ours was one of the newer buildings on the campus , all concrete and glass with tasteless touches of some highly polished silver-colored metal added here and there to give it the look of post-modernist west at its worst , but as we stepped out of the elevator on the ground floor we stopped to read the faded inscription on a copper plaque attached to the base of a rectangular piece of beautifully striated marble that stood in the very center of the large slate-floored lobby .