Makerere University is just finishing a new building for computer science students, including lab space for more than 2,000 PCs. The new building is 12,700 square meters (137,000 square feet) and cost $9 million or $65 per square foot in 2007. It is an easy to navigate stacked set of identical floors, designed by an architecture firm owned by the university and staffed by its teachers and graduates. A Chinese construction firm was engaged at a fixed cost, starting in March 2006.
Stata Center: 400,000 square feet of space above ground, $300 million, or $750 per square foot in 2004. The building was plagued by cost-overruns and the result is almost impossible to navigate.
The MIT building was more than 10X the cost/square-foot of the building at Makarere. When you substract for all of the unusable space in the Stata Center, the cost is probably closer to 20X/sf.
[Another way to put the cost of the MIT building into perspective is by looking at it as an investment in computer science innovation. The MIT building cost more than 10X what it cost to fund Google (source). We can compare any improvements in the CS research done at MIT post-completion of the Stata Center to the value of the benefits to society of Google, Gmail, Google Earth, etc.]
This isn’t really a meaningful comparison. MIT has lots of money and a complex need — to appear creative and unique despite the fact that its market share in engineering education is plummeting. Makerere probably has little money, and a comparatively basic need — office and lab space for a bunch of people who were probably severely underserved by previous facilities.
It’s about as silly as comparing the cost per line-of-code between some challenging computer vision project and a routine web commerce app. Of course you can hire cheap labor to build a commerce app at $.01/LOC. Of course the computer vision project requires $100k/year salaries but still has a major risk of being totally useless. They operate under different constraints and strive for very different goals.
Given all that, I think the Stata Center is a success. Despite some major usability problems, it is fun and memorable. It has a lot of really good open space. It looks good on brochure covers. MIT’s facilities dept. is probably competent enough to patch its numerous roof leaks quickly. And it’s readily identifiable when seen from a helicopter. 🙂
How much of that factor of 10-20 reflects the relative cost of construction labor in the US versus Uganda? While I have no particular love for the Stata Center’s gaudy architecture, it would have been pretty inconvenient for most students if MIT had decided to save money by constructing their CS building in Kampala.
Boston is one of the most expensive cities in the US. Why wouldn’t third world costs be cheaper?
I would imagine that for the cost of a well located condo in Cambridge one could purchase a marvelous villa on a large parcel in a scenic equatorial location near Fort Portal. So why stay put in Cambridge with the beauty of the Virungas beckoning – no high speed internet ?
Folks: Most things are more expensive in Uganda than in the U.S. That is why more new businesses are started in the U.S. than in Uganda. Fuel and other essentials must be trucked for two days over bumpy roads from the Kenyan port of Mombasa. Labor is not especially cheap in any landlocked African country, esp. skilled labor.
Why does MIT need buildings-as-brochureware? Is there a shortage of qualified applicants? Not exactly…You can’t build anything for $65/ft in the US, but you could build something fine for less than half the cost. An extra $175million endowment for the department would fund hundreds of students.
isn’t the Stata center first and foremost a monument/legacy kind of thing for the donors (Stata, Dreyfoos, Gates)? They have literally left their mark on campus. Maybe they were not interested in donating money for scholarships or whatever.