Building the Ivory Tower

Muncie, Indiana. Life published a photo essay by Margaret Bourke-White in 1937 to coincide with the publication of Middletown in Transition. Bourke-White captured the economic disparities in the city; her depictions of opulence, greenery, and open space in northwestern Muncie (above) were starkly contrasted with the crowding and deterioration of working-class southern Muncie (below). Margaret Bourke-White/Getty Images.

Muncie, Indiana. Life published a photo essay by Margaret Bourke-White in 1937 to coincide with the publication of Middletown in Transition. Bourke-White captured the economic disparities in the city; her depictions of opulence, greenery, and open space in northwestern Muncie (above) were starkly contrasted with the crowding and deterioration of working-class southern Muncie (below). Margaret Bourke-White/Getty Images.

The dormitories of Units 1, 2, and 3 were a triumph of brutalist design that efficiently provided housing for students and a design that could be reproduced multiple times on Berkeley urban blocks. Students rejected the spatial implications and lived experience of mass education in the dormitories and in campus life. 1959 Blue and Gold Yearbook.

Stata Center, MIT. Designed by Frank Gehry, the center replaced the utilitarian and much-loved Building 20 in 2004. The center houses the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, or CSAIL, bringing high-tech research and innovation to the edge of Kendall Square and giving it a distinctive, idiosyncratic architectural aesthetic. Photograph by the author.