2004

Frank Gehry’s MIT Stata Center

A brief review of the Ray and Maria Stata Center, the new home of the various computer science and engineering faculties at MIT, designed by Gehry Partners.

Ed. This piece was originally published at cityofsound.com on October 12th 2004. Apologies for the image quality; it's a 2004-era digital camera (a Canon Digital IXUS 400!)

I visited this building during the nearby conference, Designing Interactive Systems 2004, at MIT, this August 2004. Yet I wrote about the Ray and Maria Stata Center before seeing it, which was always going to be a risky thing to do.

Designing adaptability into MIT

On the basis of this single visit, however, I do feel partly vindicated in raising a few question marks, even from that distance. But it’s also clear that the Stata Center will succeed both as the kind of landmark piece of celebrity architecture that cultural institutions and cities increasingly define themselves with, and as an exciting and engaging working building for the staff and students at MIT.