One of the most striking buildings on any university campus in the world, the Beinecke Library (1963, designed by Gordon Bunshaft of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill) is an opaque white cube from the outside and a luminous amber lantern from within. The exterior panels are not marble but translucent Vermont marble, each about one inch thick, which admits a warm, diffused light that changes with the weather and time of day. The library holds one of the few complete Gutenberg Bibles on public display, along with original Audubon prints, papyri, and medieval manuscripts. Admission is free.
story: "The building has no windows in the conventional sense. The marble panels admit enough light to read by but filter out ultraviolet rays to protect the irreplaceable manuscripts inside. On very sunny days the interior glows like the inside of a paper lantern."