| NEWS | DESIGN | BUILDING | DESIGN TOOLS | ENVIRONMENT | CULTURE |
| BUILDING | ||
|
|
Stub-Girder Composite Structural System | |
|
|
House by House | |
|
|
Cambridge Public Library | |
| [an error occurred while processing this directive] | ||
|
Cambridge Public Library by James McCown A stunning new addition has opened at the Cambridge Public Library in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Using ideas of transparency, inclusiveness, and efficiency as starting points, William Rawn Associates designed the glass-and-steel addition as a modernist foil to the original 1888 library by Van Brunt & Howe. [an error occurred while processing this directive]The older building's Richardsonian Romanesque style is all about ponderous granite and brownstone and circular geometry — arches, cylinders, and cones. The glass addition goes in the opposite direction aesthetically: it is light, transparent, crisp, and orthogonal. The new building is especially alluring at dawn and dusk, when a bright orange stairway shaped like a lightening bolt seems to hover weightlessly in the space behind the glass wall. The project incorporates a number of sustainable design strategies and features. It has been submitted for LEED certification, and the architects are tracking a Silver rating. Ann Beha Architects served as associate architect, focused primarily on restoring the 27,200-square-foot (2,530-square-meter) historic library building. Glass Skin from Germany The most environmentally compelling and visually arresting feature of the 76,700-square-foot (7,130-square-meter) addition is its advanced double-skin curtain wall — the first comprehensive U.S. application of such a system by Gartner Steel and Glass GmbH, based in Würzburg, Germany. In addition to providing depth and visual interest to the facade, the curtain-wall system transmits daylight deep into the building while maintaining thermal comfort throughout the region's seasonal extremes. >>> Discuss this article in the Architecture Forum...
|
|
|
