Frank’s Folly?

When architect Frank Gehry was hired to design and build MIT’s new Stata Center For Computer, Information, and Intelligence Sciences, the price tag was set at $100 million, gifts were rolling in, and the university was downright gleeful at having secured the services of arguably the hottest architect of the era. But “MIT brass now peg the budget at $300 million, although a June press release from a Stata Center supplier put the cost at $430 million. The completion date is spring 2004. And what once appeared futuristic now looks like a jumbly rehash of existing Gehry piles.”