A Telos program about architecture — coming spring 2009 The argument is not new but it has never been so vociferous. The quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns has erupted all over again. This time, the debate ensues on the campus of Princeton University, in big bold architectural statements by two world-class architects at the height of their powers. What is best for students? The comforting embrace of the familiar past or the provocative slap of the shock of the new? Extreme Visions is an educational documentary project that explores the design and construction of the innovative Lewis Science Library, designed by Frank Gehry and the Collegiate Gothic Whitman College Dormitory Complex designed by Demetri Porphyrios. The documentary project is funded by a generous grant by Peter B. Lewis. This program contrasts the radically different architectural styles of the two buildings and also profiles the architectural philosophies and creative processes of the two designers. The purpose of the program is to put these two world-class architects into the spotlight and compare their ideologies and their visions. The program will put the projects into oscillation with each other to raise issues of the traditional V.S. the modern and to give future generations of architecture students an overview of styles and approaches on the opposite ends of the architectural spectrum. “It struck me that having these two great architects designing two dramatically different buildings for the same institution at the same time; it was a fascinating idea to me. I bet that out of this process, and out of the documenting of this process, will come some interesting revelations about clients and architectures and institutions and that the contrast may even bring out more. I think it might wind up being an interesting story.”  — Peter B. Lewis   “Collegiate Gothic are the buildings that Universities built all around the country over the years, probably in England somewhere too. I think it’s kind of a symbol of solidity and integrity and all that stuff that people just latch onto because it has that meaning from a lot of historic campuses. You wonder why you have to do it at a university that’s mission is to deal with the future, and you wonder what that says about them?” — Frank Gehry   “It is the value of the ephemeral, the value of the novelty, the value of the newness which are all modernist values as opposed to values of robustness, and values of longevity.” — Demetri Porphyrios “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 Porphyrios building will fit seamlessly into the larger historical fabric of Princeton. On the other hand, I do find it a little odd that one would design a building - 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