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E-PrinceAfter six years of design and construction, the Lewis Library opened its doors today in time for the start of the fall 2008 semester.
Designed by renowned architect Frank Gehry, the new 87,000-square-foot building now houses the astrophysics, biology ...
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I want to thank Peter Lewis for making this building happen (the acerbic prattlings of Ira Tarbell notwithstanding). This facility is a welcome addition to the Princeton landscape that should benefit future generations of student and faculty for decades to come. The fact that it exciting, unusual architecture only adds to its appeal. Princeton owes a great deal of thanks to people like Peter Lewis who share their financial resources with the University, and particularly those benefactors whose largesse helps the University to move in new directions, whether through architecture, new academic programs, student financial aid, or faculty support.
Three cheers.
just imagine what peter lewis's largesse could have done to improve and fund actual scientific research rather than providing a hideous pointless building where scientists won't go.
re: stoopid - I'd imagine we'd get the Lewis-Sigler Institute for Integrative Genomics.
All new buildings, like cars, appeal to laymen because of their showroom condition. Time has not yet taken a toll in chipped paint, worn carpeting, scratched glass or oxidized metal. Lewis Library is in the best condition it will ever be, of course, so naturally laymen sing its praises. But will that tune change in twenty years or so when Gehry is dead, and his once outre designs seem passe like the former Butler College? Will laymen then see beyond the building's tinsel and recognize its form as chaotic, self-indulgent and annoying -- in other words, violating a library's function of serene study for spectacle? Will they then recognize that Gehry's "genius" was actually his defect, that he never understood the difference between architecture and sculpture, tried to combine both on a headline-grabbing scale, and merely reinvented the funhouse?