If the analysis is right, repairing the Stata Center will cost tens of millions of dollars.
"It's hard for people to believe that something so simple is screwing up these buildings," Lstiburek says. "But this is an industrywide problem. It's not because you have a famous architect." He adds that basic errors like these occur in up to 20% of all new buildings going up, concrete boxes as well as soaring landmarks. (In another high-profile example, Daniel Libeskind's Denver Art Museum has suffered leaks similar to the Stata Center.) "The more complicated the building," Lstiburek says, "the more critical workmanship becomes." The Stata Center's construction firm, Skanska U.S.A., is the American outpost of a $17 billion Swedish giant. They responded through a spokesperson: "Skanska values its relationship with MIT and is looking forward to a speedy resolution of the matter." But Paul Hewins, executive VP and area general manager of the company, told The Boston Globe: "This is not a construction issue. Never has been."
Gehry's official statement, of course, implies the opposite: "I fully stand behind the center's design and have no reason to believe that it contributed in any way to the problems, which are relatively minor and easily addressed." If Lstiburek is right, repairing the Stata Center will require removing the outside cladding and reapplying layers in the right order, not to mention resealing the wall-to-window connections. The cost will run in the tens of millions of dollars.
That huge potential price tag is the strongest hypothetical explanation of why MIT chose to go to court. (MIT's press office would only say that the lawsuit speaks for itself.) Gehry told The New York Times that MIT was "after our insurance," and William Mitchell, the former dean of MIT's school of architecture, speaking for himself, not MIT, echoes that assessment, calling the lawsuit, "a haggle over insurance, really." In the end, though, because Gehry was the architect, his reputation will suffer just as much as MIT's, whether his insurance company has to pay for the repairs or not. To protect their status and multimillion-dollar fees, perhaps star architects are going to have to pay more attention to how their fantastic, otherworldly designs are brought down to earth.
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