June 20, 2008

An Architect Asks: Should Colleges Erect 'Buildings of Our Time'?

By LAWRENCE SPECK

I love old buildings. There is nothing I like better than puttering around in a Gothic cathedral or climbing through Inca ruins in Peru or even reading in my all-time favorite library — a hundred-year-old Cass Gilbert building on my own campus. Part of what I love about these old buildings is that they connect me to another time. Lasting architectural artifacts become documents of their place and time — authentic representations of the culture and era that made them. By