Library Buildings around the World

In addition to elegantly appointed public reception spaces and efficient reserve stacks, the facility provides 50,000 square feet of
office space for library management. 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. 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.
SIBL is a classic solution to a problem of preservation and adaptive re-use: reclaiming the historic B. Altman façade while
reconstituting the interior for a new purpose. (Gwathmey)
Harvard University. Werner Ott Hall – Busch Reisiger Museum and Fine Art Library, Cambridge MA –
USA 1991
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture, New York, NY – USA
http://www.h3hc.com
Libraries:
Youth-Centred Library Spaces-Nationwide
Over the past ten years, public libraries have demonstrated their increasing commitment to youth and teen services through new
expanded, targeted facilities. H3´s library specialists, Daria Pizzetta and Margaret Sullivan , habe been responsible for giving
architectural form to this national transformation.
Specifically, the Centereach and Selden branches of of the Middle County Public Library demonstrate a dedication tp specific youth
and teen space. Sandy Feinberg, Director of the Library, was one of the first librarians to introduce “place as play” as a library
initiative. In developing the design of space for the youth services collection, as well as the entire branch, our library specialist team
aimed to invoke imagination, innovation, and the playful spirit that has proven to bring positive return from learning environments.
An innovative design approach for youth services can also be seen in the design of ImaginOn: The Joe and Joan Martin Center in
Charlotte, North Carolina. Both Daria Pizzetta and Margret Sullivan were involved in the programming of this “first library of the
twentiy-first Century” and the design for youth-centred services that, for almost the first time, created an environment that placed
the emphasis on a child´s experience and not on the design of space for the collections. The intentionally sensory design encourage
brain development of youth ages 0-5 in support of the public Library Association´s “Every Child Ready to Read” initiative. But
more importantly, ImaginOn brings the world to each child´s fingertipps, weather through written, spoken or electronic word. The
intention of the library to be a place for children to realize dreams has transformed the lives of Charlotte´s youth. (H3)
Dream Yard, New York, Bronx, NY – USA ongoing
Dream Yard is the largest arts education provider in the Bronx, with programs that reach 8.500 K-12 th grade students annually
during in-school and out-of-school programs. The Dream Yard Art Center provides positive, creative programming for youth and
arts learning training programs for educators and artists.
H3 has been working with Dream Yard over the past two years to provide design services to enhance their spaces to represent the
creative spirit encouraged by the program. In addition, H3 and Dream Yard are beginning a new project: to design a prototype for a
nation-wide model for a YOUmedia-inspired digital media learning environment for youth and teens.
The Center, located on the ground and lower levels of a housing development in the poorest congressional district in the country, is a
vibrant community environment, fostering success through arts education, whose programs include poetry and creative wrinting,
fine arts, dance and theatre. (H3)
BRIT (Botanical Research Institute of Texas) Library, Fort Worth, TX – USA 2011
In spring 2011, BRIT moved into a new 70,000-square-foot (6,500 m2) facility designed by Hugh Hardy of H3 Hardy Collaboration
Architecture. The building is one of only six buildings in Texas to earn a LEED-NC Platinum Rating from the U.S. Green Building
Council. The building's ingenuity and efficiency is supported by sustainable design and organized into two parts: an Archives Block
and a Think Block.
The Archive Block of the Botanical Research Institute of Texas houses the extensive collection of botanical specimens in the
Herbarium, a two-storey 20.000 sqf. Climate controlled starage hall, together with a distinguished book collection found in the
library stacks. Because of the delicate nature of the specimens, the structure is nearly windowless – a solid box of tilt-up concrete
panels to provide maximum temperature and humidity controls.
BRIT´s library houses more than 125.000 volumes of books and journals from more than 100 countries. The library facility includes
a rare book reading room and children´s library. The Herbarium, a collection of more than one million dried plant speciments
representing much of Earth´s plant diversity is among the largest in the United States and is the largest U.S. herbarium not part of a
university, botanical garden, or broader natural history museum.
BRIT´s plant collections and educational programs are open to the public to help fulfil their mission of achieving public
understanding of the value that plants bring to life. Classrooms, children´s library, rare book room, exhibits, gathering spaces and
other public areas hwlp support this mission. Taken all together, the project´s elements create a fitting new home for the Botanical
Research Institute of Texas. (H3)
Fredrick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library, Vassar College , Poughkeepsie, NY – USA 2001
One of the most important of early campus buildings was the Frederick Ferris Thompson Memorial Library. Originally a freestanding
structure built in 1905 (1905, Francis R. Allen *1844 Boston - + 07.11.1931 Boston), it has grown in pieces over time.
Renovations to double its space in depth took place first in 1918 and then in 1937. The latter linked the library to Taylor Hall to the
south and included John McAndrew's important early modernist Art Library. There were further additions to the north, including
the 1977 Lockwood addition (Helmut, Obata and Kassabaum) and its renovation, which has created the Ingram wing (Hugh Hardy,
2001). Identifying the different parts of these renovations, some of which are indistinguishable to the untrained eye, would be a
major goal of any educational material produced by the college as a result of this initiative. Such work would also help to focus
attention on the ambitions of the early college and its original library--not just the central tower, which is truly monumental, or the
Cornaro stained glass window, which shows the 17th-century Venetian intellectual, Elena Lucrezia Coronaro Piscopia, the first
woman to receive a Ph.D.--but on the entire decorative program of the building, which links Vassar and its education to the world of
wider learning.
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