Walking down Main Street, the buildings of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology rise up on either side, gleaming, tall, and unremarkable until the intersection of Vassar. There on the corner, it looks as if a giant has split three buildings—brick orange, gray and shiny white—and haphazardly welded them back together into a crooked, Dr. Seussian structure.

It is the Maria and Ray Stata Center, what Wired magazine calls famed architect “Frank Gehry’s Geek Palace.” The inside of the building, like the outside, is an amalgam—the main floor is part cafeteria, day care center, free library, and student hub. The first floor also operates as a testing ground for some of the 600 researchers’ experiments examining how people and computers interact—a console with video game controllers sits in the foyer; elsewhere, a robotic face waits patiently with a “please interact with me!” sign below it. The public space belies the function of other floors—labs and offices for artificial intelligence, information systems and linguistic specialists grow increasingly private with height. For the prospective student or tourist, the tour pamphlet touts the building’s green aspect, explaining why the toilet water is yellow (recycled) and how the folding glass sides of the building naturally heat the space within.

After passing through one of the front glass doors that cluster like a growing salt crystal, one might pause, not quite sure where to go. The space on the main floor wraps around itself; each wall is a different color—teal, tangerine, magenta. Bits of staircase jut out overhead, Escher-like, while wooden benches zigzag around the walls. A metal staircase rises from the end of the benches, spirals, flattens and continues around a column, finally intersecting with a suspended walkway that stretches above the main floor like a cursive ‘S.’ It is, one might imagine, Gehry’s attempt to reflect the inner workings of those who work here, the pensive-looking persons who walk quickly, quietly, across the linoleum.

In one corner of the trapezoidal main level a door reads “not a public throughway.” It is locked, but, like many other doors, is glass, and renders visible a labyrinth of computers nestled amidst giant black bookshelves, from which robot innards dangle like ritualistic offerings. Through another window, machines designed to mimic ants rest blinking at their docks, and two wheeled vehicles sleep in a sand box among fake rocks and pieces of plywood.

The public elevators stop at all nine levels, but a glass barrier with a coded door prevents the just anyones from investigating the research floors too closely. However, the transparent wraparound lets curious onlookers see spacious lounges meant to facilitate the thinking process, sprawling orange chairs, views of peach and brown brick against a gray sky. Visitors step off the elevator for a minute or two, craning their necks, trying to get a glimpse of science in action.

No one is visible during the muted atmosphere of the weekend; floor after floor one might occasionally catch some movement—a shoulder passing into a door, a dark shape traveling down the hall. On the fifth floor a long workspace with computer terminals is abandoned, a white teapot and mug rests on one of the many small tables that all face a whiteboard branching two dozen first names. There is the sense that the scientists are hiding, that a brisk bang on the glass would scare them out, get them scurrying across the floor. Even in stillness, something in the air hints at the many luminous ideas that have been born and bred, cared for until strong enough to venture out beyond the brick and glass.

If you want to observe science in its natural habitat, the Stata Center is certainly worth a visit. But you may have to be patient—the scientists are not always out.