MIT New 450-bed Residence Hall | 121 Vassar St. | Cambridge

It's not built and it looks dated.
 
The lowest priority in MIT's scheme of things is creating an undergraduate, residential campus that will be a selling point when it comes to attracting prospective students. MIT's student housing is functional, nothing more.

Three quarters of the campus is architectural cacophony, replete with specimen buildings giving homage to the 'hot' architects of the moment. Stata is a statement building, and what does MIT do? Cocoons it with other buildings.
 
Equilibria said:
And meanwhile, at a school that cares...

https://news.yale.edu/2017/08/23/first-students-be-welcomed-two-new-residential-colleges-week
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I agree that this "building" should be imploded before it even opens and its architect sent to Guantanamo, but........

Is that a joke? Yale cares about WHAT????

New Haven is a sewer and Yale is a Mar-A-Lago surrounded by gates. MIT is actively saving Kendall Square/East Cambridge, correcting its mistakes of the past and giving it life for the 21st century and beyond. Yale is building higher walls.

The words "Yale" and "Care" are an odd coupling.
 
shmessy said:
New Haven is a sewer and Yale is a Mar-A-Lago surrounded by gates.
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I walked through New Haven in the fall of 2016 and it felt like a stand-alone Cambridge. The city had plenty of people on the streets, and more depth/density than I thought based on the tallest buildings being along the same road. There was a ton of beautiful architecture there! We walked down a bunch of different streets, from downtown to Yale, and the city is not at all like you describe it. Granted, the surrounded neighborhoods might be crap, but the downtown plus Yale portions make this my 4th favorite city I have walked around in New England. (behind Boston, Providence, and Portland)
 
Trust me, Yale does not care for anything outside its borders lol. I wouldn't go so far as calling New Haven a "sewer". It is rather poor and ghetto overall but it is almost entirely preserved historic housing, relatively walkable/bikeable, and some neighborhoods are legitimately nice. There is also a good level of real diversity with many immigrants and mixed neighborhoods. Definitely better than the actual sewers of Bridgeport and Waterbury.
 
This is more complicated than y'all are making it. I agree MIT has made its share of bad architectural decisions. But MIT has a very reputable school of architecture, and when those internal folks are involved in the design and decision making, things tend to turn out much better. Such as: the Collier memorial. And such as their award-winning restoration projects that aim to maintain authenticity of legacy designs (e.g., the recent Bldg 2 and E52 restorations).

simons850.jpg


mit-e52_ext02.jpg


When it comes to things like new dorms, I find it hard to believe there's adequate collaboration with the resident experts. Seems those dorm decisions are more "corporate".

All i am saying is that I don't think there's one specific way MIT approaches things. I think it's a mishmash (unfortunately). After all, MIT is a big complicated entity.
 
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How sensational would Stata look if it was fronted on Memorial Drive, instead of being relegated to an MIT back lot?
 
BarbaricManchurian said:
Trust me, Yale does not care for anything outside its borders lol. I wouldn't go so far as calling New Haven a "sewer". It is rather poor and ghetto overall but it is almost entirely preserved historic housing, relatively walkable/bikeable, and some neighborhoods are legitimately nice. There is also a good level of real diversity with many immigrants and mixed neighborhoods. Definitely better than the actual sewers of Bridgeport and Waterbury.
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I fully agree with your statement about Yale not caring for anything outside its borders. How can anyone compare it's neighborhood to the environs of MIT? That being said, "sewer" was a lousy word choice by me.

The particular MIT dorm in question IS indeed an architectural car crash, but the overall engagement with its urban surroundings that MIT has taken over the past two decades is on a completely different plane from Yale's insularity.

After all, the original post in question championed/contrasted Yale as a 'college that actually cares'. The 2nd highest endowment in America. Really how has it affected its urban environs as positively as MIT? Is MIT actually the 'college that doesn't care' and Yale the 'college that cares'? I just found it pretty funny.
 
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It's an ugly building. Full stop. But, it's in a backwater area and completely forgettable location. I can count the number of times I've been down that street on a single hand and the only reason I was down there in the first place is because I was out for a run and decide to explore some unfamiliar territory.

That said MIT's architecture in general is rather meh when it comes to greenfield construction. I'm not a fan of Stata though I don't hate it either. I'm not in love with their Kendall plans which seem to have been designed by someone with a cantilever fetish, but at the same time they're not bad either. I really hope MIT does something good with the Volpe site... It would make up for a lot of "meh".
 
stellarfun said:
How sensational would Stata look if it was fronted on Memorial Drive, instead of being relegated to an MIT back lot?
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Thank God thats not the case .

It's a garbage building, and it can't be covered and buried by surrounding buildings quick enough.

It might actually be interesting then if you had to dig through many other buildings to discover it. But, front and center and standalone. This current eyesore would be an eye gouger.
 
The Stata Center is best where it is. It was very specifically not designed to be a showpiece on Mem. Drive.

It was specifically designed to break up the endless repeating string of grey box lab buildings that spanned the length of Vassar. Keep in mind, this is what Stata replaced (which was quite an important building in its own right, though not aesthetically!):
0018.jpg


The story is that then-president Vest supposedly went to the top floor of the Marriott and looked aghast at the endless grey grid, and subsequently took Gehry up there to ask him what he could do about Vassar St.
"...two things bothered me - the planform of the campus and its backdoor. From the top floors of the adjacent Marriott Hotel, I could look down on MIT and see an unbroken rectilinear layout that somehow instantly made me think more of a naval base than of a campus for such a wonderful academic community. I also confess to a depressed feeling upon driving down the tired, treeless Vassar Street at the back of the primary campus, where steam plants, decaying buildings, and the nearly dilapidated and dismal gray-shingled Building 20 flanked the street..."
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From Building Stata.


Now, shifting back to this new dorm, I suppose an issue is that it further perpetuates the monotony of Vassar st. Or, as some posters have pointed out, maybe that particular stretch of Vassar is so hopeless that it doesn't matter. Either way, Stata was specifically designed to punctuate Vassar...not to be the front face of MIT (now, whether you agree with the approach or not is a different story).
 
Mods please mark this thread as "under construction"
 
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