Nerd Rant: The Stata Center

I know very, very little about architecture. I approach architecture the same way I approach many types of art about which I have little to no formal education: I either like it or I don't. Well, except for one general personal rule--the architecture I like must not sacrifice form for function. That said, I generally just don't think about architecture all that much, unless it's a building I work in or something exceptionally striking. The building I work in now is not much to look at and has some flaws, but for the most part I enjoy working there. The Stata Center, home to MIT's Computer Science Department and AI laboratory, is exceptionally striking. It's about two blocks from where I work and I walk by it nearly every day.

I've had mixed feelings about Frank Gehry's Stata Center since I first laid eyes on it years ago. There was the initial "Wow" factor, of course. I mean, look at it:
Then, when the novelty began to wear off, I began to wonder if it's actually just an eyesore. Then I got pretty used to seeing it on a daily basis, and I mostly thought of it as a helpful landmark. "Just take a right at the Crazy Building and you're there." But up until today, I'd never actually been inside the building. Now I have a new opinion of the Stata Center.

This is the worst effing building I've ever entered.

The professional reviews of the building have been mixed from the beginning, and much has been said by people smarter than me about how "uncomfortable" the building is. Have you ever imagined walking through an M.C. Escher drawing? Does that sound cool to you? Really? I mean really close your eyes and imagine it. Oops, did your stomach just lurch a little bit? Welcome to the Stata Center!

Here was my experience today, briefly. My boss, a colleague, and I decided to go to a seminar that happened to be in the Stata Center. I was pretty pumped to finally see the inside of the place. Upon walking through the front door, I found myself at the bottom of a psychedelic canyon. There were no 90 degree corners to be found. The walls slanted away and in many places went up a few stories to a variety of convoluted ceilings. It was all kind of a blur until the elevator. On the elevator, my boss, who went to MIT, told the story of a friend who had a job interview on the second floor of this building and was half an hour late because he couldn't figure out how to get to the second floor. Sure enough, I looked at the elevator buttons and there was no "2" to be seen. We went from L to 3 in one swoop, bypassing the mythical second floor completely.

We walked into the auditorium, which felt like walking into the bottom of a starburst shaped missile silo. I'm pretty sure we were inside the yellow structure you see here:
These walls actually lean inward, and were covered with a disconcerting grid of spots that probably had to be there to improve the acoustics in this unfortunately-shaped room. I soon discovered that if my eyes strayed too long from the screen or the speaker, I started to feel woozy. I have never experienced vertigo or claustrophobia, but this room made me feel a little of each.

Upon leaving the seminar (which luckily was interesting enough that my eyes seldom strayed from the screen), we decided to take the stairs down to the ground floor. There was a staircase right in front of us as we left the room, and we took it down to the fantastical 2nd floor. Upon doing a 180 at the bottom of the stairs to find the next flight down I found...nothing. A wall. Where were the stairs to the ground floor? I turned around to see that I had three choices: a hallway to my left, a bizarre twisty catwalk, or, hey a flight of stairs off to the right! Naturally we took the stairs down to...nothing. We found ourselves on a platform halfway between the 2nd and 1st floor that had no discernable egress. No more stairs, no doors. Not even a chair to sit on. There was a railing you could peer over into the cafeteria, in case you like to look at the tops of people's heads while they eat, but that was it. So we went back up the stairs and made our way over the twisty catwalk, where we eventually found the next set of stairs, essentially on the other side of the building, to get to the next floor.

WTF? Not to sound all Mr. Safety, but how the hell did this place pass fire codes? My colleagues and I are not stupid people, and yet it took us several minutes to figure out how to make a trip that should have taken 30 seconds.

The bottom line is, the Stata Center is the most pretentious pile o' crap I've ever seen or experienced. I can't imagine the poor people who have to work and study in it every day. I suppose they get used to it eventually, but you shouldn't have to gradually grow acclimated to the building you work in, at least not to this extent. And I haven't even gone into the fact that the building is barely even structurally sound--MIT sued Gehry last year for all the problems they've had with the building's integrity. What a disaster.

Please someone, direct me towards a building in the Boston area that will erase this nightmare from my memory.