More than four years after the Penn State Board of Trustees approved the building of a home for the newly found College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), Penn State President Graham Spanier officially dedicated the building yesterday afternoon.

"We are on the cutting edge of the digital age," Spanier said.

"This building is not only a bridge over a busy thoroughfare," Spanier said of the 199,000 square-foot building that spans Atherton Street on west campus.

Spanier said the inspiration for the building came from Ponte Vecchio in Florence, Italy.

Architect Rafael Viñoly, who envisioned the Ponte Vecchio bridge design, called the building a "labor of love" and said the vision for it "appeared crazy and extreme" from the beginning. "It was ... a personal obsession of mine for the past few years," he said.

The project cost $58.8 million and was subsidized in part by a $25.5 million grant from the state, in addition to funds from private corporations and individuals.

James Thomas, dean of IST, said the building would house classes within the college as well as from the department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), in the College of Engineering.

While CSE has been holding classes in the new building since the beginning of the semester, IST will begin moving classes into the new space on Monday.

At yesterday's dedication ceremony, officials from the state and the university addressed a standing-room only crowd in the building's Cybertorium.

The Cybertorium seats 155 people, with "pods" consisting of five chairs seated around small semi-circular tables. Two computers sit at each pod, but their screens were drawn below the tables for yesterday's event because they were not in use.

Versatility of space and collaborative group work were behind much of the building's design, Stephen Murgas, IST's chief technology officer, said. The building incorporates a number of the latest technologies, including wireless access that would go as far as to let students print notes from their personal handheld computers to the on-site Xerox Innovation Centre, he said.

Chao-Hsien Chu, an associate professor for IST, said the new building would allow for a more hands-on approach to teaching. Instead of just talking about network security, the technology in the new building lets students create wireless networks in groups and then try to defend their networks while also trying to hack into other groups' systems. He said the new space, as well as grants, such as a $110,000 grant from Cisco Systems, allowed for these changes.

"It is now the oldest and most famous bridge in Florence," he said, building on the metaphor of the new IST building as a bridge between worlds.