Comments on: MIT Alleges Flaws in Frank Gehry’s Building

By: Sestimator

Sestimator — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:38:02 +0000

Ghery’s right. Value engineering and cost-cutting is the bane of construction these days. Skanka is notorious in the construction industry for eating it’s young and value engineering to cover the fact that the under bid projects for the win and then try to take the costs out of the job so they can get the profit back.

By: David

David — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 01:10:32 +0000

Calvin, no 5% is too little for a specialised building like this one. The building houses specialised labs and a complex program. For design of hospitals, the going fee is at least 12%. If he had charged 5 million, he would be screwing himself. There was a presentation by Bill Mitchell of MIT, and the process of designing this building was quite elaborate.

As for the leaking, we cannot fault the architect primarily. Up to 30% of all buildings will experience some form of water ingress in the first 18 months. Up to 80% of buildings will experience some form of water ingress within the first 10 years.

Defects liability period spans for 2 years in most cases, but contractor liability spans for 7 years at the very least.

By: anne

anne — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:14:35 +0000

I don’t see you asking what Skanska’s (the General Contractor) fee is, which was probably more like $40 million. And they actually signed a contract that obligated them to provide a useful building.
let’s face it — MIT is a sophisticated client and no one goes to Gehry to get an IKEA box. the project was probably in design for 3 years, the Owner had the right to say “uh… this is too weird for us” but didn’t, and Skanska took on the construction contract.

By: Hoffer

Hoffer — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 14:36:08 +0000

lets face it gehry is a shit architect. His designs are so complex and never fit in or even acknowledge their surroundings be it site, climate etc. Anyone after having smoked a reefer could imagine designs like his..

By: BarnaStil

BarnaStil — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 07:45:52 +0000

5% is a bargain…the going rate in Spain is 13%. It probably changes according to negotiations because 13% of 300 million would be huge. But, then again architects in Spain are also engineers and project managers so maybe 13% isn´t that bad.

By: Calvin

Calvin — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:35:44 +0000

5% out of 300 million is still a huge amount of money. MIT should have just paid Gehry on lump sum basis. say 5 million.

By: Sky

Sky — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 22:31:23 +0000

5% of estimated construction costs is not unusual for architectural fees. I’m not sure if you are aware of the costs of doing business as an architect, especially one that does work that falls out of standard practice detailing.