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People and Places | |
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Endangered Historic U.S. Places 2009 | |
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AIA/COTE Top Ten Green Projects for 2009 | |
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AIA/ALA Library Awards | |
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AIA/ALA Library Awards Stretched reflective white fabric by Barrisol forms a playful, undulating ceiling. In some areas it is folded away to reveal the exposed painted concrete slab and to increase ceiling height, adding a lightness and openness to the space. Daylighting and outdoor views benefit the clusters of reading tables, behind which translucent plastic bookshelves arranged diagonally create a dynamic series of spaces while also maximizing visibility for staff. "It achieves excellent value and remarkable transformation on a limited budget," praised the jury. "What a fresh solution to the problem of renovating a small public library!" Adaptive Reuse in Arkansas The small town of Gentry, Arkansas, also sought to create a modern public library within an older structure — in this case, the 100-year-old brick shell of a former hardware store on Main Street. Marlon Blackwell Architect met this goal by juxtaposing old and new, transforming two adjoining scarred and patched buildings into the 12,000-square-foot (1,100-square-meter) Gentry Public Library. A new load-bearing steel-and-glass curtain-wall system at the front elevation transmits northern light inside and also supports integral bookshelves. To take greater advantage of an existing skylight, the architects opened the ground-floor ceiling to create an atrium. Throughout the building, a series of steel-and-glass volumes act as display cases for elements of the existing structures, celebrating brick ornament, openings, interior columns, and selected walls. Other preserved elements include the pressed metal ceiling, wood floors of cherry and heart pine, and a hand lift for horse carriages. "One of the more sophisticated reuses of an existing building," praised the jury, "respecting its origins with precise insertions of unabashedly Modern components." East Asian Library at UC Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley, posited these design guidelines for its new C.V. Starr East Asian Library: the building had to be rectangular in plan; have a pitched clay-tile roof, white granite exterior, and vertically proportioned punched windows; and reinforce the axial relationship of the surrounding buildings in the campus's "classical core." The resulting four-story, 68,000-square-foot (6,300-square-meter) building is a symmetrical box constructed of rough concrete and embedded into the hilly campus landscape. But Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects also sought to express the focus of the library's collections, so they reinterpreted the screen — an important traditional architectural element in much of Asia — as an array of cast-bronze grilles for the facade. An additional layer of perforated metal screens was installed behind the bronze grilles to block 45 percent of direct sunlight and reduce the library's cooling loads. Other sustainable features include occupancy sensors and stormwater recharge basins. The warmth and softness of the interior contrasts with the solidity of the exterior. The core of the building is a long multilevel atrium bathed in daylight, with a concrete-and-stone stairway cantilevered from the structural "spine" wall. Bridges connect stacks on either side of the atrium. The jury commented, "It provides different qualities of light — big and dramatic, subtle and diffused, and quiet and secluded — as well as different qualities of spaces for different study styles." Library and Rec Center in Phoenix In Phoenix, Arizona, the new Palo Verde Library stands alongside an expanded recreation center to form a public complex encompassing both physical and mental "exercise." Gould Evans and Wendell Burnette Architects collaborated on the 16,000-square-foot (1,500-square-meter) library and 27,000-square-foot (2,500-square-meter) Maryvale Community Center. A pair of volumes, equally scaled, house the library collection and the gymnasium, respectively, with entrances facing each other across a breezeway. At ground level, a band of externally shaded glazing visually connects each building to the other and to the outside. The upper portion of the street volumes is clad in mill-finish stainless steel, a finish process that is more energy-efficient than "finished" stainless steel, and that imparts the property of absorbing light and color more than reflecting them. Designed for maximal flexibility, each of the two volumes is a clear-span, column-free space, economically daylit by Solatube light tubes. "The upper volume of the one-story space provides gracious public space and a solution to the acoustics," lauded the jury, "while the off-the-shelf light tubes are used in an inventive way to bring in natural light without overwhelming the interiors." The AIA/ALA Library Building Awards will be presented formally at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago on July 13, 2009. The jury for the AIA/ALA Library Building Awards was chaired by Douglas E. Ashe, FAIA, of Ashe Broussard Weinzettle Architects, Alexandria, Louisiana, and also included Charles Forrest, Robert M. Woodruff Library, Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia; Sarah R. Graham, AIA, AGPS Architecture, Los Angeles, California; Donna Lauffer, Johnson County Library, Overland Park, Kansas; Professor Claudia J. Morner, University Library, University of New Hampshire, Portsmouth; and Ann Voda, AIA, Bentz/ Thompson/ Rietow, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota. >>> Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum...
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