This documentary film is made by Princeton students about their built-in environment both as architecture and as genius loci. The main (and title) character of the film is Lake Carnegie, built by fiat; that is that, commended into existence by a donor. The architectural hubris of a human-made body of water masquerading as a natural environment is getting more poignant by every day that the hazardous toxicity of the lake is ignored. The short film will present the students’ well-researched reflections on their “sense of the place” from the everyday, environmental, scholarly, scientific, historical, touristic perspectives as well as from the perspective of ‘the crew’ for whom the lake was originally built and from that of the indigenous locals whose land was used. Archival footage of the campus during key moments in its development will be intertwined with interviews, architectural blueprints, NASA images from space, charts of toxicity levels and film images of the present-day campus to bring to life the local spirit of the Princeton Campus. The students will ask the questions: What are the long-term consequences—both seen and unseen—of architectural innovation? What can be done by today’s Princetonians to mitigate the negative consequences of the architectural overreaching of the powerful?
