Built in 2002, the Peter B Lewis Building is housing the Weatherhead School of Management. Named in honor of lead donor Peter B. Lewis, chairman of the Progressive Corporation, and designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, the building is the most advanced management school facility in the world and reflects Weatherhead’s international reputation for innovative management education. The building in the Case Western Reserve campus is a $62 million building, which Mr. Lewis donated $37 million, with 152,000 sq ft of space.

For Lewis and the school, Gehry’s curves and shapes signify the manner in which management and business is taught at Case Western. Interior spaces are specifically designed to encourage informal student-faculty interaction, making teachers and students equal partners in the learning process. Entering the building through a small door that is almost less scaled by the large shapes above, one enters into cleanly designed interior spaces. The light shifts and changes hue as it bounces from high white walls.

At certain times of the day, the interior spaces seem painted in colors other than white due to the changing hues on the higher parts of the walls. Artificial lighting is primarily brought about by simple fluorescent tubes which hang high up on walls. In this way, the interior of the building puts on a show that must be appreciated over time, as light shifts through the day. The Peter B Lewis Building contains administrative and educational facilities for the Weatherhead School of Management, and accommodates offices, student meeting rooms, study rooms, a cafe, various classrooms and a multipurpose meeting space. Multiple classroom configurations accommodate a variety of teaching techniques and group interaction. No two classrooms are exactly alike, so students are constantly faced with changing perspectives.

A series of largely rectilinear blocks form a U-shape around two sculptural towers clad in stainless steel which contain the four largest classrooms and which rise through the center of the building, an arrangement which produces a canyon-like atrium between the towers and the perimeter blocks. The steel towers appear as billowing growths bursting out of the more regular volumes. The facilities on the ground floor of the blocks are arranged around this atrium, encouraging interaction between the faculty and the students. One of the curving sheets of stainless steel folds down over the entrance to meet a glazed facade with both vertical and slanting metal framing. Inside the atrium, the curves continue with bridges and walkways snaking through the white-painted space.

Sitting in the main atrium space is a large sculptural form, which serves as a skylight for a classroom underneath. Viewing it from high up, the oversized skylight appears to be a pushpin holding the lively building in place. While interior spaces are cleanly designed and in certain cases almost austere, the richness of materials used and the prominent use of wood warm up the space, which is probably further energized during class hours since some spaces are tight and force students to interact and acknowledge one another. Classrooms are bright, ample and laid out in a functional manner.

The building is largely constructed of red brick, with identical windows arranged in an irregular pattern. The bricks relate the new building to the surrounding campus, while the two gleaming classroom towers reinforce the school’s central ideology which encourages students to challenge convention. If there is something questionable also seemly irrelevant, then it was the “Peter B Lewis Building” sign on the front of the building, above the entrance. The sign is just like attached on there as no creative effort in it.

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