Library Buildings around the World

simulations revealed a potential problem of stalling in very warm conditions when departing air is cooler than ambient. The
design was modified accordingly. The model tank is immersed in a large water tank filled with saline fluid as the background
environment; a source of fresh water is added to the base of the building to mimic the heating in the lower floors of the building.
This drives the upward flow in the stacks and draws in additional fluid through the stack. Pre-cooling in the stack is modelled by
adding dense saline fluid (blue) to the stack. This mixes down into the ground floor, and then mixes with the fresh water producing
a relatively low density fluid which rises through the stack, as long as the analogue pre-cooling is not too intense. Results from the
experimental modelling help establish flow regimes and guide the control strategy for the building. The project was on exhibition
in the Wellcome Wing of the Science Museum September 2005 until March 2006. (Short)
Lancaster Library, Coventry University, Coventry – UK 1998 – 2000
Total Project Cost: Contract sum of £18 million sterling / $28.26 million plus fit outFinal Account £17 million sterling.
Gross Floor Area: 110,000 ft², Construction Period: November 1998 - August 2000
Awards:
SCONUL Award 2002 “Best Library Since 1995”
Brick Developement Association & Building Magazine “Best Public Building Award” 2000,
and overall “Building of the Year” 2000
UKCSA Award for Excellence “Best New Commercial Project” 2002
Coventry´s Library was won in full European competition in 1995, in collaboration with the Institute of Energy and
sustainable Development at De Montfort University. It is the world´s first deep-plan, multistorey, naturally conditioned
building on anything like this scale. The library staff wanted large open square floor plans. In fact the building could
bee used for any kind of corporate activity, it is a kind of universal diagram. Its plan form was distilled from a series of
fesibility studies involving iterative intensive brain-storming and testing of a series of type forms. It develops a small
campus plan with a mall/galleria, a bookshop and café and extensive landscaping leading to a lake stocked with fish, and
a mediaeval Friary. It makes a new public park and garden for the city. It is highly replicable as a form. It has been
thoroughly engineered and features customised leak proof dampers by the Swiss manufacturer Landis-Staeffer, and our
own ventilation terminal design featuring double banks of split aluminium tubes like an array of organ pipes. The principles
are simple but the physics is complicated: air is introduced into a plenum below the upper ground floor and fed upwards
through four atria. It is extracted via perimeter stacks and a large central atrium. The motive power is entirely provided
by the natural buoyancy effect of warming air. Sophisticated wind tunnel and computational fluid dynamics analysis
informed the design, right through to the production of construction details. The building is characterised by simple but
finely crafted brick patterning which embeds it culturally into the West Midlands region. The Library is a key element in
the revivification of the region through widening access to higher education. Building Magazine and the Brick Development
Association awarded this building their ‘Public Building of the Year’ and overall ‘Building of the Year’ prizes in December
2000. Five and a half thousand visits a day are being logged at the library entrance, nearly three times that anticipated.
It seems to have changed the whole geography of learning at the University. (Short)
Harm A. Weber Library and Academic Centre, Judson College, Elgin, IL – USA 2005 – 2007
Total Project Cost: $25.0 million, Gross Floor Area: 85,000 ft², Construction Period: May 2005 to April 2007
Awards:
Certified as a Gold level LEED Building by the United States Green Building Council
Total Project Costs: $ 25 Mil. International Competition win 2001 $7.5 million U.S. Federal Government grant for “Eart
Stewardship”, administered through the Dept of Energy $110,000 grant from the Illinois Clean Energy Community
Foundation to fund environmental design research. In April 2001 we won the College’s worldwide competition for a new
Academic Centre to house their University Library and the Division of Architecture, Art and Design. We were fascinated
at the prospect of juxtaposing a new library with a Faculty of Art and Design and a School of Architecture on a beautiful
campus alongside the Fox River, 40 miles west of downtown Chicago. The scheme puts classrooms and academic offices in
a wing fronting a landscaped quad at the heart of the College, and the library in a square, deep plan building with a huge
open attic studio above. The floor plates are interconnected and punctuated by atria which supply air and admit light.
Mechanical cooling and dehumidification is installed because of the Continental climate, but the building will optimise its
natural conditioning potential in the mid-season period - its energy consumption should achieve US record lows for this
climatic zone. The environmental strategy has been developed with the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development
at De Montfort University, Leicester, and the BP Institute for Multiphase Flow at Cambridge University. (Short)
Space Group, Newcastle – UK
http://spacegroup.co.uk
Libraries:
Bill Bryson University Library, Durham University – UK 2012
A major new extension, the East Wing of the Bill Bryson Library creates much needed graduate study and postgraduate research
space for the growing student cohort at Durham University. Book collections have been rationalised and printed maerial
consolidated in to controlled access loans with addressable compact mobile shelving for swift retrieval. Modern wireless enabled
reader spaces are clustered around the perimeter taking advantage of long views. Group rooms, study booths, carrels and eddy
spaces provide a variety of student study experiences. An exiting four storey atrium, grand sweeping stair and link bridges connect
the levels. Daylight, natural materials and neutral colours create an atmosphere of calm and studious activity. (Space)
New East Wing is part of £22m investment in Durham University’s modern and historic libraries
Bill Bryson returned to Durham University on Tuesday November 27, to rename the main library and open its new wing.
The opening of the £11m East Wing at the Bill Bryson library makes the main library building 42 per cent bigger and provides 500
new study spaces across four floors.
The development is part of Gateway, Durham University’s major £60m estates project which incorporates a new Law School and a
dedicated building for student support services, The Palatine Centre.
Dr Bryson, who served as the University’s Chancellor from April 2005 to December 2011, is making his first visit back to the
University since he bid farewell last year.
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