Wasserman Contemporary Art Forum, "The University as Patron of Cutting-Edge Architecture” (5/8/2004)

[LOGO MUSIC]

FARBER: Good morning. Hello. We were just waiting for some people to come over from the overflow simulcast, but I think we'll go ahead and begin. Good morning again.

My name is Jane Farber. I'm the director of the List Visual Arts Center here at MIT, and it's my very great pleasure to welcome you to the List Center's annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art.

As you know, this year's topic is "The University as Patron of Cutting-Edge Architecture." Just a few words about the forum-- the annual Max Wasserman Forum on Contemporary Art was established in memory of Max Wasserman, who was an MIT class of 1935 and who was a founding member of the MIT Council for the Arts. This public forum addresses critical issues in contemporary art and culture through the participation of renowned scholars, artists, and arts professionals. We are extremely grateful to Jeanne Wasserman for her continued generous support of this project and for being such an absolutely superb member of our advisory council. Thank you so much, Jeanne, for everything.

[APPLAUSE]

And thank you to Peter Wasserman too for all of your help with this year's forum and also to the members of the Wasserman Forum Committee-- Jennie [? Frucci, ?] Bill Arning, Andrea Miller Keller, Jerry Friedman, Dorothy and Roy Levine, Marjorie Jacobson, and special thanks also to Allen Brody, Associate Provost for the Arts, here at MIT. I think I just changed somebody's screen. Sorry.

Also I would like to especially thank William Jay Mitchell, who is the Academic Head of Media Arts and Sciences here at MIT for his generous collaboration with us on this project. It wouldn't have been possible without him. And I must give my very, very sincere thanks to the List Center's staff. They've just done an amazing job on this project, and I'd like to recognize especially David Frylock, Bill Arning, [INAUDIBLE] Kikuchi, Barbara Pine, and Camillo Alvarez, as well as the many volunteers, all these nice people in yellow t-shirts, who have given their time to help this happen this morning.

Before I introduce our forum participants, I'd like to make just a few brief more announcements. There will not be a reception following this event, but at 4:00 PM today at Simmons Hall on Vassar Street. There will be the dedication of a new work by Dan Graham in Simmons Hall, and we would like to invite you all to be present for the dedication of his Yin/Yang Pavilion.

So a campus map is included in your package. Whoops. It looks like this, and Simmons is marked there with a red number 2, so you can find it. And we hope you'll use this map in the interim to guide you around campus, if you'd like to see some of the other public art and projects on campus. And also on the back, there is a list of restaurants, if you would like to have lunch in the area. So we hope you'll find that helpful.

And I'm sure many of you want to take a tour of Frank Gehry's Stata Center. And you can do this at an open house on May 24. Please go to the web at mit.edu/evolving/ for more information on that. And tours of Steven Hall's Simmons Hall can be arranged through Simmons Hall, so you need to email a request for a tour to simtoursrequest@mit.edu. The people in the yellow t-shirts can give you this information if you missed it.

And also we hope you'll have a chance to visit the List Center at 20 Ames Street, as there are two remarkable exhibitions currently on there, Marjetica Potrc's "Urgent Architecture," and the first US solo show of Warsaw-based artist, [INAUDIBLE]. And on view and in our Media Test Wall is Amy Globus' video, electric sheep. This lecture is being recorded for archival purposes and will be webcast on the MIT world website. So if you missed something today, you can revisit the forum at the website in the future.

We apologize to the many whom we're not able to accommodate in this auditorium, and hello to those of you watching the simulcast in 10-250. We appreciate your patience and your understanding. And finally, we're very lucky that the remarkable individuals who are here today were able to take time out of their very busy schedules to be with us. So they will need to leave the auditorium immediately after the forum. So we regret that they won't be able to stay around and converse with you. We hope you'll understand.

Finally, I truly regret to inform you that there's a change in today's forum. Steven Holl has back trouble and will not be able to join us. We're very, very disappointed. He had hoped he would be able to come, but after an MRI and the doctor's advice, he wasn't able to join us. So we wish him well and hope he's well soon, and we're very sorry that he can't be here today.

But we have wonderful participants today. Our participants are architects Frank Gehry and Robert Venturi, architectural historians and theoreticians James Ackerman, Kimberly Alexander, and Kyong Park, MIT President Charles Vest, Executive President John Curry, and William Mitchell, who is head of the program in Media and Arts and Sciences at MIT. He will be serving as moderator.

If I can just give you some brief biographical information about our panelists, then we can begin. James Ackerman is an architectural historian and the 2001 winner of the prestigious Balzan Prize for History of Architecture. His work Palladio has had immense influence due to its innovative way of examining patronage and the role of the works commissioner in creating cultural significance for architecture. James Ackerman's talk will provide context for the forum's discussion of current university buildings within a historical perspective.

Kimberly Alexander is an architectural historian who blends social history perspective in her work with the built environment. She was the first curator of architecture and design at MIT, a post that she held for 10 years, during which she organized significant exhibitions on MIT's great buildings, such as Alvar Aalto's Baker House and William Welles Bosworth's 1916 master MIT campus plan. She will discuss MIT's particular role as a patron of architecture.

Frank Gehry, as I'm sure you all know, is the designer of MIT's new Ray and Marie Stata Center as well as the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, and many, many others. His buildings have received over 100 national and regional AIA awards, including the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 1989, the premiere accolade of the field, and many more too numerous to mention.

William J. Mitchell is Academic Head of Media Arts and Sciences and Professor of Architecture in Media Arts. And he was the former Dean of Architecture at MIT. He also serves as Architectural Advisor to the President of MIT. His recent publications include Me++: The Cyborg Self and the Network City, e-topia: Urban Life, Jim-- But Not As We Know It, and City of Bits: Space, Place, and the Infobahn.

Robert Venturi's extension commissions, as well as his teaching, advising, writing, and lectures, have received national and international attention. His major campus buildings include five at Princeton University, three at Dartmouth, and five at the University of Pennsylvania. Robert Venturi's numerous awards include the Republic of Italy's Commendatore of the Order of Merit. He's gotten the Presidential National Medal for the Arts, and he also was a recipient of the prestigious Pritzker Architecture Prize.

Charles Vest has been president of MIT since 1990. He holds degrees from West Virginia University, the University of Michigan. He chairs the US Department of Energy Task Force on the Future of Science Programs. And he's the Vice Chair of the Council on Competitiveness and the past chair of the Association of American Universities. And he's now serving as a member of the Commission of the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. He's also leaving us, so we are truly sad about that, because he's been a fabulous, fabulous president.

Respondents for today are MIT Executive Vice President John Curry and artist, curator, and architectural theoretician Kyong Park. John Curry, MIT Executive Vice President, was formerly Vice President for Business and Finance and Chief Financial Officer at the California Institute of Technology. He was also administrative Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer of the University of California in Los Angeles. He's authored numerous articles on academic finances and management, and he's a trustee of the National Association of Colleges and University Business Officers and a trustee and chair of the Finance Committee of the College Board.

Kyong Park is my friend and founder-director of the International Center for Urban Ecology in Detroit and New York City. And he was the founding director of the Storefront for Art and Architecture in New York. He was also commissioner for the international section of the Kwangju Biennale in Korea in 1997, where he organized a wonderful architectural show called "Images of the Future: The Architecture of a New Geography."

Finally, there will be a 15-minute intermission following President Vest's presentation. So without further ado, if you would join me in welcoming James Ackerman, who will make our first presentation.

[APPLAUSE]

ACKERMAN: May I remove the PowerPoint? Could I get the PowerPoint out of the way, because I have to put my notes down. I'd like somebody else to do it.

Good morning. I'm honored to be initiating this very promising colloquium, and I want to add to the expressions of thanks that were delivered by the director of the List Center my own warm feelings of gratitude towards Jeanne Wasserman, who's been a colleague of mine over many years. My talk is divided into two parts. The first part has to do with the organization of university environments, and the second address is the growth of the phenomenon of what might be called the signature building, which is the primary subject of the discussion today.

Here we see together an instance of early campus organization in the late 17th and early 18th century. We have William and Mary on the left and Harvard on the right. Let me emphasize that these were colleges with very limited aims at the beginning. It was characteristic in early building of the kind to join together residents with classrooms and other functions of the college. And in both of these cases, the project was conceived in a U form, which was by no means generally characteristic. For example, at Dartmouth College, in this print around 1850, all the building were strung out in a line in a rise above the common of Hanover. And the same thing was true of Yale University-- Yale College at the time-- which was on the New Haven common ground just stretched out in a line worked out by Trumbull, who was the university advisor of the time.

It was not very much later-- that is, in the beginning of the 19th century-- that conceptions of the college as an organized organism began to take place. On the right you have Union College, which was designed by the French-American architect Ramée in 1813 and conceived as you see it here with a central focal building and others around it.

Now, the focal building of these days, I think, was different from the kind that we're going to be talking about today. It was an urbanistic event, and in fact one of Jefferson's Virginia on the left was very much like Ramée's conception. It was a round building with a portico in front, a kind of Pantheon recollection. And the Ramée scheme is interesting in that this very rigid French type of organization was surrounded by a picturesque English garden. So there was always a kind of eclecticism in the conception of the American campus.

I don't know whether the choice of Ramée was due to a desire to suggest the kind of Greco-Roman background. The ideology of campus planning really developed later. Jefferson had a very clear idea of what a university should be. He put the different disciplines in different pavilions-- as you can see on the right. The library is the building on the far left, and these pavilions that are joined by porticoes, the pavilions on either side, were places where the discipline was-- each discipline had a professor who lived upstairs in the pavilion, and the students were downstairs. This was partly to distinguish the intellectual environment in this way and partly for crowd control. The professor was supposed to be able to take care of the students who were living in the porticoes underneath and keep them from rioting, which was a very characteristic thing for students to do at the time.

Now I can't see my notes. Anyway, I think I know what I'm going to say.

So each of these pavilions had a different architectural style, and it was Jefferson's idea that the style of the building would teach architectural students about the history of architecture. It was rather a ditzy idea. One of them is taken out of Palladio's Four Books on Architecture. So that was interesting to me.

Now, after the classical start, we have a plan for the Michigan University of 1838, which you see on the right by Alexander Jackson Davis, who did universities a lot. He was perhaps the first architect to be continuously hired by universities, NYU among them, and could change styles at will. Here is the Gothic plan for the university, which envisioned the single building at the start where a whole environment that could be developed later. That was not accepted, and the actual Michigan campus looked the way it does on the right here in 1850, which was the same thing as Dartmouth and Yale, just a string of buildings.

Now, the next stage was in the later 19th century, and there's a big change at that time. For example, you see here on the left the College of New Jersey, which in 1896 became Princeton. And it followed the idea of their most famous president, Woodrow Wilson, that it be a place, quote, "to those who would learn and be with their own thoughts." And so it was isolated from its environment with a cloistered system.

Of the right, you see a design in 1890 for the University of Chicago. And here the Gothic dominates also. This is undoubtedly because of the thought that the Gothic period was one of contemplation and enrichment in the model of the English university. Now, we're in the 1890s, and at that time, these colleges increasingly developed into universities. That meant a great deal of physical diversity. The buildings had to serve different purposes, and at the same time as some of the establishments were being done in a very highly organized way, others began to have to build buildings that didn't fit the plan because they had new functions. Rockefeller was behind the funding for the University of Chicago which you see on the right.

In the late 19th century, the issue of styles became very important because the style of the architecture was intended to express a particular attitude towards learning. For example, Princeton was bitten by anglophilia at this point, and it was largely an Episcopalian organization. So the attachment to the British college environment of cloisters was very strong, imitating Oxford and Cambridge. The display is one of monkish learning and closed from the community.

I didn't intend to find such an unrevealing slide as the one on the left. But when I did, I thought, that does show the relationship of the university to the community.

[LAUGHTER]

Now, at the same time, Columbia in the mid '90s turned towards the classical, driven by, on the one hand, the Beaux-Arts background of leading architecture at the time-- this was [INAUDIBLE] and White and, on the other hand, by new attitudes toward learning. This was the start of the elective system, and there was an enlightenment background rather than the cloister as the model. And the same, of course, was true much later on at MIT, as I think you'll hear shortly.

And finally, the last stage in the planning of the American campus-- for reasons of time, I'm leaving Stanford University out of the picture, because it's eccentric with relation to the respite-- Illinois Institute of Technology dates from 1939 and designed by Mies van der Rohe. And the ideology of modernism now supplants that of historical association with an attempt to get away from this attachment to particular historical background. And his original plan was continued in later construction.

And I want you to note that the organization of the buildings are quite different from the style. The style is absolutely modernist. The organization is quite classical-- The central axis, the buildings that go off forever. It's a kind of a conception that's very hard to add on to in the casual way that occurred in other places.

Now, the second part of what I want to speak about is the the individual building. The beginning of turning to architects because of an interest in their own mode of expression, I would say, came with Seaver Hall at Harvard in 1878. Harvard also has the University Hall by Bulfinch, but that was a fit-in building. This is a fit-out building. These are increments which are related to academic innovation. This is the first classroom-- all-classroom building of importance in the American tradition.

So we're getting one building at a time now. And the new buildings are either anonymous or seeking to blend into the background, or they stand out because of architectural distinction. And the realization of this goal required employing architects and willing to give them substantial leeway in developing design.

And now coming out to more recent times I'm sure you all can recall a number of instances of what might be called signature buildings in different university settings-- on the left, what they call The Whale in Yale University, a hockey rink designed by Eero Saarinen on the right. Richards Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania, 1958, which you see here by Louis Kahn. The Saarinen building is, I think, 1953. The same is true of the dormitory by Aalto at MIT, although that does fit better than most of these, and the Carpenter Center at Harvard, which fits less than most of these.

Now, finally, there's a very interesting phenomenon that when Illinois Tech had to grow and a new architect of repute came into the picture, the original conception was so strong there that even a very far-out architect like Rem Koolhaas fit into it in part of his conception and out of it in another part. But this building which I haven't seen in the flesh seems to be representative of the tension that I've been speaking about.

So let's ask the questions which I'm sure will be discussed in the panel about what's behind the signature building. First of all, fundraising is an important element, the patron demanding distinction rather than blending in. And there's commonly, really since the beginning of this century, an abandonment of a link between a philosophy of education and its embodiment in a historic style. So the style then becomes independent of the theory.

A signature building is a feather in the cap of the university. Striking buildings attract attention and publicity and give a desirable impact on potential applicants to the university, and seems to express up-to-dateness and modernity. And finally, in earlier times, while skilled purveyors of Gothic and classical styles that might have been the same people were often the most qualified for the job, today the most qualified bring with them bold, though often exceedingly costly and sometimes unworkable, individualized proposals. Last of all, architects' reputations are based on his or her singularity. The university purchases a distinctive style as much as the skill and executive ability of the designer. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

ALEXANDER: That's not the way I want to start. Great. Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I knew as soon as I saw the laptop go off the podium, it's going to be a rough start. Good morning.

Architecture may be called the prose, as sculpture and painting are the poetry of art. Its first principles are truthfulness, good sense, perspicuity, considerations of method, order, form, clearness, precision, and sobriety, are what make a good working style, both in writing and in building. So said William Robert Ware, the founder of MIT's Department of Architecture to William Barton Rogers in 1865 as he stood on the brink of inaugurating their new program.

In a constructive place, as artists and scholars as diverse as Eudora Welty to Simon Schama, even to William Ware have observed, exerts both the most mundane and the most powerful influences on our sense of experience, of memory, and of myth. The power of place and the ability to create a sense of place through identity is what gives the study of architecture its driving force. Today I'd like to offer some thoughts about the particular opportunities that the building of MIT provided, both the challenges and the things that fostered a shared sense of place throughout American culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The architecture that has defined MIT's campus through a century and a half has been the embodiment of the vision of its founders of 1861. These builders of structures and institutions were cognizant of the educational design on which they embarked, and that was itself an experiment. They were sensitive to the ways in which their efforts would be recognized and scrutinized in the public sphere. Through war and peace, prosperity and depression, achievement and crisis, conquest and calamity, this architecture has been designed to represent a progressive, innovative, and yet eminently practical vision of what an institute could be. The philosophy and mission of MIT have been reflected in an unparalleled melding of architecture and pedagogy, and despite occasional lapses and nuances, this vision and its representation, whether it be in built architecture and curriculum, has been remarkable for a constancy of thought.

MIT's campus architecture is a progressive and innovative embodiment of the goals, principles, and vision of the Institute, although these goals and objectives have changed and evolved over the years, as they continue to do today. William Barton Rogers and the founders in 1861 were extremely aware of this experiment at hand. And I show you here two views of the Rogers Building in Boston's Back Bay. The building in the foreground was the building of the natural history on the top screen, and on the far portion of the upper screen was the MIT building, the tech building.

The first physical manifestation of MIT, an expression of its informing principles, may be seen in this building. This represented what was considered the high style of the day at mid 19th century, with its French academic character, detail, and flourish. Whoops. Significantly for its contribution to the public sphere, MIT's founders were able to cite their inaugural edifice boldly within the cusp of a much larger experiment which was the shape of shaping a public space, which was the creation of Boston's Back Bay. Allying themselves with the Society for Natural History, the founders had petitioned the Massachusetts legislature for a grant of land, a request which the legislature eventually conceded.

Furthermore, not only the physical act of filling the Back Bay was an important achievement, but also following the grand scheme loosely that Baron von Haussmann had evolved for Paris. Elegant public buildings, wide boulevards, mandated height and building setbacks signaled Bostonians' aspirations to be ranked among the community of civilized nations. Even the drawings for the Rogers Building were sent home from Paris, where the architect William Gibbons Preston was studying at that time.

Transcending its elegant appointment, the Rogers Building was consonant with the very practical needs of the Institute and was highly functional-- classrooms, libraries, laboratories, museums, offices, and so on. In short, it was an ideal building in an ideal location to carry out ambitious, post-Civil War educational goals in the initial departments of chemistry, physics, engineering, mathematics, and architecture.

It's interesting in terms of the design of the Rogers Building that it was so based on French prototypes that was prophetic in terms of the teaching in the department for many years. In 1872, MIT brought in the first French professor to teach architecture in the person of Eugene Letang. And this French influence of the École des Beaux-Arts would continue into the 1920s and '30s, all the way up through Jacques Carlu, and to a lesser extent, Lawrence B. Anderson.

I'm showing you here Frenchman Désiré Despradelle-- who has one of the most interesting monikers when you read it as an American, of constant desire, Despradelle-- quite an interesting character who inspired his students in very new ways. In his building right across from what was the Technology Building, the Berkeley Building. The role that the Architecture Department also played in the shaping of core values is one I will touch on today for their times throughout the history of the Institute when the faculty and students in the department play significant roles in shaping the campus in its ideology.

That Rogers envisioned architecture as one of the original departments is clear in his original scope and plan. He brought in the young dedicated William Robert Ware, who I show you here, left, in a toga at a party of George Post House in 1885, and one of his buildings in the Back Bay, the First Church. Ware would go on to found the Department of Architecture at Columbia as well.

While Ware turned to the École des Beaux-Arts for a well-honed time-honored system of instruction, he visited numerous practitioners throughout Europe and spent a particularly productive time in England, bringing back drawings of models and photographs for the fledgling Architectural Museum, another first. I show you here images that Ware collected abroad from English practitioners on the top, and down below one of the drafting rooms. The idea here was that the instruction was practical but also visual and very, very tactile, and by being surrounded by these objects and artifacts, that would become a way for you to learn. There was also a very strong sense in Ware's pedagogy that it was a way of elevating public taste and public education. Many of the students-- this was a land grant college, if you'll recall-- he felt would never get to travel to Europe. So instead he tried to bring the whole of Europe back to his students.

So the Rogers Building, then, was a paradigm of progress and new vision. It was a school of technology and science, as opposed to a school of agriculture. The location of the building also signaled a new vision-- it was the latest design being sent from Paris. There was numerous firsts associated with it. It was young, it was progressive, the faculty was well trained and well educated. There was a focus on physical as well as mental rigor, and of course, what we hear so many times at MIT, learn by doing.

By the late 1880s and 1890s, it was very clear that this experiment had been a success. And MIT had long outgrown its original campus buildings. There wasn't a campus there. There was no more room for expansion. The Back Bay had become very crowded. And the Institute began looking for a new home.

This time, the Institute chose an area that was not currently under major development and moved to the riverside in Cambridge. The chance for the new technology to fulfill the vision of Rogers and the founders was seen as inextricably linked with this particular site. I'm showing you here a view, again by Désiré Despradelle, the Frenchman, because there were certain things and qualities in this initial design that carried through many subsequent designs.

This was complete about 1912, just before Despradelle died. But I'd like you to see, obviously, the strong axial plan, the Beaux-Arts symmetry. But one interesting thing that follows through with Despradelle is the connected aspect of the buildings, and that's something that we'll see happening over and over and over again. A sub-theme that could have been developed today also in terms of patronage were the various squabbles that continued throughout the various buildings. As late as the 1920s and '30s, we still have architects who came up with designs and engineers who felt that they were not rewarded for their efforts on behalf of the Institute. And the letters in the Institute Archives speak well to that.

So if you think of Cambridge and the new technology as a fulfillment of Rogers' and others' vision-- and now, of course, the Institute is headed by Richard McLaren-- you get a sense-- I'd like to take a little shift here-- a sense of the public palpable excitement over the new building, or the new buildings. In 1920-- I took a scan through about five different tour guides and tourist brochures that were completed. And there was such a palpable sense of pride and excitement over the new technology. And you see it everywhere. Everyone was using, everyone was talking about it. And as one of the guides quite simply states, the Tech is simply the best in its field. This is 60 years after founding, which I think is an impressive amount-- impressive thing to accomplish in such a short time. Not bad for a small, modest land grant college at its start.

For its next venture, the Institute selected one of its own, William Welles Bosworth. Bosworth was an alarm. He'd studied in Paris. And I think that's another theme that carries the early years of the Institute is that the architects were either faculty or former students. And so the Institute had a pattern of going to its own to help it further its vision. So there's this very strong intertwining of the teaching system coming back and then influencing the architecture.

Now, I think at first glance you might feel that there is a bit of a pedestrian quality to the classicism of Bosworth's scheme. But it ended up being a very, very influential design. We've already seen some elements of classicism. This is a return to classicism. I think in some ways you can think of it as a return to normalcy after the horrors of World War I, something that MIT was thinking more and more about and would continue to think more about as we reached into the World War II period.

Also, it embraced a number of new technologies. Some of my favorite visions of this building are where you have railroad-- and I should say of Killian Court-- where you have railroad cars, spurs bringing in supplies, right next to horse and donkeys with carts. So there's this sort of changeover going in terms of transition and technology. Ultimately on Mass Ave, Building 7, had poured in place concrete, factory sash metal windows, so that you have, again, sort of a tension between the actual architecture and the creation of that.

The Great Court and Rotunda was dedicated in 1916, with additions made through the 1930s when 77 Mass Ave finally opened. In another aside, the Architecture Department was actually the last one to move to the Mass Ave address, remaining holed up in the old Rogers building with their French Beaux-Arts drawings and medieval sculpture, something which made the Institute realize it was high time to get them into Cambridge.

The first building to break with the Bosworth axial plan-- again, we turn to student and faculty member Lawrence B. Anderson, working with Herbert Beckwith in 1929 with a swimming pool. And I'm showing you two views. For those of you who are familiar with the swimming pool and you see the new Stata Center behind the pool, you'll notice how much the disposition of this building has, in fact, changed. But it was quite, again, a very important moment for MIT, not only in terms of breaking with the original master plan, but also because of what it said about the importance of physical and athleticism to the student body this time. There were great many thoughts going on about how do we keep not only the mind healthy but the body healthy, and the swimming pool was one of those.

If the new technology was fulfillment of vision, the post-World War II campus questioned that vision tremendously. I'm sure many of you know this image as Building 20, which was certainly eminently adaptable to scores and scores of uses and dearly loved by many students and professors. What I'd like to do is talk about the post-World War II vision as embodied by Baker House and what that meant for the Institute.

It represents a tremendous shift in thinking at MIT following the upheavals of World War II, and it caused MIT to begin thinking about offerings for its students. There were a number of things that happened, including the Lewis Committee. The Lewis Report was issued in 1949, which had far-reaching curricular recommendations. And among those recommendations was the formation of a new school of humanities and social science. I think that's something that a lot of people aren't aware of in terms of how long the connection with humanities existed at this institution.

It was of considerable importance to MIT this time as well because MIT was still largely a commuter school, and the idea of having a residential life component was seen as very, very important in terms of creating a humanitarian vision for the students. One of the singular events leading up to this was in 1949, MIT hosted the Mid-Century Convocation. And the convocation actually began with Winston Churchill's speech in the Boston Garden. And as his backdrop was this view of Baker House. Baker House was the future, and MIT was the future. They were inextricably linked.

Bringing Alvar Aalto to MIT, for that we need to thank William Worcester. And I think Worcester is someone who frequently does not get the attention for the role that he played here at MIT. You can get a sense of his excitement when Worcester says, "Aalto flew here. So comes fresh from the problems of reconstruction of destroyed towns in Finland, I would say that possibly the greatest contribution is adding richness to the stream of teaching in the school which gives zest to each problem for each student. Professor Aalto is not to conduct a studio for a few, but rather to meet with each group and each individual during his term." So here again, we have a link between teaching and building ideology.

Here I show you an anterior view shortly after completion. Aalto said about Baker House in a letter to his wife, "I've improved almost every part of the building. Now it is really going to be good. It always happens that the real inspiration comes and the exact forms appear only after construction has started. As for the additional rooms, well, it went exactly the way you thought it was best. Keeping the basic form of the building with some improvements but increasing the number of rooms with a stepped extension on one end turned out best. As always, your instinct was right." Now, you can sense how excited he was. But of course, a number of these expansions were cut due to budget restraints. So--

After the influential Lewis Report, the Institute moved forward into the second century campaign. And that generated a series of other very important buildings. And I show you here on the far screen the Kresge Chapel and Kresge Auditorium, again by Saarinen. And on the opposite screen, the Student Center by Eduardo Catalano. With the second century campaign, the focus was again on providing facilities for the students and, again, returning to those earlier visions and goals and founding principles about student activity, student life, and a well-rounded environment.

The Wiesner Building again shows MIT going back to its students. I show you here a photograph of the Wiesner Building. And in the upper corner is actually a student drawing, a thesis drawing, by the architect IM Pei. IM Pei was a student here in 1940 and completed some very, very interesting work at that time as a student. He was brought to MIT also in the 1960s for the Green Building, and then made a return appearance here with Wiesner.

This was a building that, again, had a very long gestation period based on-- actually going back to 1960, '61-- based on what were the needs of the students at this time. How do we bring creative activities and art into the lives of our students? So again, you have the Institute turning to its own and coming up with something that fits-- is a good fit for its student body up to this point.

In conclusion, I'd like to just go back to Alvar Aalto, one of-- I think a telling quote for this, in which he says, "True architecture, the real thing, is only where man stands in the center." Aalto's remarks remain as compelling today as they were when they were spoken over 50 years ago. Is one's perspective, where one stands in relation to the center or the place architecture occupies in one's worldview may shift, but as we can see in the vision of the founders, faculty, and students, we always return to the same principles. Thank you.

[APPLAUSE]

VEST: well, being the one true technologist here, I'm only using notes this morning. I get very nervous whenever I'm asked to speak to groups of artists and architects and musicians and such people because I don't know very much about the subject. But I always hearken back to one of Victor Borge's comments he used to make, which is-- he would introduce himself as the music critic for Mechanics Illustrated. So just kind of think of that.

So with all this in mind, I said to Bill Mitchell yesterday, Bill, what should I say tomorrow? This is a very important forum, and there's nothing worse than somebody who actually doesn't know about architecture learning a little bit of the phrases and all that stuff and standing up and pretending to know something. So Bill said, Chuck, your job tomorrow should be just to tell the truth about what it takes to get something like what we have accomplished here done.

And I said, Bill, tell the truth? You're not serious. And he said, well, tell a little bit of the truth anyway. So that's what I'm going to try to do today is speak a little bit of the truth of what we have been through in this really last decade when it comes right down to it, because it has been a remarkable adventure.

And I want to begin saying that I suppose if we sat down and made a list we could probably identify 1,000 people who one way or another have had something significant to do with the transformation of the campus that is now well underway. And there would obviously be 1,000 different realities. So I am only going to give you a bit of mine. And let me start with a couple of observations, and I will apologize in advance for some of them.

When I had the great privilege of coming here to MIT as president in 1990, two things happened that were short of traumatic experiences. One is that I took my first drive down Vassar Street. And as you know, I came to MIT literally from the outside, with a great sense of reverence and awe for what went on at this Institution. And I could not somehow in my mind put together what I saw on Vassar Street with what I knew was the reality of the Institution.

And the second sort of weird epiphany was during the interview process, they put me up in the suite on the top of the Marriott looking down over the campus. By the way, it was the last time they put me up in anything of that expense. And I remember standing out there looking down on top of the campus from that height and distance and sort of seeing all these rectilinear lines with two big flagpoles. And for some reason, the image that kept coming into my head was a Naval base.

But then there's the other side of the campus. After I came here, every morning it's my habit-- including this morning, at about 6:30-- to get up and go for a jog. That's how I get my mind in order for the day. And I absolutely fell in love and in awe of the sight I would see every morning running along the banks of the Charles River and looking into the Killian Court and the Bosworth Buildings and cutting back behind the dorms and going by Baker House and so forth, different every day, different quality of life, different this, that, the other.

And so we had this kind of juxtaposition of something awful and something really quite wonderful. And yet some level, none of these seemed to reflect the wonderful extraordinary reality and excitement electricity of what goes on inside all of those buildings. So with this in my mind, I formed a grand well-organized vision of what I believe this campus needed to be for the next 30 or 50 years, started a capital campaign to raise the funds, knew the right architects to hire, and got the job done so it will stand as my personal vision and legacy.

[LAUGHTER]

[APPLAUSE]

Now, of course, none of that is true. None of that is true, except for the first three observations. And just to tell you how untrue it is, I was remembering the other day-- we have something here called a campus visit, where we have friends and alumni and donors and so forth in to meet faculty and students, see what's going on. They always come to dinner at the president's house at the end of the session. And I always answer a few questions.

And I remember the first year, somebody asked me the question, what's the situation with deferred maintenance on campus, and do you anticipate building a new building for something or other, and so forth. And I distinctly remember that my answer was, understanding MIT's budgetary situation and as best we could project, I did not believe that we would build a building during my tenure. Well, as it turns out, when I stepped down next fall, recognizing that a lot of the space I'm going to refer to is in housing system and so forth, we will actually have constructed about 25% of everything on the MIT campus. So much for vision.

My good buddy and hero Gerhard Casper, who was president of Stanford during much of my tenure, called up one morning in his third year as president. And he said, Chuck, I just got to unload on somebody that if one more person asks me what my vision for Stanford University is, I'm quitting, because I don't have a vision for Stanford University. And I really understand what all that is about.

But having said that, let me make a few serious observations. We are, as has been said much more eloquently than I can say, really in the midst of a very profound transformation of our campus that I think of as an effort to better reflect and support and inspire what the extraordinary people of this institution do. That, to me, is what it is all about.

And while I don't know much literally about architecture, I do know a lot about universities. And I have sort of a basic theorem about how universities-- great ones, at least-- evolve. And when I say evolve, I mean intellectually and socially as well as physically. It kind of happens roughly by 50%, by planning and strategy, and at least 50% by serendipity and opportunism. And I use opportunism in a positive sense of that word. It means faculty recognizing exciting new intellectual or other opportunities.

It's not like an orchestra with a conductor, despite the fact lots of people like to write about themselves or others as conductors. It's more-- at least here, it's more of a jam session among a lot of very talented musicians who start kind of listening to each other and get into the flow, and people like the provost and executive vice president you'll meet in a moment and myself try to kind of keep all that going, see if we can get the right musicians and listen to the pieces and so forth and so on. That's more to me the way things happen.

The second serious observation-- which being MIT I even did as a plot one time of all the square feet on this campus coming in and out over the period since we moved across the river from Boston-- the opportunity for campus development, the kind of thing we're going through now, it simply comes in waves, with a period of about 20 or 30 years. And there are obviously good reasons for that. It's driven by two things primarily, I would say. First and foremost, to be honest, the economy. Economy gets better, you could do some things. Economy gets worse, you have to pull back.

But juxtaposed on this are a couple of things which are the intellectual trends, what faculty are doing, especially in a place that's focused largely on science and technology, as we are here. And secondly some of the kinds of thinking that both of the previous speakers referred to as kind of views of what the life on a campus should be, how our students should be, what's the humanistic role, and so forth. That also creates opportunities as we move forward. So I think as we headed into this sort of pivotal moment in roughly 1997, '98, through those two years, MIT, and to a lesser extent I, had what in the sciences we often like to refer to as the prepared mind. There really was not a well-formed vision, but there was a lot of thinking about what is going on in the world, what's going on here, that I think put us in a good position when the moment came. And when I say "the moment," it means that literally in that sort of two-year period of '97, '98, it became crystal clear that we had an opportunity to create some things of historical import in the development of MIT. And I say of MIT because I'm not just talking about physical facilities.