Editing Stata Center (section)

== Architectural criticism ==
Robert Campbell, architecture columnist for ''[[The Boston Globe]]'', wrote a glowing appraisal of the building on April 25, 2004. According to Campbell, "the Stata is always going to look unfinished. It also looks as if it's about to collapse. Columns tilt at scary angles. Walls teeter, swerve, and collide in random curves and angles. Materials change wherever you look: brick, mirror-surface steel, [[brushed metal|brushed]] aluminum, brightly colored paint, corrugated metal. Everything looks improvised, as if thrown up at the last moment. That's the point. The Stata's appearance is a metaphor for the freedom, daring, and creativity of the research that's supposed to occur inside it." Campbell stated that the cost overruns and delays in completion of the Stata Center are of no more importance than similar problems associated with the building of [[St Paul's Cathedral]].<ref>{{Cite news |author=Robert Campbell |title=Dizzying heights&nbsp;— In Frank Gehry's remarkable new Stata Center at MIT, crazy angles have a serious purpose|work=The Boston Globe|url=http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2004/04/25/dizzying_heights/ |date=April 25, 2004}}</ref> The 2005 [[Kaplan, Inc.|Kaplan]]/''[[Newsweek]]'' guide ''How to Get into College'', which lists twenty-five universities its editors consider notable in some respect, recognizes MIT as having the "hottest architecture", placing most of its emphasis on the Stata Center.<ref>{{Cite news |author=Kantrowitz, Barbara |title=America's 25 Hot Schools|url=http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5626574/site/newsweek/|work=Newsweek via MSNBC.com|publisher=Microsoft Corporation|date=August 2004|access-date=2007-09-23 |url-status=dead |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20070903110639/http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/5626574/site/newsweek/ <!-- Bot retrieved archive --> |archive-date = 2007-09-03}}</ref>

Though there are many who praise this building, and in fact from the perspective of Gehry's other work it is considered by some as one of his best, there are certainly many who are less enamored of the structure. Mathematician and architectural theorist [[Nikos Salingaros]] has harshly criticized the Stata Center:

{{Blockquote | style=font-size:100% |An architecture that reverses structural algorithms so as to create disorder&nbsp;— the same algorithms that in an infinitely more detailed application generate living form—ceases to be architecture. Deconstructivist buildings are the most visible symbols of actual deconstruction. The randomness they embody is the antithesis of nature's organized complexity. This is despite effusive praise in the press for "exciting" new academic buildings, such as the Peter B. Lewis Management Building at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, the Vontz Center for Molecular Studies at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, and the Stata Center for Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences at MIT, all by Frank Gehry. Housing a scientific department at a university inside the symbol of its nemesis must be the ultimate irony.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Anti-Architecture and Deconstruction|last=Salingaros|first=Nikos|year=2007|publisher=Umbau-Verlag|isbn=978-3-937954-09-7}}</ref>}}

Former [[Boston University]] president [[John Silber]] said the building "really is a disaster".<ref>{{Cite book |title=Architecture of the Absurd: How "Genius" Disfigured a Practical Art |last=Silber |first=John |year=2007 |publisher=Quantuck Lane |isbn=978-1-59372-027-8 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/architectureofab00silb}}</ref> Architecture critic Robert Campbell praised Gehry for "break[ing] up the monotony of a street of concrete buildings" and being "a building like no other building".<ref name="globe20071106" /> The style of the building has been likened to [[German Expressionism]] of the 1920s.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Lienhard|first=John H.|url=http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi2521.htm |title=No. 2521: Radical Buildings |work=Engines of Our Ingenuity|publisher=University of Houston (www.uh.edu) |date=2004-08-01 |access-date=2012-03-24}}</ref> The building has also been described as "reminiscent of a [[Dr. Seuss]] creation".<ref>{{cite web |title=Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) |url=https://cascade-architectural.com/content/massachusetts-institute-technology-mit |website=Cascade Architectural |publisher=Cascade Coil Drapery, Inc |access-date=2023-05-08 |language=en |date=26 August 2020}}</ref>