Gordon Bunshaft was born this day in 1909 in Buffalo—a 40-year veteran and partner of the global architecture firm Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill and one of the leading lights of corporate modernism who designed, among other things, the groundbreaking Lever House in New York. But it wasn’t all glass towers for Bunshaft. He excelled at harnessing the industrial materials of the 20th century to create ethereal architecture that could belong to future centuries, notably the Beineke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University (pictured). Rare books need, above all, a highly controlled environment for optimal preservation, yet Yale—in the market for new acquisitions (and at the vanguard of library science)—was interested in showcasing its collection. How to balance security and openness? Bunshaft created a jewel box display case several stories high to hold the collection surrounded by an exterior shell anchored 50 feet into the bedrock. To limit the amount of harmful natural light, he inserted thin slabs of veined marble (quarried in Vermont) along the exterior shell to filter the light while also allowing visitors enough of an amber glow inside to observe the collection, which includes one of the remaining Gutenberg Bibles. Photo: Michael Kastelic via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED.
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