alt Hacker NewsHe designed the Stata center at MIT. I know it's had lots of problems (leaks and other issues) because of its wonky design. But I always liked walking by, and thought of it as a Dr Seuss building.
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I worked in the Stata Center for the first five years and it was just a very poor office building to work in. Even setting aside the leaks and other construction defects, individual working spaces, traffic paths, and communal spaces were not well-separated leading to a lot of distraction. There was also various useless corners due to sharp angles.
I much preferred working in the previous building, CS and AI lab building, NE43. It looked like a punch card from the outside, but had a very nice design with small offices (with closing doors) ringing a common space. The primary downside is the square footage per worker was decadent by today's standard.
Oh wait, we were talking about Frank Gehry, right? His museums looks cool but he should never have been allowed to design an office building.
The exterior design grew on me, for all the issues it had (and at least one major redo), over time. The few times I was in there I liked the ground design well enough as a space. But I'm not sure I've ever heard anyone rave about the interior layout as a working space in general.
I know someone who worked for an HVAC sub for the building and they said it was really hard because there weren't plans as they were used to working on at the time.
Anecdotally, the professors I talked to in the building hated it. Non-rectilinear walls and oddly-shaped offices made it difficult to put up bookcases and desks. The windows were all custom, meaning if one broke, it was difficult to replace. And, of course, the aforementioned leaks.
I was in the Radio Society and had access to the Green Building (50) roof. The Stata Center actually looks coherent from that angle, and you can tell that was the angle the designers and approvers had been seeing it from (in model form) the whole time.