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June 30, 2008
Harvard tears down a SEVENTEEN-year-old Museum
Here's an expensive lesson in unintended consequences from Otto Hall at Harvard:
Sebor says that both construction methods and curatorial demands were changing in the years leading up to the Otto. "We engineers let architects and museum people go off on their own," he says. "There was a lot of wishful thinking." He notes many oddities, such as the fact that at architect Louis Kahn's gallery at Yale, heating elements were installed in the wall cavity, keeping it dry in winter. Kahn thus solved a problem he may not have known existed. Architects today, says Sebor, are more sophisticated.There are a couple of other lessons to be learned from Otto. One is that long-term institutions like Harvard should build durably. They're short-sighted when they indulge in the cost-cutting that's common in the commercial world. At Otto, the exterior limestone and metal panels were connected to the framing structure by what are called "ties," small metal connectors. Otto's ties were made of galvanized steel, a material that eventually rusts when subjected to moisture, as it was at Otto. They should have been stainless steel.
Another lesson, perhaps, is that architects should be more wary of new ways of building. In Boston we've seen two other costly cases of architectural skin disease, the failure of windows at the Hancock Tower and of granite panels at 28 State St., the former Bank of New England - both of which were designed by noted architects. And recently the problems of the Stata Center at MIT, by Pritzker winner Frank Gehry, have been in the news.
Don't worry - they can afford it.
Posted by CrankyProfessor at June 30, 2008 7:52 AM
Comments
argh. Just argh.
Posted by: Another Damned Medievalist 
at June 30, 2008 8:56 AM