CLEVELAND — Students at Case Western Reserve University could have been forgiven a few months ago if they had concluded that a roller coaster was being built on campus.

        The twisting, turning framework, with its tumbling stainless steel exterior protruding from bent brick walls, is not an amusement ride at all. It's the new home of the university's Weatherhead School of Management, designed by internationally renowned architect-artist Frank Gehry.

        Mr. Gehry's masterwork is the titanium-covered Guggenheim museum in Bilbao, Spain. He also designed the University of Cincinnati's Vontz Center for Molecular Studies.

        Construction on the $65 million Peter B. Lewis Building began in April 1999 and is to be completed by next summer. Enough of it has been completed so that passers-by commonly stop and wonder.

        While most business schools appear as conservative as an accountant's balance sheet, the slopes, curves and glint of this Gehry design belie business as usual.

        “Rather than being just another building, it's a reflection of where this business school is heading,” said Moshen Anvari, newly appointed director of the university's Weatherhead School. “It's reflecting what we believe is going to be management education in the 21st Century, coming out of the box.”

        Mr. Gehry said his design has received mostly positive feedback.

        “If a miracle happens like Bilbao, then I get a 98 percent approval rating, but that's rare for any building. But I'm much more critical of myself than anybody else could be. I am terribly self-critical,” Mr. Gehry said from his office in Santa Monica, Calif.

        He said that especially since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, he has been criticized for creating buildings that, at first glance, seem to be in disarray.

        “They are about optimism and belief that a building can be uplifting, have a spirit and create a consensus and a constituency and can bring people together and give them a sense of pride that they are part of something special,” he said.

        The Weatherhead School, now based in plain-looking Enterprise Hall on the private university's Cleveland campus, but spread over three buildings, needed a new building to unify faculty with an enrollment of about 1,400 mostly graduate students, said faculty member Dick Boland.

        Peter B. Lewis, an ardent art collector and the billionaire chairman of Progressive Insurance, agreed to fund a major share of a new building.

        “Businesses to survive must be continuously creative,” Mr. Lewis said. “The same standards must be included in a business school, and I'd tell teachers and students you must feel that in the marrow of your being.

        Mr. Lewis has committed about $37 million, the biggest gift the small, private university has ever received.

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