IMAGINING MIT

IMAGINING MIT Designing a Campus for the Twenty-First Century

William J. Mitchell

Afterword by Charles M. Vest

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Mitchell,William J. (William John), 1944- Imagining MIT : designing a campus for the twenty-first century / William J. Mitchell ; afterword by Charles M.Vest. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-262-13479-8 (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Buildings. 2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology—Planning. 3. Campus planning—Massachusetts—Cambridge. I. Title. T171.M49M58 2007 378.744'4—dc22 2006029824 CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION VI

1 THE AMERICAN CAMPUS 2

2 WILLIAM WELLES BOSWORTH: TAYLORISM AND CLASSICISM 6

3 POSTWAR PRAGMATISM 20

4 ALVAR AALTO AND EERO SAARINEN: MIDCENTURY MODERNISM 24

5 KEVIN ROCHE: ZESIGER SPORTS AND FITNESS CENTER 38

6 STEVEN HOLL: SIMMONS HALL 46

7 FRANK GEHRY: STATA CENTER 62

8 CHARLES CORREA: BRAIN AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES COMPLEX 86

9 FUMIHIKO MAKI: MEDIA LABORATORY 102

10 PLANNING A CAMPUS IN REAL TIME 118

CHARLES M. VEST, AFTERWORD: TRANSFORMING THE MIT CAMPUS—

A PERSONAL JOURNEY 124

NOTES 130 BIBLIOGRAPHY 134 ILLUSTRATION CREDITS 136 INDEX 138 INTRODUCTION 1 Map of the MIT campus showing five major architectural projects of the 1990s and 2000s.

When colleges and universities build, they don’t just add to their ZESIGER SPORTS AND FITNESS CENTER inventories of floor space.They reveal—sometimes unwittingly—their prevailing values, aspirations, and preoccupations. Campuses are evolv- SIMMONS HALL ing, continually contested representations of the communities they STATA CENTER house.

The late 1990s found the Massachusetts Institute of Technology BRAIN AND COGNITIVE SCIENCES COMPLEX with a grim, run-down campus that had earned it the nickname “the factory on the Charles,” a huge pent-up demand for new space to MEDIA LABORATORY accommodate its changing needs, and growing capacity to do some- thing about it as a hot high-tech economy pumped funds into the endowment. The result was a decade-long, billion-dollar building boom that produced five major works of architecture—by Kevin Roche, Steven Holl, Frank Gehry, Charles Correa, and Fumihiko Maki.These and other projects added more than a million square feet of floor space, transformed the Institute’s physical environment, and remade its relationship to adjacent communities.1 They not only responded to immediate needs, but also became an expression of faith in the long-term future of the residential, campus-based university at a time when new communication technologies were raising questions about its continued relevance and alternative models—such as dis- tance learning and international multi-campus universities—were emerging.2 MIT, under President Charles Vest, was rebuilt as radically as Rome under Septimius Severus. The process of campus reconstruction confronted MIT and its architects with the need to reflect critically on the very idea of a cam- pus for a twenty-first-century research university, to engage a vigor- ous ongoing debate about principles of campus design, and to rethink the constituent building types. The outcome was a concrete realiza- tion—incomplete and imperfect, to be sure—of some compelling Massach

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vii ideas that emerged, were explored and argued about, and eventually tural possibilities, but in general, architects build what they can repre- took hold as the process unfolded. It illustrated both the opportuni- sent and represent what they can build. Over time, the repertoire of ties and the difficulties of architectural production and city building available techniques has expanded, and this has opened up new under conditions of supercharged, technologically driven, entrepre- domains of potential building forms for consideration.To clarify this neurial capitalism.And it disclosed the presence of significant ambigu- connection, I have confined the illustrations to contemporary repre- ities, contradictions, and cultural tensions within the MIT sentations of projects, and I have taken care to show how different community—indeed, within the American academic world more types of representations play their characteristic roles at different stages generally—at the dawn of a new millennium. in the lengthy processes of floating, exploring, developing and detail- This book critically examines both the built results and the com- ing, and documenting design concepts. plex processes leading to them. It is a story of architects and their This is, in the end, a story not only of successfully completed proj- buildings, but not only that. It departs from the standard, mythic form ects, but also of rejected options, regretted compromises, and unreal- of an architectural narrative—the tale of a heroic designer and ized proposals. Designing a building is a messy, informally structured enlightened patron overcoming adversity to realize a vision—to generate-and-test process; framed by the cultural conditions of the develop a Rashomon-like construction of multiple voices and view- moment, the architect’s wide-ranging imagination proposes, while points. It tells not only of architectural intentions and inventions, but some combination of institutional and economic imperatives, emerg- also of money, politics, institutional dynamics, project management, ing exigencies, and sheer accident disposes. It is the social exploration and ideological and cultural contention. My own text provides an of a complex, shifting solution space.The construction of today’s MIT engaged insider’s account—written from my perspective, during this campus has actualized just one politically and economically contingent period, as dean of the School of Architecture and Planning and archi- path through a maze of might-have-beens, and the paths projected but tectural advisor to MIT’s president.3 The various architects are repre- then not taken are as interesting and revealing as those that were. sented by their drawings, models, and computer graphics, and by their own words. Emeritus President Vest, who, in his institutional role, ini- tiated and led the effort, contributes a candidly reflective afterword.4 The illustrations show not only the evolution of each project, but also the relationship of diverse and evolving architectural representa- tion techniques—sketching, drafting, scale modeling, prototyping, photographic and digital imaging, mathematical modeling of engi- neering systems, and eventually three-dimensional computer model- ing and rendering—to the conception, discussion, and development of architectural ideas. Design media do not directly determine architec-

viii 2 Representation techniques employed in the Stata design and construction process: sketches, physical scale models, three-dimensional digital model, and CAD/CAM construction.

INTRODUCTION ix

IMAGINING MIT