Superstar architect Frank Gehry is being sued by MIT - the Massachusetts Institute of Technology renowned for technological innovation - and the court action suggests that the Gehry bubble may be about to burst.
MIT claims in papers filed in court in Boston on October 31 that Gehry Partners "breached its duties by providing deficient design services and drawings" because their $300m, drunken-Hobbit-like Stata Centre leaks and has moldy bricks, cracking masonry and bad drains.
Its swooping, haphazard roofline, the Gehry signature, fails to perform in the New England winter. It creates hazards such as "sliding ice and snow from the building's window boxes and other projecting roof areas, blocking emergency exits and other building elements".
The law suit, seeking unspecified damages, also claims that MIT had to
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Leaky roofs, mold on walls - what next? CHARLES LAURENCE reports on a ‘genius’ architect under siege |
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spend $1.5m to rebuild the outdoor amphitheatre with new bricks, seats and drainage system.
The $300m, 400,000 square-foot Stata Centre of classrooms, offices and computer labs was completed to Gehry's familiar rave reviews in 2004. Gehry Partners was paid $15m for the architecture.
Gehry, 78, became America's most celebrated architect since Frank Lloyd Wright after building the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles. He has since created a host of other buildings which have captured the imaginations of both critics and the public. The latest is billionaire Barry Diller's headquarters in Manhattan, which suggest billowing sails on the Hudson river. But do they work?
Gehry has responded aggressively to news of the law suit by telling New York Times that MIT is "after  |
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