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

It's so bad. I hope it's nice to live in at least.
 
Someone was actually paid money to design this hot mess????

It is like they went to the Ikea kid's department, and bought a set of mismatched storage units, and just threw them together (with parts left over).
 
First, Beeline once again thank you for your wonderful pictures. I've said it before but your hard work on this forum is a reason many of us tune in here.

Secondly, it's a little early to say, but you know what... I think I like this. Seems to me an architect has taken a chance. There's every reason people may quibble - that's the nature of art, isn't it, make a statement - but to my eye there's craft evident here. An artist at work. This is not cookie cutter, by the numbers real estate development. How bloody rare is that in our city? Most of what we build barely rises to mediocre. Overstatement? Not by much.

Yes, I too can imagine the jokes, "My kid's serving time at MIT." Is that bad? Think about it. I bet that same kid, when he first lays eyes on the building says, "I'm gonna live there? Really? Cool! I think..."

Shouldn't student housing be an appropriate place for us allow whimsy in design - see Holl's fine example down the block. A little whimsy where our kids go to school? Makes sense to me. (I understand if allusions to prison seem less than whimsical to many. It's still courageous.) Maltzan happily tweaks tradition - color, windows, massing - and I think he gets away with it. Not to everyone's taste, okay, granted.

It's still too early to say for sure, and I may some day rue my words, but I don't think so.

Or maybe I'm just so thirsty for evidence of the craft in our city.
 
^ Thirstier than a man who just crawled out of the desert, but I'd wager everyone who frequents this forum hopes for real architectural bravado in local projects, so you're not alone there.
 
BeeLine said:
IMG_5897 by Bos Beeline, on Flickr
Click to expand...
I don't know why but this is all I can see in that picture, give it 20 years.
r
 
"Architects" taking a steaming dump in our mouths once again.
 
I also have mixed feelings about this design. The massing fits the area, but could have been much bolder. The orange in the color scheme is an homage to the fencing that was there before it. The height and width of this structure match the area.

However, the extremely bold white is far too loud for this area. The orange clashes with the color of the brickwork of the neighboring buildings. And worst of all, the texture, so flat, makes this facade look less like a brick building and more like sculpted clay.

It's well constructed. It will serve MIT well. It will be a fantastic place to live on the inside, I'm sure, and will be one of MIT's best dorms. Aesthetically, it's not the worst thing in the world. But this could have been so much more, especially sandwiched between a beautiful old building (The Metropolitan Warehouse) and a bold, newer building (Simmons Hall).
 
The orange is quite close to the University of Texas orange.

Colors | Brand

brand.utexas.edu brand.utexas.edu

The design is in the rich tradition of MIT's specimen architecture, 'we'll have one of these, and one of that,....'
 
This should probably be its own thread, but I felt like there were a lot of individual MIT projects in independent threads, and I was wondering if west campus should maybe be consolidated under one thread. Maybe renaming this thread would be good, or mods can feel free to spin off this post as its own topic?

New graduate student dorm coming on west campus. Looks like it's going to be huge.

MIT is embarking on a project to design and construct new graduate housing at the west end of campus on the site of the West Lot parking area and Building W89 (MIT Police). Currently in an early planning stage, the apartment-style residence hall is expected to provide 550 new graduate student housing beds, completing the October 2017 commitment MIT made to add 950 beds to the graduate housing system on campus.

news.mit.edu

New project advances commitment to expanding graduate housing

MIT is embarking on a project to design and construct new graduate housing on Vassar Street at the west end of campus. Currently in an early planning stage, the apartment-style residence hall is expected to provide 550 new graduate student housing beds.
news.mit.edu news.mit.edu

MIT-graduate-residence-west-campus-site.jpg
 
wow...that is a landscraping turd of an effort. Baffles me how a school with a great school of architecture can be so daft sometimes.
 
The red brick is too red.
It should well be something else.
The white brick is too white.
It should well be something else.
They clash.
 
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