The demolition of Building 20 will be complete by the end of May, and workers will then begin preparations for constructing the new Ray and Maria Stata Center for Computer, Information and Intelligence Sciences in its place.
Soil testing will be performed throughout this summer, and utility relocation work will take place in late fall. Construction of the Stata Center is scheduled to begin with excavation of the basement in January 2000 and will continue through the summer of 2002, with occupancy expected by late 2002.
For the next few months, the site will be closed off with a chain-link fence, with pedestrian and vehicular traffic limited to the perimeter. The space between the Building 57 squash courts and the construction site will be open for pedestrian traffic.
Access to the East Garage, the surface parking lot and the food-truck location will be maintained until the start of utility relocation work later this year.
The Stata Center, designed by architect Frank O. Gehry & Associates, Inc., will house the new headquarters for the Laboratory for Computer Science, the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems Technology, the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and the Department of Linguistics and Philosophy.
A version of this article appeared in the May 12, 1999 issue of MIT Tech Talk (Volume 43, Number 30).
