Aalto's MIT Masterpiece
While the restoration of Baker House has some purists fuming the classic
dorm has never looked better.
By Ted Smalley Bowen
December 2003
Cross the Harvard Bridge from Boston's Back Bay to the MIT campus in Cambridge,
and you might miss Baker House. It cuts a relatively low profile: six
horizontally sweeping stories of red brick tucked in to the left. But as
you near Memorial Drive, Alvar Aalto's masterpiece throws you a captivating
curve, its sinuous southern facade echoing the Charles River. The main approach,
from the school's massive Neoclassical hub, cuts between MIT's other Finnish
classics--Eero Saarinen's Kresge Auditorium and Chapel--and through the
dorm's split-level lobby and lounge. This Aalto axis continues into the
"moon garden," a two-story dining pavilion with a maple-slatted
ceiling pierced by cylindrical skylights.
Most architects know of Baker House through old textbook photos of its famous
facade and north-facing cantilevered stairs. But the dorm is very much alive,
thanks in part to a recently completed $24 million restoration overseen
by Perry Dean Rogers (PDR). Over the years Baker has been one of MIT's most
popular dorms (harder to get into than the school itself, its residents
like to say).
The four-phase restoration, which had to work around the academic calendar
and was suspended for two years for lack of funds, took seven years. In
that time MIT overhauled and modernized Baker House, while striving to maintain
the building's architectural integrity. The renovation has made a popular
dorm more user-friendly and spruced up an icon, while sparking a debate
over preservation practices.
Although it competed for the job, PDR would seem to be the obvious choice.
Perry Shaw Hepburn, the firm's earlier incarnation, was Aalto's local
partner for the original project, from 1947 to 1948. It also worked on the
sanitized and chronologically challenged Colonial Williamsburg from the
1920s to the 1950s. "Some intellectuals say--and they may have some
credence--that that particular commission set the Modern movement back fifty
years in the United States," PDR's principal Charles Rogers says. Of
the Baker House project, he says, "We tried not to do anything we didn't
think Aalto would have done."
Baker House is a significant postwar building, one that marked a departure
from strict International Style functionalism. The dorm's signature waveform
isn't merely sculptural but provides the majority of rooms river views and
oblique exposure to Memorial Drive traffic. The undulating facade yields
wedge-shaped, trapezoidal, and rectangular rooms--dubbed "pie,"
"couch," and "coffin" by students--and the single-loaded
halls (with rooms on only one side) open the living areas to cross-breezes.
The dorm remains remarkably vital, but this fall students returned to a
hybrid environment: part Aalto, part Perry Dean Rogers. "We couldn't
pretend to be Alvar Aalto," says David Fixler, project manager from
1996 to 2000, who then served as preservation adviser through the project's
completion. "There are no absolutes. That's what makes it a design
process. When you tamper with anything, you're designing--even if you're
restoring. I started out being much more doctrinaire. But the more you get
into it, the more you realize that much of it is a perpetual series of judgment
calls."
The restoration involved technical upgrades typical for a half-century-old
building--replacing wiring, plumbing, windows, and HVAC systems; repointing
the facade's distinctive irregular brickwork; and ADA and code compliance.
But the interpretations of Aalto's "original intent" have raised
some purist eyebrows. "I was quite surprised to observe a number of
design choices that are in contradiction with decent restoration practices,"
says Kristian Gullichsen, a Finnish architect who directs the Alvar Aalto
Foundation and visited Baker House in 1999 for its 50th anniversary symposium
and building rededication.
The foundation, which participates in Aalto restorations mainly in Finland,
was not actively involved in the project, although PDR and MIT conducted
research at the Helsinki museum and library, and had periodic contacts with
its staff. The research turned up drawings that informed the new roof deck
and pergola designs; in PDR's archives they found original drawings of the
dining-hall ceiling scheme that was adopted during the renovation. "The
goal was to get Aalto into our heads and hands so that when we had to make
changes, we would know how to do it appropriately," says Susan Personette,
former MIT senior project manager.
Gullichsen acknowledges the need to update a living building but questions
after-the-fact collaboration with Aalto. "There is no problem with
reorienting the front desk, or installing a new elevator, or refurbishing
the basement," he says. "But there has to be a clear distinction
between what is original and what is not. The modifications should
not pretend to be part of the original design, nor should they be based
on speculation of architectural intent. It is simply not correct to introduce
'neo-Aalto' light fittings or 'Aaltoesque' wooden details that the
public will take for originals. A trained eye will of course immediately
identify them as clumsy imitations. It is a mystery to me how those involved
managed to fall into that trap."
Fixler argues that the ceiling amounts to a practical necessity backed by
historical documentation--working drawings of the wood-slat treatment signed
by Aalto. "If we'd left the ceiling as it had been built and put in
all the necessary upgrades, it would look terrible," says Fixler, who
serves as president of the New England chapter of Docomomo, the group dedicated
to preserving Modernist buildings. "It'd be pockmarked with access
panels. To Aalto it was a pristine surface, broken only by light fixtures."
It has been argued that Modernist works warrant a special preservation
methodology given their social and technical underpinnings. But most architects
are leery about applying a strict formula to any building. "It's all an
interpretation," says Hugh Hardy, a partner with Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer,
which counts Radio City Music Hall and Manhattan's Central Synagogue among its
many restoration projects. "Each project has a different origin, a
different community, a different set of uses, and a different context."
The task is to consult a variety of sources, get a sense of the original
architect's intentions, and keep an open mind. "Change is
inevitable," Hardy says. "The question is what's appropriate. In some
cases replication is an asset. On the other hand, if you're adding a large
volume onto an existing building, you can make a strong case that it ought to
be contemporary."
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A view of the cantilevered north stair of Aalto's Baker House at MIT shows the
new ADA-compliant ramp in the foreground. In the seven-year restoration of the
university's first postwar dorm, Perry Dean Rogers made use of the archives of
the Alvar Aalto Foundation.
Photo by Albert Vecerka/Esto |
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A curved row of single and double rooms (in the original plan) maximizes views
of the nearby Charles River.
Courtesy Alvar Aalto Museum |
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The birch paneling in the 1948 interior (above) inspired the newly
built common area (below) with its custom-built study carrels and Aalto lounge
chairs. |
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Top: Ezra Stoller/Esto. Bottom: Jeff Goldberg/Esto. |
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To meet the demands of use, PDR replaced a makeshift
roof-deck (built by students) with a teak wood design.
Photo by Albert Vecerka/Esto |
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A rooftop view of the "Moon Garden" dining hall shows the 24
cylindrical skylights that illuminate the space.
Photo by Ezra Stoller/Esto |
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