Library visitors enter from the building’s 17-foot-high lobby into the 92,000-square-foot facility, which occupies portions of the first floor, concourse and entire second floor. Combining print and high-tech media, it offers open shelving for more than 250,000 periodicals and monographs, over 500 work stations which are wired to support lap-top and desk-top computers, and fully equipped state of the art electronic training rooms.

The library also offers group study areas, miscellaneous special collection rooms, dissertation archives and a media library complete with music listening stations. In its previous quarters, the library was in the basement. Now library users have the luxury of sitting next to 12-foot-high windows that look out onto Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, and 35th Street.

The facility’s high-tech capabilities are announced at the library reference desks with LED signage strips running along the edge of the desk canopies. Flexibility is key throughout the facility, typified by the workstations’ adjustable perforated dividers, which provide lateral flexibility, create a discrete territory and are handicapped accessible. Cabling in the walls and floor are easily accessible for upgrades. Sight lines extend down the length of the library, allowing easy supervision by library staff.

One special part of the library design was the reclaiming of select historic interior elements. The most visible result was the restoration and replication of one of the original stairs and elevators as the main circulation between the library’s three floors.

Opposite the entrance to the library is the cultural complex that includes three theaters, an art gallery, a bookstore, a coffee bar, and television production facilities. Academic and research areas, located on the middle five floors, include classrooms, lecture halls, computer labs, faculty and student offices and study areas. The top floors house administrative offices, a skylit conference room and a conference center, organized around the central dining commons.

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The Bello Center’s primary spaces are organized within a glass enclosed, double-height pavilion structure, which orients to the new campus quad. In the evening, the center radiates light and provides views into its facilities from the campus.

The library, which occupies a major portion of the building, provides for the introduction of state-of-the-art, electronic information services, classrooms and study rooms that formerly had not been available. It will also accommodate the growth of the library’s current collection of 140,000 items including books, bound journals, audio-visual materials and microfilm.

The other portion of the building is devoted to the Grand Hall entry rotunda and other spaces complementary to the library. The two-story entrance serves as a central campus meeting place, special events venue and exhibition center. The Grand Hall and the library both connect to a cybercafé, library classrooms and the Academic Center for Excellence, all of which remain open to students and offer study spaces and electronic access when the library is closed.

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In addition to the library, the building houses an Educational Technology Center that includes an Instructional Technology Unit, a Center for Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development, and a Center for Distributed Learning. The design facilitates personal assistance with information needs and helps with finding, assessing, creating and using expanded resources.

The programmed 440,000-volume print collection of monographs, periodicals and documents are housed in standard open shelving and compact shelving. This area are interspersed with computer facilities and electronically equipped study, teaching and meeting rooms, allowing electronic access from homes, laboratories, residence halls and offices. Electronic flexibility is a major design requirement.

FLITE’s function extends beyond its services. The siting of the new facility became the impetus for a complete reconsideration of campus circulation systems, the organization of public arrival and the spatial relationships among the University’s component parts. Also part of this rethinking was the conversion of the centrally located parking lot to a campus green as part of the new “heart” of the university.

Associate Architect: Neumann Smith & Associates

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Its design responds to a number of unique site conditions, including the adjacent Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, designed by Le Corbusier, an existing subterranean library by Jose Luis Sert and a required three level connection to the Fogg Museum.

The building establishes a primary two-story facade facing the street and integrates a new exterior stair, plaza and ramp at the library entry. Behind it, the building rises to three stories, complementing the Carpenter Center as a distinct yet related object perceived from all angles.

The fine-arts library has a separate entrance from the gallery, thus resolving a security problem when the library and museum hours are different. With its high ceilings, tall windows, and visible reference stacks, the reading room conveys the stature associated with such spaces.

Existing streetscape and scale relationships had to be addressed, and constraints imposed by building above an existing underground library structure with limited load-bearing capacity had to be accommodated.

The solution also resolves Le Corbusier’s compelling site circulation idea. The Carpenter Center ramp, which was intended to provide a public mid-block walkway from Quincy Street to Prescott Street through the building, ended in the Fogg’s rear yard without a connection to the sidewalk. The design extends the ramp onto a new plaza from which one can either enter the library or descend a new exterior stair to the street.

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The three-story, 143,000-square-foot facility accommodates the increasing use of technology in teaching and research. It also provides expansion space for the College’s growing collection of printed materials to support evolving curriculum needs.

The library is architecturally consistent with the other buildings on the historic front quadrangle in both its materials—limestone, granite and marble—and its scale. The project reconfigures a composition of existing roadways, buildings and prominent public spaces, establishing a new campus center that fits into existing view corridors and pedestrian circulation routes.

Library interiors provide efficient and flexible space that will serve the College’s needs well into the next century. This includes increased seating to accommodate planned growth in the student body. Because of the importance of interactive and collaborative learning in the residential liberal arts environment, most seating is in group study and meeting rooms.

In keeping with Middlebury College’s overall concern for contextual and environmentally sensitive design, the project is designed to meet a high rating for the LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) standard for environmental efficiency.

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The library provides a series of quality environments for serious study, informal browsing and music listening, as well as three instructional laboratories, a greenhouse to augment biological studies, an astronomical observatory tower, faculty offices, preparation rooms and a computer science center.

The building is organized along an elevated arcade that extends and is connected to those of the Main Building and overlooks the Field. The new facilities are reached through entrances off the arcade. Primary spaces—the science laboratories and the library reading room—are sited a half level below the arcade, at the grade of and overlooking a smaller landscaped area to the west. Ancillary spaces—stacks, study carrels, faculty offices, preparation rooms and computer center—are arranged beneath the arcade. These two levels are separated by a two-story skylit gallery, bridged by entrances from the arcade. The composition of building elements with a new façade that incorporates a renovated activity center is punctuated by the observatory housing the school’s 8” telescope.

The library’s main desk and reference area offer views over the main reading room, one level below, to the west, and out to a garden edged by a stone wall. This upper level of the library is illuminated by three circular skylights. At the north end of the two-story reading room is a one story periodicals area defined by a sinuous wall. The cabinets and curtain walls in the science labs are finished in mahogany, giving them the feel of an old college lab: glass, metal, dark wood.

Westover’s pedagogical philosophy is to allow its students access to the materials of education: lab spaces, the library, and the activities center are kept open for students to use. There are no locked doors.

Architecturally, the library and science building reiterates this notion of openness with views between spaces and no barriers between the building’s library and science wing. While capturing views of gardens and playing fields, the building also provides students and faculty relief from the cloister.

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The 270,000 square-foot library building reestablishes the public and institutional image of the Main Library and reinforces downtown Akron as an urban, cultural and architectural center. The design of the facility reflects the Library as a patron-friendly place, accommodating its users in a variety of environments.

The new addition negotiates the twenty-five foot difference in elevation between High and Main Streets. A three-story atrium along High Street brings natural light down to the lowest Main Street level and provides orientation for all patrons. The assemblage of building “objects” along Main Street includes the new library loft addition and the new theater flanking the existing library, maintaining a pedestrian scale along the mall in contrast to the automobile-scaled facade along High street, which is accessible by car.

The building encompasses the most advanced applications of technology and communication systems for administrative management, the processing of library records, and bibliographic and information networks. Special design consideration was given to provide the most flexible, state-of-the-art infrastructure and distribution systems for digital information.

Numerous community spaces are provided, including a 425-seat auditorium, a cafe, a bookstore, public meeting rooms and art exhibition spaces. An interior link to a new parking garage along High Street resolves into a new pedestrian ramp, activating the three-story addition. An outdoor amphitheater and landscaped park complete the complex.

Associate Architect: Richard Fleischman Architects, Inc.

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The selected design gives the library, which has one of the largest genealogy collections in the nation, an image that reflects its prominent role in the community and enhances the urban context. It will make a significant portion of the collection “browse-able” by expanding open stacks.

There are two public entrances to the expanded facility. The existing re-imaged Webster Street entrance maintains the current easy pedestrian access from downtown and incorporates a Café and Library Shop to permit a synergy of uses. The new Ewing Street wrap-around entrance integrates the connection to the new below-grade parking and includes a major glass component that affords attractive views to neighborhood churches and the historic district.

The east and west entrances are interconnected by the great hall, which provides clear visual orientation and access to all library departmental facilities and seamlessly integrates the existing renovated spaces and the new construction. The curved roof of the great hall contains a large north-facing skylight and a shaded south-facing clerestory window, bringing daylight into the center of the building.

The great hall can be separated from the library spaces, so that community functions can extend past library hours if needed, without compromising library security. The central great hall also houses the Circulation Desk, Central Reference Desk, self-check stations, electronic catalog stations, and informational components, as well as stairs and elevators to the Library’s second level, the new Auditorium on a lower level, and the Garage below grade.

Community use facilities are organized along the southern side of the first floor, between the great hall and Washington Blvd. These spaces include flexible Meeting Rooms, Access Fort Wayne Television, Community Computing and Public Computer Training, an Exhibition Gallery, the Café, and the Library Friend’s Store.

Associate Architect: MSKTD & Associates, Inc.

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Its philosophy is decidedly activist and ‘outreach’ with a highly trained staff of reference specialists supported by a complete reference department, open micro-form shelving, an electronic information center and several training rooms. It has been heralded by the president of the New York Public Library, of which it is the largest branch, as “… a prototype of the 21st century Library.”In addition to elegantly appointed public reception spaces and efficient reserve stacks, the facility provides 50,000 square feet of office space for library administration. Public areas are organized on the ground and lower floors, providing maximum horizontal adjacency for the research library below and easy street access to the circulating library above. Storage and administration are organized on the upper floors; with staff areas surrounding the climate-controlled, structurally reinforced stacks. Healy Hall, a 33-foot-tall, two-story volume provides a highly visible forum for changing exhibitions and receptions. The Circulating Library and Reading Room on the street level is accessible to people who want to browse through current periodicals or borrow books. A stainless steel and terrazzo staircase and a pair of glass and stainless steel elevators lead down from the entrance lobby to the Research Library, which comprises extensive research facilities, a 125-seat Conference Center and an Electronic Training Center with four modifiable classrooms. Flexibility and accessibility were the goals of the design. Workstations are separated by adjustable perforated dividers that provide lateral flexibility, create a discrete territory, and are handicapped accessible. Sight lines allow the entire library to be supervised by five people, maximizing staffing resources. A grid of removable concrete panels raises the floor six inches, permitting power and data lines to be easily reconfigured in the future. Download project pdf for more information

The new Civic Plaza identifies the new Library Building as an iconic public structure that offers four accessible facades, plus the roof, each responding to context, views, program disposition, and future development.

The main entrance to the library, off the public arcade, reveals a six-story, clerestory/skylit atrium with balconies. It establishes both the public vertical circulation and primary orientation space in the building. The atrium, which is the horizontal and vertical fulcrum of the building, anchors, defines zones, and articulates the programmatic organization and hierarchy.

On the ground floor facing the entry is the Information Desk. To the north are the Circulation Desk and Staff Workspace; to the south is the Browsing Library with internal secure access to the Copy Center, Café and Library Store, as well as to the Young Adult component. To the east are the Electronic Information Center and the Audio/Visual Collection.

The lower level contains the auditorium, meeting rooms and book sales space as well as the loading dock, operations and maintenance spaces. The second floor houses the Children’s Library and nearby outdoor play terrace, story/meeting room and crafts room. Also located there are the language and literacy center, computer services and the technology center. Newspapers and magazines are on the third floor. The fourth floor houses the fiction collection, the non-fiction collection, as well as the Administration Offices and Boardroom.

The fifth floor houses the Reader’s Hall, a two-story, clerestory-lit space that affords panoramic views of the mountains. The remaining components include Local History, Special Collections, The Center for the Book and the Art Gallery. The penthouse/roof level houses the central staff facilities all with access to a private landscaped roof terrace. The remainder of the roof is a public terrace and roof garden.

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