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JULY 2009 |
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Altered Spaces: Blowing Apart the Rectangle — Behind the Scenes at Frank Gehry’s New Building Princeton University;
The shape and scope of the Frank Gehry-designed Peter B. Lewis Science Library building at Princeton University is now clear. You might even suspect that the builders could just scrape off the protective materials, haul away the trash, plant some grass, and they’d be finished. In fact there is still much to do, and the building will not be fully completed until May of 2008 and operational that fall. But I’ve been photographing the construction progress since it was a bare patch of ground in 2004, so needless to say I’m anxious to share a sneak preview of what I’ve found. Gehry, whose Guggenheim Museum in Spain has generated what has been coined the “Bilbao Effect,” where an iconic building alters a town’s fortunes, is not of course attempting to put Princeton University on the map. It has long been a place of renown. Instead, what a Gehry does for Princeton is to give added incentive in attracting the cream of the crop students and faculty in the sciences.
I can sympathize with Gehry’s need to blow apart the rectangle, especially on this site. Just behind the Science Library from Ivy Lane sits Fine Hall, the mathematics building, Princeton’s tallest—a thirteen-story block-like tower that is not one of the university’s finest. Although Gehry’s building is much lower, he stepped the design so that your eye is lead slowly upward from the rhythmic curves close to the ground to the three jagged towers that do their best to soften the blow of Fine looming in the background. Not that curvilinear designs are new or that radical. Even before new technologies and materials allowed for almost unlimited sculptural effects, buildings like Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim Museum (completed in 1959) provided enough swirls to make your head spin. What is perhaps unique about Gehry though is his method of contrasting rectangular forms with curved ones that ultimately create asymmetrical masses. It is the success or failure of this method that defines a Gehry building. In my view the Science Library may not be as harmonious in its blending of forms as, say, Bilbao or the L.A. concert hall. In fact there is so much variety that you might argue, “there’s no there there,” echoing Gertrude Stein’s famous adage about early twentieth-century Oakland. What is the central motif? What are the dominant forms? Where is the main entrance?
Changes in the building site over time guarantee variety to the shots. Construction crews have changed, interior spaces have materialized and dematerialized, and steel forms that were prone have become structural components. While standing on an upper floor early in the construction process, I realized that I was looking through support “ribs” to a view across campus that would be blocked in the finished building.
But what’s most impressive is the element of surprise. Once I learned of Gehry’s long-time interest in Serra’s work, I started looking for how that bond was manifested in the building. Sure enough, if you peek around the corner window of the upper story, you are drawn downward to the sculpture, where Serra’s tilted curves are most clearly articulated. It is one of those touches that Gehry, whose work is sculptural itself, likely created in homage to Serra. Another unexpected twist is a group of large figurative brick masses that form the back of the building close to Fine Hall. Similar in appearance to my nephew’s toys, this robot looks to be both the building’s superstructure and its behind-the-scenes operator.
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