MIT Sues Frank Gehry Over Problems With Stata Center Design

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has quietly filed a lawsuit against Frank Gehry, the high-profile architect, alleging that flaws in his design for MIT’s huge Ray and Maria Stata Center (right) caused leaks that cost more than $1.5-million to fix.

The lawsuit, described this morning in The Boston Globe, was filed October 31 against both Mr. Gehry’s firm, Gehry Partners, and Skanska USA Building Inc., the contractor for the $300-million Stata Center project. MIT says problems with the design of the center’s amphitheater led to cracking, flooding, and other difficulties, and that MIT had to bring in another company to make repairs. The amphitheater was eventually rebuilt with a new drainage system. The suit also says the Stata Center developed persistent leaks, and that mold grew on its exterior bricks.

The suit says Gehry Partners “breached its duties by providing deficient design services and drawings,” and it asks the Suffolk County Superior Court, in Boston, to order the firm to pay MIT’s expenses as well as an unspecified amount in damages. Neither Mr. Gehry’s firm nor MIT would comment on the suit, but a spokesman for Skanska said the Gehry firm had ignored repeated warnings about the amphitheater design.

It’s not unusual for universities to encounter problems with buildings that have unusual designs, as Mr. Gehry’s certainly do — the original roofs that Jefferson designed for students’ rooms at the University of Virginia, for instance, had to be replaced because they leaked. But it is rare that disagreements continue to the point at which lawsuits are filed — particularly lawsuits involving architects as prominent as Mr. Gehry and institutions as well known as MIT.

Mr. Gehry’s critics have long said that his vision surpassed both the technology available to build what he drew and the size of his clients’ bank accounts. His 1986 computer-science and engineering complex at the University of California at Irvine leaked so badly that the university tore in down in January, even though it was one of the most highly praised campus buildings of its decade. And his building for Case Western University’s Weatherhead School of Management cost more than double what the university had expected (The Chronicle, January 6, 2001).