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Comment by oceliker | Hacker News Reader

I know him through the buildings he designed at MIT: Buildings 54, 66, and E15. My favorite fun fact to tell visitors is that building 66 (chemical engineering) is a perfect 30-60-90 triangle.

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Woah, I had no idea he designed the Green Building. It was always my favorite architecture on campus (light years better than the Stata Center), much to the disagreement of my peers.

> Woah, I had no idea he designed the Green Building.

He famously had problems with wind: The Great Sail was placed in order to break up wind off the Charles, which (by Bernoulli effect) would lock the doors at the bottom of the Green Building.

The funny part was: The Hancock Tower on the other side of the Charles had pretty much the same problem, but was too tall for remediation-by-artwork. They had a devil of a time redoing the windows in that building.

Anyway: 66 was always my favorite. Living in EC, it was always fun to show visitors the sharp point of that building.

RIP

The Green Building is quite nice in most ways, but there's also the famous story about how it was built "on stilts" parallel to the Charles, so because of the wind coming off the river nobody could open the doors...

The legend about how the nearby Alexander Calder sculpture was placed to block the wind is apparently untrue, but the revolving doors on the ground level are very real.

I'm not a fan of Brutalism in general. But there are some pretty good examples on the MIT campus including the group in east campus. I also rather like the Stratton Student Center on west campus by Eduardo Catalano. Other examples like McCormick are not great.

I don't know if Green Bldg is my favorite, but I definitely agree that Stata [0] is not a great building. It might look interesting to visitors, but it's super difficult to navigate, and it doesn't have that stature that says "important science is being conducted in this building", unlike its neighbors 46 (neuroscience) [1] or 76 (Koch) [2].

[0] https://s3.amazonaws.com/thetech-production/images/web_photo...

[1] https://capitalprojects.mit.edu/sites/default/files/styles/p...

[2] https://capitalprojects.mit.edu/sites/default/files/styles/p...

Stata made some aesthetic sense in isolation. My understanding was that its unusual look and big price tag was justified by the argument that it would be the northeast entrance to the campus. But it's had various problems both in terms of usability and in terms of various problems with the structure and associated elements.

But then with all the other construction in that area, including some very big buildings, Stata now gets almost lost amongst its various neighbors.

The Green Building definitely had the better view. Plus it was understandable. I often got lost in Stata above the first floor.

And has a mini 30/60/90 triangle on its basement floor!

I had no idea! Will go check it out tomorrow.

Don't forget building 18! 54 on its side :)

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