A Gehry Inside a Viñoly
John Hill
30. January 2015
Photo: John Hill/World-Architects
World-Architects toured Princeton University earlier today, taking in the campus's appealing mix of old and new buildings. A standout was Rafael Viñoly's Carl Icahn Laboratory from 2003, which contains a conference room designed by Frank Gehry.
Yet Gehry did not design the sculptural "horse's head" piece for Princeton, or as a conference room. It was to be a small part of a huge 22,000-square-foot (2,044-sm) residence for Peter B. Lewis in Lyndhurst, Ohio, but after ten years of numerous iterations the project was cancelled. Luckily a mockup, framed in wood and covered in lead, found a second life in the Icahn Lab, providing a suitable contrast to Rafael Viñoly's curved glass wall and two-story atrium.
Model of Lewis Residence, 1995, with horse's head in center. (Photo: From "Frank O. Gehry: The Complete Works")
The west-facing facade of the Carl Icahn Laboratory, as seen from Pardee Field. (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
The west facade is made up of of thirty-one 40-foot-tall (12-meter) computer-controlled aluminum louvers. They are set in front of the curved glass wall to create a colonnade.
Behind the glass wall is the two-story atrium with plenty of seating for students; the Gehry conference room can be seen in the distance. (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
A closer view of the conference room. (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
The aluminum louvers cast dots of light across the atrium and the lead panels of the conference room. (Photo: John Hill/World-Architects)
