Originally conceived as a dedicated computer science building, the new Center has been expanded to accommodate a recently created interdisciplinary research group in computer science and artificial intelligence, as well as researchers in linguistics and philosophy. The building will also house the university's Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems, an inherently cross-disciplinary program investigating research problems that span information theory, computer networks and control systems, signal processing, and neurobiology.

Designed by Frank Gehry of Santa Monica, Calif.—who also designed the Vontz Center for Molecular Sciences at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center—the 713,000-sf Stata Center is being built as part of MIT's ongoing, multi-year, $1-billion capital program. Researchers are expected to move into the building in March.

Throughout the capital building program, the university has solicited architects from around the world, in the belief that such a process was most likely to produce buildings in keeping with the caliber of MIT's research programs.

A Controversial Gateway with a Heart

The new building occupies the northeast sector of the campus, essentially the gateway to the rest of the MIT campus. Externally the building is quite unconventional. Anchored at the ends by two towers—the William H. Gates tower and the Alexander Dreyfoos, Jr., tower, both named after project benefactors—the building is defined by tall, leaning forms that shelter a central courtyard of pods, nooks, and terraces. The design has received some mixed reviews from the local press, but David Silverman, senior project manager for the Stata Center, is confident that the building will prove itself by fulfilling its intended mission: to produce high-caliber research by fostering new ideas, including across traditional disciplinary boundaries.

"Whatever people think of the exterior, there are some very friendly and stimulating spaces inside and around the building. The building is very different from what our people are used to, but they feel that this approach will in fact help them do better work," he says.

From the outset, Silverman and others are aware that accomplishing their goal of fostering interaction across disciplines is going to require breaking old habits: Many of the researchers the Stata Center will house have occupied the same labs for decades, and have become accustomed to little interaction with colleagues in nearby departments—actually, rarely even seeing them.

One of the challenges involved in planning and designing for interdisciplinary research is that a detailed definition seems inherently elusive: The point is precisely to try to create conditions that will encourage new kinds of interaction and creativity to emerge, new forms of researcher cooperation that haven't occurred before. For this reason, it is perhaps more art than science.

"It is interesting to think about what might happen when the philosopher and the robotics professor stop for coffee and quiet conversation in a lounge space overlooking fantastic sculptural architecture," says Silverman.

To increase the odds for productive chance encounters, the Stata Center is organized into neighborhoods, arranged vertically throughout the building. The aim is to encourage researchers to get used to moving up and down across floors, rather than just back and forth on the floor where their primary research space is located, and where they are unlikely to encounter other researchers.

The heart of the building is a fourth-floor collection of shared spaces and functions located between the two towers. The area houses seminar rooms, a faculty lunchroom, a pub, and an outdoor space looking down on the rest of the courtyard areas.

"The idea is to have something in the middle of the building so that researchers on the top floors come down and have the opportunity to bump into researchers they might not otherwise work with," says Silverman.

A recent renovation for MIT's aeronautics / astronautics department provided lessons in using transparency across spaces to foster interaction and cross-fertilization of ideas. In that building, elevated informal interaction areas permit students to look down on professors' research spaces, and the library uses ample glass, both to bring in natural light and to permit views into other parts of the building.

"We took researchers who are going to be in the Stata Center to this (other) building to see how these spaces felt, to help them start to think differently about how they work, and about new possibilities for doing research," says Silverman.

Silverman notes that open spaces in the Stata Center are not limited to the central fourth floor area, but are found throughout the building. The first floor houses communal spaces for all members of the MIT community—most notably a 20,000-sf "student street" with a variety of alcoves and lounge areas, and blackboards and displays for student groups. One end of the street features a 5,000-sf, skylit food service facility that seats 150. Numerous double- and triple-height spaces create a sense of movement and dynamism as one moves through the building.

One unusual feature of the Stata Center design, which Silverman describes as a consequence of the building "unfolding on itself," is that researchers working in one part of the building will be able to see those working in another, across the central courtyard.

"It is going to be hard for people to hide in this building, because there are lots of windows and people are always going to be on display. This also means there is a lot of natural light," he says.

Concepts for Flexibility

In addition to encouraging interaction, the building aims to provide its resident researchers with usable flexibility. Some design solutions came from surprising sources.

In order to build the new Stata Center, MIT had to knock down the historic Building 20. Built as a temporary structure during World War II, Building 20 housed research programs that made important advances in radar—advances that were key to U.S. successes in the War. Originally planned for demolition as soon as hostilities ceased, it was spared and served the university well for 55 years.

One of the things that made Building 20 successful was actually a consequence of its temporary nature: its simple construction meant researchers could reconfigure their own spaces with relative ease.

"People in Building 20 had a lot of liberty to change the space they were working in to accommodate their ever-changing research ideas: knock down walls, hang things from the ceiling, string wires. So a culture had developed where they didn't want to go through the bureaucratic process of asking the facilities department to do something," says Silverman.

This flexible, "democratic" functionality was carried over into the new Stata Center. Simple sheet-rock construction is used for walls throughout the research spaces.

"We haven't yet finalized the rules for letting people do work in the building. We'd like them to go through a formal process, but it is actually going to be relatively easy for them to do things on their own," says Silverman.

Another feature allowing researchers to reconfigure their space is that the building relies on raised floors throughout, with air, power, and data connections being delivered under-floor. The system allows floor diffusers to be moved, with variable air-volume dampers controlled by local thermostat controls; power and data systems are essentially plug-and-play.

"We looked at an overhead system for air delivery, but decided to go under-floor because it is better environmentally. Supply air can be delivered at 65 degrees instead of 55 degrees, as would be required if it were being delivered from above. It is also cleaner, because the air is rising and going away from you, rather than blowing down and stirring up things in the air," says Silverman.

Offices and circulation corridors feature indirect lighting, with fixtures that resemble cable trays and direct light onto ceilings above; in offices, this solution helps minimize computer screen glare. Since services are delivered under-floor, ceilings in the research spaces are completely bare, and are painted white to maximize the amount of reflected light reaching workspaces. Open lab areas have industrial light fixtures that provide both ambient and task lighting.

Spaces bordering an exterior wall have operable windows. For safety reasons, window movement is limited to four inches, but even this amount allows fresh air directly into the labs when desired.

Despite its departures from more traditional lab designs, research spaces in the Stata Center are still based on a standard module. Each 210-sf module will typically house one professor or research scientist, two administrative staff or post-doctoral researchers, or four graduate students.

Expanding Program, Expanding Budget

Originally projected at a total project cost of around $100 million, the budget has grown to roughly three times that amount, increasing proportionally as the program evolved during the design process. Several spaces and functions were added to the building to address various issues of student life while concurrently programming the building—specifically, a large childcare center, a fitness center, the "student street," food service facilities on the first and fourth floors, the pub, and a two-level, 700-slot parking facility under the building. None of these spaces were in the original building program.

Some additions came relatively early in the project, but others came quite late. For instance, the decision to include the parking facility was made during design development. The complex Stata Center design meant that the task of recalibrating loads to accommodate such an underground facility was significantly more complicated than for a more traditional building.

The decision to include the childcare facility was also made late, but was almost unavoidable. Silverman explains:

"We really had to add this to the project, because the university had begun to lose significant numbers of prospective researchers to other institutions over the ability to provide this form of support," he says.

While it has to be acknowledged that the Stata Center has been expensive, Silverman points out that for a Gehry-designed building of 713,000 sf, undertaken during a major construction boom in the Boston area, the final construction cost of around $320/sf is quite reasonable.

By John Treat

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