Challenge to the Rectangle

Bostonians will have to get used to some radical new architecture across the Charles River Basin on the M.I.T. cam pus. In 1950, M.I.T. commissioned Michigan Architect Eero Saarinen, whose wicketlike design for a Jefferson memorial in St. Louis caused a sensation five years ago (TIME, March 8, 1948), to submit plans for a new campus center with auditorium and chapel. Saarinen's idea: to challenge the age-old rectangle with a new pattern of spheres, cylinders and triangles.

Architect Saarinen's auditorium is as simple and modern as an airplane hangar; he sees it as a huge, concrete shell, one-eighth of a sphere, planted on the ground at three points. Advantages of the triangular dome, according to Saarinen: speaker and audience seem closer together, space and materials are saved. Inside the auditorium are two levels, a lower for a small theater, an upper for a large, 1,200-seat hall in which students will sit under a sky of white, sound-reflecting "clouds" hung from the dome. Total estimated cost: $2,250,000.

Saarinen's small (130 seats) chapel is just as unusual: a simple cylinder of brick or stone that belongs to no century and looks somewhat like an oil storage tank. Since there are no windows, Architect Saarinen has set it on arches in a moat to get a dappled light effect something like Capri's Blue Grotto. The altar is near the wall, dramatically spotlighted from a small bell tower in the ceiling. Outside, to tie the whole project together, Architect Saarinen has designed a majestic plaza set with a mosaic of colored stones, possibly pink, grey and blue triangles.

M.I.T.'s officers liked the auditorium, but they balked at the chapel. Said Building Committee Chairman Robert M. Kimball : "Seeing it for the first time, a person wonders if this is really a church. Worship doesn't mean the same thing to all people. It wasn't until we began to get the feel of what Saarinen was trying to create that we really appreciated the design." After months of discussion, M.I.T.'s corporation finally approved the chapel. Work on the auditorium has already started.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.