Extreme Visions

“There is kind of an astonishment that I sometimes get from people in Princeton when they talk about the Gehry building, I mean you’d think something from Mars was going to land on the campus. There are those who might argue that fifty years from now we’re going to look at the Gehry building as some sort of weird aberration of the turn of the 21st century, whereas the (Collegiate Gothic) Porphyrios building will fit seamlessly into the larger historical fabric of Princeton. On the other hand, I do find it a little odd – knowing what we know about the way that students live and work and think today – that we would design a building intentionally anachronistically that way. I think that this debate is part of the larger urban imperative of architecture.”

— Stan Allen, Dean of Architecture Princeton University.

Objective: Tell the story of two immensely powerful donors, two world-renowned architects—and two extremely different architectural visions at Princeton University.

Strategy: Let the extremely intelligent and sophisticated architects and patrons speak for themselves. Show the architects in their native environments - Los Angeles for avant garde architect, Frank Gehry and Cambridge & London for traditional architect, Demetri Porphyrios. Highlight the incredible careers of the patrons: Meg Whitman, former CEO of eBay and Peter B. Lewis, former CEO of Progressive Insurance and former Chairman of the Guggenheim. Collaborate on the script with Art Historian, Henry Adams. Use the hauntingly beautiful music of Sir Ralph Vaughan Williams. Get Wentworth Miller (best known for his starring role as architect Michael Scofield in the hit TV show Prison Break) to dramatically whisper the narration.