A Knight at the Library for Campus

Representing a major coup for Ventura County’s emerging public university, world-renowned architect Sir Norman Foster has agreed to design a state-of-the-art library and media center at the developing Cal State campus.

Foster, recently awarded his profession’s highest honor, is best known for designing a range of high-tech buildings, including a $1-billion bank headquarters in Hong Kong, the new Great Court for the British Museum and Hong Kong’s recently completed $20-billion International Airport, the largest in the world.

Although no formal agreement has been brokered, the 64-year-old British architect already is drawing up designs for the 283,000-square-foot library complex, envisioned as a signature building for the campus under development at the former Camarillo State Hospital.

At this point, the university exists in name only. However, Foster’s collaboration would boost efforts to carve a unique identity for the campus as it evolves over the next two years into a full-fledged, four-year institution.

“I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I tell you that I think he is the world’s leading architect at the moment,” said university President Handel Evans, who plans to meet today with representatives from Foster’s London-based firm to further discuss contractual terms and design concepts.

“From my point of view, this sets a standard that I would like to maintain,” Evans added. “It signals that this university is of significance and will continue to be of significance as we go forward.”

Foster would be asked to transform an old hospital laboratory--a medical unit where doctors once studied mental disorders and performed lobotomies--into a landmark building, one of several Spanish-style structures slated for renovation at the Cal State Channel Islands campus.

It’s not exactly the kind of work--neither in scale nor design--for which he is famous.

Foster has earned a world-class reputation for his towering glass-and-steel structures, which have pierced skylines in cities worldwide and earned him a host of honors and awards.

But it is perhaps his most recent project, the renovation of Berlin’s Reichstag, that offers the best glimpse of his ability to blend the old with the new.

His design for the parliament building, which in April was reinstated as the seat of the German government, was hailed as an emblem of reinvigorated German democracy and considered the centerpiece of a rebuilding campaign to reconstitute Berlin as one of Europe’s great cultural centers.

In recognition of his body of work, Foster in April was awarded the 1999 Pritzker Architecture Prize, dubbed the Nobel of the profession.

It’s too early to tell how Foster’s vision might unfold at the Camarillo campus.

Robert Timme, dean of USC’s school of architecture, said many universities shy away from bringing in big-name architects, fearing a loss of control over the design process.

And too often, he said, such a conservative approach results in buildings that are more functional than they are aesthetically pleasing or important.

“We have this concept of a university being this gothic series of buildings when, in point of fact, that’s actually a terrible image when you stop and think about it--that it’s frozen in time and not open to new ideas,” Timme said. “That’s why it’s so good to have Foster on board. . . . It says that the university is very pluralistic and heterogeneous.”