© 2024 Iowa Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

M.I.T. Sues Gehry for Leaky Building

The Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences, at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
Stan Honda / AFP/Getty Images
/
AFP/Getty Images
The Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences, at MIT in Cambridge, Mass.
Another view of Gehry's Stata Center.
Stan Honda/ / AFP/Getty Images
/
AFP/Getty Images
Another view of Gehry's Stata Center.
The Stata Center at MIT
Stan Honda/ / AFP/Getty Images
/
AFP/Getty Images
The Stata Center at MIT
Inside MIT's Stata Center
Stan Honda / AFP/Getty Images
/
AFP/Getty Images
Inside MIT's Stata Center

The elite engineering school is suing one of America's biggest architects over work he did on the university's Stata Center.

Frank Gehry's project initially won praise for its daring and whimsy, but today school officials say the complex is plagued by mold and cracked walls.

It's not the first time Gehry's work has been criticized. Engineers have also found problems with the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, and with the Guggenheim in Bilbao. Diane Georgopoulos, president-elect of the Boston Society of Architects, talks about where responsibility really lies, and whether form-breaking architecture is prone to just plain breaking.

Copyright 2022 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.