| Personalized Learning
Space in a Global Context Section 3 1.Introduction & Distance Lab | 2.Aerospace Lab | 3. TEAL, Gehry, References
A presenter can walk around the room with a wireless microphone, interacting with individual groups at 13 round tables. Eight ceiling-mounted projectors pick up images from the whiteboards,
On a break from the Teal room presentation, conference attendees had an opportunity to see MIT's newest project in construction, the Stata Center for computers, information, and intelligence, by Frank Gehry & Associates. The center rises like a group of exuberant teenagers, squirming in a hushed library. The planning concepts underlying the center are rational in the best sense of the word - generated from a thoughtful evaluation of the needs of the campus, and resulting in an interior boulevard that extends MIT's famous "mile long corridor." However, the choice of Gehry as the signature form giver is surprising for an institution devoted to the rational disciplines of engineering and science. Frank Gehry's work is the epitome of personal, idiosyncratic expression. One of my favorite Gehry works is not a building at all, it's a sculpture of a fish, located in the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; the piece is 22-foot long, supported by a timber and steel armature and clad in scales made of thick plate glass, fastened together with silicone. Gehry writes about the emotional nature of the piece.
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| Open courseware - the whole world is watching As we left MIT's campus, I though about the Provost Robert Browns word's the day before at his keynote speech for the conference. Brown described the University's commitment to a new "open course" environment, in which MIT course content, including notes, examples, and simulations will be available to students and non-students alike, for free on the Internet. The unique value that the university environment offers is not in gigabytes of data, but in the environment it creates for personal interaction among students, and between instructors and students. In an age where information and intelligence has become the domain of computers, it is individual stories, interactions, and emotional nuances that remain important.  Randall Fielding, AIA, is the editor of Design Share, and a practicing architect specializing in educational facility planning and design. Fielding takes a collaborative approach, working with other architects to offer a full range of services. Contact information for Randy, as well as a description of his approach to services is available at www.designshare.com/fielding. The next CAE conference, focusing on "Lifelong Learning - Lessons from Business and Culture," will take place in Seattle in September. For more information, see the CAE Web site at: http://www.aia.org/PIA/cae/ Special Thanks to: • Laura Wernick, AIA and George Metzger, AIA, of HMFH Architects, Cambridge, for their work in planning the conference. • The facilities department at MIT, including Vikki Sirianni, Dave Myers, Ruth Davis, Donna Landry and David Conlon. • Design Share's Sponsor, C/S Group, The global innovator in architectural specialty products. References and Credits All photographs and plans used by permission Rolf Jensen, Copenhagen Institute for Future Studies, http://www.cifs.dk Distance Lab, MIT, Design and Plan, D'Agostino Izzo Quirk Architects, Somerville, MA, http://www.daiq.com Aerospace Lab, MIT, Drawings and Images, Cambridge Seven Associates, Inc., Architects, Cambridge, MA, http://www.c7a.com TEAL Classroom, Design and Plan, MIT, Miller Dyer Spears, Inc., Architects, Boston, MA, http://www.mds-bos.com; TEAL Photo courtesy MIT Gehry, Frank, Standing Glass Fish, 1986, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, http://www.artsconnected.org/uia-bin/uia_doc.cgi/thick_art/xwac86.68 Stata Center, MIT, Design and Model Photo: Gehry Partners, LLP; Associate Architect: Cannon Design, http://web.mit.edu/evolving/projects/stata/index.html |
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TEAL Classroom at MIT 
allowing students at any table to share ideas with the rest of the room.
It is the intensely personal nature of Gehry's work that makes it so compelling. The fact that MIT retained Gehry for such a pivotal building is indicative of a shift in values associated with technology, education, and culture.