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The University as Patron of Cutting Edge Architecture
(Part One)

Moderator: Charles Vest HM
Jane Farver
James Ackerman
Kimberly Alexander
May 8, 2004
Running Time: 1:18:47
About the Lecture

About the Lecture

The opening of The Ray and Maria Stata Center, MIT’s latest innovative building, inspires this panel’s historical review of collegiate architecture projects. James Ackerman provides the longest lens, focusing first on the earliest, national trends, when buildings served as both residences and classrooms. In the 18th century, Thomas Jefferson housed different disciplines in different pavilions. The Gothic style came next, cloisters and all, to promote “monkish learning closed from the community.” Signature buildings started popping up in the late 19th and 20th centuries, driven by “the patron demanding distinction rather than blending in.” Kimberly Alexander notes that throughout MIT’s history, its architecture has always embodied the institute’s mission. On its original Boston campus, the Rogers Building housed the first instructional physics laboratory. Students of this land-grant college were treated to European teachers and their vision. When MIT landed in Cambridge, its classical buildings “embraced new technologies” such as poured concrete and factory sash windows. After World War 2, the campus welcomed projects by international stars Eero Saarinen, Alvar Aalto and I.M. Pei (‘40 MIT) to embrace all aspects of community life. Charles Vest describes both the difficulties involved in completing the Stata Center, and the opportunity he saw “to create things of historical importance in the development of MIT”-- buildings that would somehow reflect not just academics and research, but the community itself.

RESOURCES: Stata Center Dedication Ceremony

    Lecture Details

  • Location: 26-100

“I transformed myself into a snapping turtle. Once we got moving … I had to grab onto people and things by the ankle and not let go until we got done…. Two (enormous forces) that caused the greatest angst around creating something wonderful: The economy--we started out with it going up, and then it went down. …. Secondly, debilitating nostalgia. There’s a weird balance between looking backward in the right way, for strength as an institution, and not getting so caught up in it that you don’t do forward looking things.”

Charles Vest (on building the Stata Center)

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About the Speakers

About the Speakers

Moderator: Charles Vest HM

President, National Academy of Engineering
President Emeritus, MIT

Charles M. Vest was the fifteenth President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

During his 14 years at MIT, he placed special emphasis on enhancing undergraduate education, exploring new organizational forms to meet emerging directions in research and education, building a stronger international dimension into education and research programs, developing stronger relations with industry, and enhancing racial and cultural diversity. He also devoted considerable energy to bringing issues concerning education and research to broader public attention and to strengthening national policy on science, engineering and education. In this latter capacity, Vest chaired the President's Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station and has served as a member of the President's Committee of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), the Massachusetts Governor's Council on Economic Growth and Technology, and the National Research Council Board on Engineering Education. In February 2004, he was asked by President Bush to serve as a member of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Vest earned his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University in 1963 and both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Michigan in 1964 and 1967, respectively. As a member of the Mechanical Engineering faculty at MIT, Vest's research interests were in the thermal sciences and in the engineering applications of lasers and coherent optics.

In December 2003, Vest announced his decision to step down from the presidency of MIT.

Jane Farver

Director, MIT List Visual Arts Center

Farver was previously Director of Exhibitions at the Queens Museum of Art, New York (1992-97); and director of the Lehman College Art Gallery, City University of New York in the Bronx, from (1989-92.) Her exhibition with catalogue, Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin, 1950s-1980s, toured nationally, and she was one of six guest curators for the 2000 Whitney Biennial.

James Ackerman

Arthur Kingsley Porter Professor of Fine Arts Emeritus at Harvard University

Ackerman is the author of major works on Michelangelo’s architecture, Palladio, and the villa. He is the winner of the Balzan Prize 2001 in the category of history of architecture, which includes town planning and landscape design presented by the International Balzan Foundation. Before his appointment at Harvard, he taught at the University of California, Berkeley.

Kimberly Alexander

Architectural Historian

Alexander was the first Curator of Architecture at the MIT Museum, a post she held for 10 years. She organized exhibitions of MIT’s great buildings, including Alvar Aalto’s Baker House.

Moderator

Speakers

About the Host

About the Host

MIT List Visual Arts Center

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The information on this page was accurate as of the day the video was added to MIT World. This video was added to MIT World on September 7, 2004.

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  • Building Stata book

    Building Stata
    The Design and Construction of Frank O. Gehry's Stata Center at MIT by Nancy Joyce
    Afterword by William Mitchell
    Commentary by Frank O. Gehry
    Photographs by Richard Sobol

    Building Stata