How to rate and review a building that functions in so many different ways for so many people? The Science Center has a variety of roles, both formal and inadvertent.
For incoming undergraduates, it represents one of the few places on campus (aside from Memorial Hall) where they will encounter all their peers, both in large lecture halls and the required lab sessions on the third, fourth, fifth and eighth floors.
For seasoned undergrads, it's a place to write your overdue essay in the expansive computer rooms in the basement, a cheap café at which to cram for the upcoming exam and a central location at which to advertise your super-awesome weekend party or activist cause.
For faculty, it's home to independent hard- and soft-science lab space, the location of the Derek Bok teaching center, and the site of any number of technologically over-equipped classrooms.
Grads find refuge in the Science Center's 24hr computing facilities, its hive of humanity amidst the endless and solitary PhD process, and the huge student discount available in the Apple Store on site.
Tourists love to hate the 70s chic of the building's exterior (rumored to be modelled on the Polaroid camera) and let their children play in the fountain feature out front.
There's a library, a museum and some weird and wonderfully large old scientific objects across the lobby. There is welcome shelter from the snow in the winter. There's a mini-garden in the courtyard, an observatory up at the top, and in the Spring there's a farmers' market out front.
The Science Center is not successful at performing all these roles to perfection, but it makes a damn good attempt at covering all its bases. For that, I give this place 4 stars. For everything else, there's Mastercard. read more