Entries by Kathrin Besier

In the interim I’ve learned a bit more about the history of the building. It all began in 2001 with a 60 million dollar donation made by Peter B. Lewis, a Princeton graduate who made his fortune in the insurance business and counts among the university’s major donors.
Peter B. Lewis tied his donation to the condition that it be used to build a science library. The university decided to build a library that would combine the collections of the Astrophysics, Biology, Geosciences, Mathematics, Physics und Psychology Libraries. Part of these libraries had already been merged in the former mathematics library in Fine Hall, and it was also to join the new library. Frank Gehry, renowned for such international projects as the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, was chosen as architect for the new building.

Gehry’s seemingly cobbled-together exterior draws the eye, and surprises those entering the building through the “Canyon”, mentioned in my last blog, with its strongly-hued planes of color. To one side of the entrance area is found the New Media Center with its several departments, the Institute for Computational Science and Engineering, and the TIGRESS High Performance Computing Center and Visualization Laboratory. As entrance area, the Canyon is the connecting element to the library opposite, and separates the two areas from one another. In addition, both within and outside the library are classrooms that are managed by Princeton’s Administration Office rather than falling under the control of the library.

The Lewis Library has four floors aboveground and one belowground. Entering the library through the Canyon, one arrives on the ground floor, where the information desk, some staff offices, reference works, and several computers for research are found. Additional research computers, copiers, scanners and printers are scattered throughout the building. Roughly in the middle of the space there is an opening between the ground floor and the second floor. From below, this opening is barely discernible and from above, not visible at all, due to the waist-high magazine display designed to protect against falls. The opening is the cause of a certain amount of disturbance on the second floor, as one can hear every conversation at the information desk and every sound made by the book security system. Through the front windows, as through those of the ground floor, one sees the bright, multicolored walls of the Canyon, which despite the indirect light enliven the space. In the library, Gehry limited himself to patches of color on individual walls and furniture chosen as color accents, otherwise the walls are an unobtrusive white and the furnishings of light-colored wood. In addition to staff offices and a library room for computer training, the second floor also houses the so-called Tree House, its large windows looking out into the trees, creating a quiet workspace.

Additional workspaces are found on the third and fourth floors, among them spaces where groups can meet, along with classrooms that are not part of the library. The rest of the library collection is located in the basement and in Fine Hall’s former math library, which one reaches by the corridor from the Lewis Library or through its own entrance, and which was not renovated.

The Peter B. Lewis Library was officially opened in 2008. All in all it is a modern, functioning library, with minor flaws, one that I would like to have experienced when the library was fully in operation instead of during the summer break. What I find particularly impressive is the effective use of color, with which difficult spatial issues find an elegant solution, and also the multitude of workspaces devoted to concentrated study that are scattered throughout the building, especially the Tree House and rooms on the third and fourth floors. It is unfortunate that Fine Hall, with its 1970’s style so different from that of the Lewis Library, has been treated in such neglectful fashion. The staff does its best to deal with this situation; perhaps the water damage suffered last December will provide a chance for renovation.

Yesterday I changed location and library yet again. I went right across the country from the sunburnt hills of California to the oppressive mugginess of New Jersey, and from the small new campus of the University of California at Merced to venerable Princeton University. There I visited the Peter B. Lewis Library, which opened in 2008 and is connected with the math/physics library in neighboring Fine Hall. As a tribute to the increasingly interdisciplinary nature of research, earth sciences, astrophysics, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, psychology, the map collection and the digital map and geospatial information (GIS) center have been consolidated. This centralization was begun before the new building was constructed, and was further carried out in stages during construction by having other departments of the university use a section of the building, separated by the so-called “canyon,” the corridor connecting the two parts of the building and which stands out above all for its vivid coloring. Due to a glass ceiling and an open configuration encompassing two floors, even on a rainy day so much light comes in that the effect of the color fields is inescapable.

I look forward to being here till the end of next week and having a chance to get to know an entirely different library in an entirely different university setting, and to getting a better look at the design of the Lewis Library.

For a tour of the entire campus of the University of California, Merced, you’d do well to get yourself into a four-wheel drive vehicle. That’s exactly what Donald Barclay, head librarian at the unveristy library, deputy librarian Eric Scott and I did, and were chauffeured around on small two-lane roads over tawny hills by a staff member who knew the place inside out.

All in all, the university grounds cover 7,000 acres, or 700 square meters. The Virginia Smith Trust left them to the university for the founding of a campus at Merced. One part of the land was previously used as a golf course, and it’s on these 800 acres that the university buildings now stand. Originally the campus was going to be located farther away from Merced, out among the hills. For one thing, though, the development of the land would have been considerably more expensive, and for another, this area is partially flooded in winter and provides a home for a wide variety of animals. The fairy shrimp plays a special role here, living in seasonal flood ponds between the hills and constituting the primary food source for many birds, thereby attracting the special attention of conservationists. So they broke ground for the campus on the shut-down golf course and expanded slowly southward from there. The greater part of the property, however, will probably never be developed, continuing to offer a home to a variety of wild animals, even mountain lions, and bringing in leasing fees from ranchers to the tune of $200,000 a year. This in turn makes it possible for University of California students to attend the school on scholarship.

As we rattled over this area at the beginning of our campus tour, we enjoyed the beauty of Rolling Hills in the morning sun. When we got back two hours later, it was still difficult for me to grasp the sheer enormity of the grounds.

After this immersion in nature, exploring the technology of the developed part of the campus was a study in contrasts. Right from the beginning of construction, a master plan was developed for the university to run as energy-efficiently as possible. An important component in this is a two million gallon (ca. 7.5 million liter) water tank. During the day, this water cools the buildings; at night, the heated water can be used to generate electricity. A control center monitors energy use regularly and can direct it, for example, by cutting off cooling from unused rooms.

A licensee maintains an extensive solar field consisting of 4,900 panels on 8.5 acres of university land. These can be aligned according to the angle of the sun and are more effective than fitting out a building with solar panels. Since lack of space isn’t an issue, this was the way they went. The university provides the land for the panels, and has contracted for use of the electricity at a flat rate. This way it covers 20 percent of its annual energy needs, saving a total of five million dollars over the next 20 years.
Toward the end of our tour we visited the second Science and Engineering Building, where the final interior fittings are still being worked on, to see the implementation of further energy-saving measures. As in the library, there are sun blinds on all glass fronts not facing north. This dispenses with automatic moving parts, which use energy and have distinct shortcomings in a constantly blowing wind. Instead, there is a fixed shading system on the outer facade and bright blinds inside that can be closed as needed. There are also windows in this building that were planned to be too high for the sun to heat up the building during hot periods, but that in winter would still allow light into the space, thus saving energy for artificial light and for producing heat. The windows, walls, and roof are very well insulated; the roof is also painted white to reflect as much sunlight as possible.

Exterior plantings are still being experimented with. One section is simply left to its own devices, so it’s yellow and dry in summer but green in winter, and blooms in spring with all manner of wildflowers. One part of the flower beds is stocked with plants that require a lot of water, another with plants that are suited to the climate, hardy and requiring little to almost no water in summer.

The UC Merced campus employs a number of ideas that can maximize energy efficiency even in the most extreme climate without sacrificing comfort. A number of these ideas could surely be applied to buildings in Germany, even if the challenges there are somewhat different.