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 proposed $120 million renovation and expansion project of the Mid-Manhattan Library will better meet the daily information needs of 8,000 New Yorkers on-site and thousands more electronically, creating a powerful catalyst for educational opportunity and economic growth.

The current Mid-Manhattan Library occupies a prime location on Fifth Avenue and 40th Street in the former Arnold Constable building which is owned by The New York Public Library. The expansion will add an additional eight floors and 117,000 square feet for library service to the existing 139,000 square foot building, while creating a 20,000 square foot ground floor presence for rental to a prominent retailer.

The design maintains the existing building, with structural modifications, retaining the contextual/urban reference, while re-imagining the limestone frame as a base and screen for a new, iconic intervention. Using the existing side facades of adjacent taller buildings on both Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street, the addition acts as a counterpart to the original building; an articulate, glass sheathed, sculptural crystal volume that anchors the corner and establishes an extended and dynamic “place marker” for the New York Public Library/Bryant Park context.

The creation of a singular and memorable new object, as a counterpoint, embodies the visual and psychological presence of the original Beaux Arts Building with a modern vision: “A Beacon of Knowledge”. The expanded Mid-Manhattan library will offer a massive presence of information technology including over 300 computers, 100 laptops, and broad access to hundreds of electronic databases and technology training programs combining computer literacy and library literacy.

Facilities will include five “Information Commons”, one on each of five paired floors: Reference, Art, History and Social Sciences, Periodicals, and an extensive popular library including multiple copies of the latest best-sellers, language books and literature in addition to biographies, mysteries, travel books and vacation guides, books on tape, videos, and current multi-media items.

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The 18,000-square-foot dining facility is on the lower level of the PepsiCo Headquarters entrance pavilion. Food preparation, storage and mechanical areas wrap the self-service cafeteria, and an entry lobby and dining room bracket this dense zone. The lobby joins two vertical circulation nodes and introduces the materials palette: steamed Danish beech, small-fissured parolino bianco marble, brushed stainless steel gridded walls and a continuous steel baseboard.

The dining room is an expansive room with seating for 400 people and areas for special functions at either end. Two doors lead outwards to the patio and garden beyond. Special ceilings offer a high degree of spatial depth and emphasize the cafeteria’s connection to the garden.

The 12,500-square-foot, 150-person Leadership Conference Center is a state-of-the-art meeting facility with rear projection screen and multimedia capabilities. All seating areas are equipped with data outlets and individual microphones. 2,000 square feet of flexible breakout space can be further subdivided into smaller, acoustically separate rooms.

The gallery and dining room addition extends the existing dining room on the lower level. The extension of this unique cantilevered building required extensive technical coordination and structural ingenuity. The addition contains a two-story, glass- enclosed gallery on the first floor and a two-story glass-enclosed and skylit dining room on the lower level. A landscaped roof terrace was created off the executive office floor for private functions.

A 12,000-square-foot renovation of the reception area and corporate meeting rooms provides views to the surrounding garden and state-of-the-art, flexible meeting rooms.

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In its rebuilding program were facilities not only for the debating society but also for activities more central to a broader spectrum of students, most importantly the office of the student president, a large meeting room, an information center, a lounge, and conference, seminar and work rooms. Some 10,000 square feet of the program were to be built into a structure that had previously held 7,000 square feet.

Further, new construction had to be built to current building—particularly fireproofing—codes and be fitted with a modern air conditioning system. The new facility is structurally and aesthetically independent from the shell of the original building within which it sits. To avoid overburdening old walls and foundations, new full height columns were lowered on to newly created foundations within the old building’s perimeter. By removing the east wall, the structure and the activity held within are visible to students along the busy cross campus path to the east.

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Both Wright’s proposed annex of 1949-52 and William Wesley Peters’ annex, originally designed as a ten-story structure, are acknowledged by the new addition. Its parti was determined by two critical intersections with the original building: first, with the rotunda at the existing circulation core, and second, with the monitor building along its east wall. It provides balcony views and access to the rotunda from three new two-story galleries and one single-story gallery. A transparent glass wall, connecting the monitor building and the addition, reveals the original facades from both the outside-in and the inside-out.The pavilions are now integrated functionally and spatially with the large rotunda as well as with the new addition. The new fifth-floor roof sculpture terrace, the large rotunda roof terrace, and the renovated public ramp reveal the original building in a new extended and comprehensive perspective.

The entire original structure is now devoted to exhibition space. Each ramp cycle affords the option of entry or views to new galleries. Within the rotunda, numerous technical refinements have corrected omissions in the original construction and brought the building up to current museum standards. Re-glazing the central lantern, opening the clerestories between the turns of the spiral wall, and restoring the scalloped flat clerestory at the perimeter of the ground floor exhibition space have recaptured the sensitivity to light evident in Wright’s original design.

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Other changes were more unexpected. Gwathmey Siegel Kaufman redefined the Sony Atrium and Public Plaza as an accessible enclave of activity with a strong presence on Madison Avenue. Enclosing the soaring, 60-foot-high arcades flanking the north and south sides of the original building with aluminum-framed bay windows recast the previously open spaces as two entertainment retail stores. The special interior features of the retail spaces incorporate superscale images and exhibition, media, and display systems, as well as banners, flags, neon lights, and music.

The former annex building contains a series of new spaces, including a newsstand, commissary, ticket booth and the Sony Wonder Museum. Organized around theatrical motifs, the museum is an interactive, state-of-the-art attraction featuring electronic display signs and graphics meant to enhance visitors’ understanding of communication through technology.

In the ground-floor lobby, sheets of dramatic black glass have been inserted into arched recesses to offset the original granite walls and Lutyens-patterned inlaid marble floor. Black glass paired with anegre veneer recurs at significant points throughout the 35 floors. Color-coded elevator lobbies clearly express each Sony division—yet materials, colors and interior detailing provide a cohesive visual impression. The original perforated metal pan ceiling detail installed by Philip Johnson and the basic core organization were retained. What is new is a rigorous architectural approach to layering the space, both vertically and in plan, as well as in the custom-designed workstations and reception desks.

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The academic and research areas, located on the middle five floors, include classrooms, lecture halls, computer labs, offices, and study areas. The top floors house administrative offices, a boardroom, and a conference center, organized around the central dining facility with views of the Empire State Building.

The academic heart of the campus is the 92,000-square foot research library, which occupies the entire second floor and portions of the ground and lower levels. It has its own internal vertical circulation system and a separate entrance from the main lobby.

Library facilities include open shelving for over 250,000 periodicals and monographs, 1,000 work stations of which more than half are wired to support either lap-top or desk-top computers, fully equipped state of the art Electronic Training Rooms, group study areas, miscellaneous special collection rooms, dissertation archives and music listening stations – all supporting the diverse and highly specialized academic departments.

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The transformation and expansion of the center, a 1935 neo-Georgian campus landmark, significantly expands and updates the students’ facilities. The center now provides student lounges, a food court and dining area, a movie theater, an expanded campus bookstore, a multi-purpose great hall, meeting rooms, a game room, a café, a restaurant and the central campus kitchen. The renovation preserves several of the landmark’s historic elements including the façade facing the central commons, the original shed roof and its distinctive cupola. Its expansion was accomplished by wrapping the building in a circular form, which mediates disparate context and topography, and by replacing a previous addition with a new, more efficient structure. The primary organizing element is a new, three-story skylit atrium, a dramatic space where students can see and be seen. The center’s circulation core is an open stairway rising in the middle of the atrium, which was created by cutting through the building’s floors and stripping the central area to its structural elements. Glazing replaces much of the original gabled roof, flooding the atrium with natural light and exposing the original cupola above. The upper floor houses a conference center with flexible meeting spaces arranged around the new atrium. Beneath the new skylight at the quadrangle level of the atrium, an open lounge provides a place for informal meetings and performances. Additionally, this level offers computer stations where students can work in an informal social setting. On the Main Street level, a student dining lounge adjoining a food court features a two-story glazed wall overlooking the stadium. The dining facility surrounds a 200-seat theater, which occupies the bottom of the atrium with direct access off the new Main Street pedestrian promenade. The lower level of the student center houses a game room and provides access to the newly created Stadium Plaza. The new south wing houses the relocated campus bookstore, a restaurant, the central campus kitchen, and a new multi-purpose great hall accommodating up to 1,000 people for various events. Download project pdf for more information