What Matters: March 2002
IHTFP: Architecture and Community at MIT
By Jay Weber MAR '81
Fumihiko Maki. Kevin Roche and John Dinkeloo. Steven Holl. Frank Gehry.
Names write large in the book of contemporary architecture.
While among them perhaps only Frank Gehry is a household word, the list is recognizable in the architecture community as the crème de la crème. These are the Michael Jordans, the Tiger Woods, and the Julia Roberts of architecture. MIT's selection of these architects to design the generation of campus buildings currently under construction demonstrates not only that they know who labors at the top of the heap, but that the administration recognizes the impact that the built environment has on its community, and the potential for architecture and design to enhance the quality of campus life at the Institute.
Just how important is the campus and the social milieu to the school's mission and core values? President Vest's 1996 Task Force on Student Life and Learning identified as one of its eleven principles "an integrated educational triad of academics, research, and community" and though the report never states it explicitly, my own experience is that while academics and research are alive and well, community is the atrophied third leg to which MIT must energetically attend if it is to maintain and advance its eminence among educational institutions. MIT must find ways to replace the attitude of IHTFP (I Hate This Freaking Place), which was prevalent when I studied there, with sentiments at the other end of the emotional spectrum such as loyalty, gratitude, and affection.
MIT's current penchant for buildings at the "cutting edge" might be seen as a reaction to the banality of the majority of the campus and its buildings. Most great university campuses arise incrementally, the results expressing the varying sensibilities of succeeding generations. Such variety is entirely lacking in the uniformity (and enormity) of MIT's main building where most of the amenities and opportunities for common space or connection to the outdoors have long since been reconfigured, locked off, or in-filled for other uses. And unfortunately, little of the subsequent incremental growth provides any relief from the homogeneity of the original structure. In the last two decades, MIT has constructed a number of new student residences. None of them has much in common with the over-scaled original building (not that they should!) yet the new dorms only extend the plodding file of residences along Amherst Street whose dull company is only slightly mitigated by beloved Baker Hall (designed in 1954 by the internationally renowned Finnish architect, Alvar Aalto), a building which is handsome and modest in so many ways, but expresses little interest toward the play fields it bounds. And aside from the Media Lab, most of the recent construction at the east end of the campus mimics the nearby commercial development of Kendall Square.
Not so for the coming generation. The identities of these new buildings are not only distinctly different from the older edifices on campus, they are assertively so. None of these buildings could be accused of hiding their lamps beneath a bushel. To the contrary, these "lamps" are front and center, on the lamp stand, and (in the case of the Stata Center) in your face.
The Web site for the Stata Center confirms the expectation that Frank Gehry and his office will lampoon convention at every opportunity and refuse (in a way that is almost religious in its fervor) to defer to the monotonous example of the pre-existing campus. Referred to by the Globe's architecture critic Robert Campbell as a drunken barn dance, the Stata Center will stand in flamboyant contrast to the fastidious sobriety of its forebears. Simmons Hall, the dormitory designed by Steven Holl and currently under construction, sports a nifty grid/screen/façade which acknowledges the old norm but projects cool elegance and modernity out onto the underused playing fields across Vassar Street. Maki's addition to the Media Lab, too, eschews the bland tradition, its elevations composed of the lines, planes, and rectangular solids of unreformed modernism. I expect these departures from convention to produce a salubrious effect on the self-image of the MIT community
While it is too much to ask that architecture and design transform the quality of human relationships in any society, it is the architect's responsibility to ascertain how buildings can nurture their inhabitants, support relationships, and provide opportunities for the integration of the inhabitants inward selves with the outer world. Fortunately, Simmons Hall in particular, but the Stata Center as well, seems to abound in the sorts of nooks, crannies, overlooks, public spaces, and connections with the outdoors that promote the sorts of informal social interaction which are critical to the vitality of any community and contribute to a place being memorable and even lovable.
Nonetheless, new buildings, even exciting ones, are not enough. After all, for all its stiff, even gloomy formality, the old main building has served the Institute well over the years, undergoing one transformation after another, as departments ebb and flow, their boundaries change and programmatic demands evolve. The old concrete framework and its glass and limestone shell have proved both flexible and durable in this respect. It can hardly be abandoned. And what of the thousands of square feet of mundane office and lab buildings constructed in the 60s, and 70s? A broad, encompassing vision is required. The campus design forum, "Spaces In and In Between" was an initial attempt to bring big names to bear on this "big picture." Somehow, the forum never got off the ground, or if it did, the results are not well publicized. The cause is a worthy one, however, and cannot safely be abandoned if MIT is sincere in its intention to avoid becoming an ongoing "Manhattan Project" (that is: extraordinary minds laboring in social isolation on behalf of large corporate and governmental interests.)
One place to start would be the development of safe, gracious, leafy outdoor spaces, an amenity which the present campus is sorely lacking. The main building, in spite of its monumental court facing the river, functions as a hose, siphoning its inhabitants onto and off of Massachusetts Avenue, its arms encircling acres of nearly inaccessible greensward which is used for Commencement and little else. Once one enters building seven at Massachusetts Avenue, the opportunities to escape into the fresh air are few and far between and if there is a public space in the main building where one can appreciate a view to the Charles, I don't know of it. Most excuses for gathering on building seven's handsome monumental stair are negated by the Mass. Ave. crosswalk, and the plaza across Mass. Ave. is ill defined and its occupants intimidated by the threatening demeanor of the Student Center with its pincer-like stairs. Is there some correspondence between the internal focus of MIT's buildings and the character of its community life?
Happily, President Vest HM and Bill Mitchell (Dean of the School of Architecture and Planning working with President Vest HM in an advisory capacity) are working diligently toward the development of an overarching vision for the campus. Vassar Street, clearly a critical element in the emerging development, has been the focus of much study. An overall "framework" for the entire campus (so called to avoid the legal and political implications of a "master plan"), with a special emphasis on outdoor spaces, is in the final stages of preparation, and the importance of improvements to the main building has been acknowledged with the renovation/restoration of Lobby 7, the first step in what promises to be a decade or more of rediscovering, rethinking, and restoring of that mammoth edifice.
I commend every aspect of this effort, and I look forward to seeing the fruits of the process. I also encourage President Vest and his advisors to open the process as fully as possible to the MIT community and the wider world. This isn't always easy, not only because of potential impact on negotiations with the City of Cambridge, or discussions with prospective donors, and so on, but because it can be difficult to arouse the interest and energies of the constituency whether students, parents, faculty, alumni, staff, neighbors, or just friends. All the same, I believe that the more sunlight on the process, the more nourishing the fruits of the process will be.
Postscript: While the transformation of the campus is an important element in the development of meaningful community at MIT, there are other, less capital-intense, measures which the MIT administration could be giving careful consideration. The recent (controversial) requirement for all freshmen to live on campus is an example of a policy decision that is likely to have profound effects on campus life. While a step in the right direction, the policy only begins to address the need for developing lasting relationships among the students and between students and faculty. A more meaningful reform might be to adopt a system of residential colleges, such as the one which has evolved over hundreds of years at Oxford, and adopted more recently (1931) by MIT's Cambridge neighbor, Harvard. The collegiate system, which establishes an added layer of social structure within the community, has much to recommend it and is admirably explicated by Robert O'Hara on his Web site, The Collegiate Way.
Learn more about the evolution of the MIT campus from the following resources:
About the Author
Jay Weber MAR '81 practices architecture as an associate with Architectural Resources Cambridge in Harvard Square, and lives (happily) with his family on the side of a hill in Arlington, MA. He attends the Fresh Pond Monthly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and spends what time he can outdoors.
What Matters is a guest opinion column written by a different MIT alumnus or alumna. The views expressed are entirely those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Alumni Association or MIT. Interested in writing a column? Email whatmatters@mit.edu.
