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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the old adage goes.

So, too, is architecture, especially when contemplating the proposed addition to the central branch of the Schenectady County Public Library on Clinton Street, said local architects and preservationists.

"It catches your eye. Whether that is good or bad is in the eye of beholder," said Karl Griffith, a principal with the Schenectady-based architectural firm of Griffith Dardanelli Architects.

The library's Board of Trustees is set to break ground before January on the 6,700-square-foot addition, designed by Re4orm Architecture of Schenectady.

The addition's estimated cost is $2.6 million, said library Director Andy Kulmatiski. Bids will go out in September and be opened in October, giving library officials a truer picture of the cost, he said. Construction is expected to take about a year and will involve minimal disruption of services at the central library.

The addition incorporates walls of glass to illuminate the two-story interior, which will contain the new children's section. In this, the addition breaks with the modernist design of the central library.

The American Institute of Architects selected the central library, built in 1969, as one its 59 most significant buildings in New York state in the 20th century.

Gloria Kishton, chairwoman of the Schenectady Heritage Foundation, said the addition follows guidelines set by the U.S. Department of Interior for the treatment of historic properties. "We would support the Interior Department's guidelines," she said.

The guidelines state additions or related new construction do not have to imitate the original structure. "It should be distinct, but it should complement the building," Kishton.

"The addition is distinct. Does it complement it? You would get a wide range of opinions on that," Kishton said. Griffith said the addition makes a distinctive statement that it does not relate to library. "There is value in knowing which piece is historic and which piece is new," he said.

John P. Senisi, of Synthesis LLP in Schenectady, said new and old can complement each other, provided construction follows rules of proportion and scale. "You don't want to put a big brick up against a little brick, and you don't want the addition to look too bulky," he said.

In essence, architecture is a blend of art and science, Senisi said. "If it is pleasing on eye, you have achieved the goal," he said. Ultimately the client determines the final design, Griffith said.

Kulmatiski said the library building committee reviewed several designs before settling on the glass structure. "Re4orm showed us several designs and they mimicked the building. The designs looked like an addition. We wanted something dramatic," he said.

The most striking features of the final design are the use of glass and that it is "child friendly. It has lots of light," Kulmatiski said. "We wanted a happy, modern children's room."

Kulmatiski said the board's goal was to double the size of the children's room, to increase space for new and popular materials and to add space for computers, and that cost estimates came in line with what the county and the library board wanted to spend. The addition's first floor will house the children's section; the second floor will have meeting rooms. Library officials will use the former children's room space in the central library, some 3,000 square feet, to expand collections of new and popular books.

Werner Feibes, who designed the central library as well as the nearby Schenectady Police Headquarters, was not available for comment. Kulmatiski, however, said Feibes likes Re4form's proposed design.

James Howard Kunstler, who lectures on topics related to suburbia and urban development, criticized the new design.

"The addition to the library follows some common fashion trends in architecture -- to stand out from adjoining structures at all costs, to contort planar surfaces with computer magic, to appear wholly original unlike any other known object in the universe -- and it achieves all these things," he said.

Kunstler said "these ego-driven objectives are far less valuable to the public interest and the public realm than the perhaps less-exciting aim of maintaining historical continuity -- so citizens know what culture they are in -- or just holding the established built-to line of its companion buildings on the block."