Library Buildings around the World

The architectural character of this building, which mixes clear, box-like, Beaux-Arts massing with complex Gothic decorative detail,
provides the dominant formal theme for the west side of the campus. Thus each of the linked additions (the Frances Lehman Loeb
Art Center to the south and the Ingram wing to the north) relate to this original structure. Generations of students, under the
training of the history department most notably, used the library and its epistemological frame for their own study. Thus the
building not only housed books, but was, in its form, a lesson for generations of students.
(http://hcap.artstor.org/cgi-bin/library?a=d&d=p1824)
Bull Street Branch, Live Oak Public Libraries, Savanna, GA – USA 2000
Located in Savannah´s Victorian district, the Bull Street Library is the largest facility of the three-county library region. Prior to
1998, the Bull Street branch consisted of three distinctly different buildings: the original neo-classical Carnegie structure built in
1916; a 1936 stack addition; and a 1966 concrete-block addition that doubled its size to 32.500 sqft.
The Library needed capital improvements including new and expanded services, space for growing collections, incorporation of new
technologies and building systems upgrades. Our design more than doubled the existing the library and reconfigured space.
Patrons now enter through the fully accessible original Carnegie entrance. Its interior has been reorganized to house services
appropriate to the classically styled spaces. At ground level, the former check-out area has been returned to a sky-lit grand foyer
with public meeting spaces and a newly expanded Georgia history department. The second floor contains the boardroom and
administrative offices. New check-out, reference services, expanded pblic facilities and vertical circulation were added, while all
historic spaces were enhanced with new architectural finishes appropriate to the period in which the library was built.
The new, two-story addition is attached to the north façade of the existing library. This wing houses a new children´s reading room
on the lower level, adult services on the upper level, and a mezzanine for newspapers and magazines. New landscaping and public
spaces integrate the two environments. To be compatible with the Carnegie structure, new construction is clad in cubic blocks of
Georgia marble. Extensive fenestration and clerestory windows maximize the use of natural light and provide views of the park and
the city. (H3)
Hafer Associates, Evansville, IN – USA
http://www.haferassociates.com
Libraries:
Rice Library, University of Southern Indiana, Evansville IN – USA 2006
Association with: Woollen Molzan
155.000 sqf., $ 26.300.000
afer Associates designed this 155,000 s.f. university library in collaboration with Woollen Molzan Partners. This is the tallest
building on campus, visible from all directions. As the most widely used facility and the academic center of the university, it was
important to design the facility to incorporate the latest educational technologies and also to provide the infrastructure to
accommodate future technologies as they emerge. Most importantly, this is a building the students use often, so it was essential that
the facility catered to this social need, and offered meeting places and a variety of group study areas. (Hafer)
Hammond Beeby Rubert Ainge Architects, Chicago, IL – USA
(see also: Long & Kentish)
http://www.hbra-arch.com
Libraries:
Sterling Memorial Library, Bass Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT – USA 2007
Awards:
Golden Trowel Award, New England Masonry Council, Regional Level 2008
Located in the shadow of Yale´s Sterling Memorial Library [1930] , Bass Library accomodates a 150,000 volume core collection and
a variety of study areas in a two-story, 60,000 sf underground structure. Connection to Sterling is via an underground tunnel. Our
solution creates a new above-ground entrance to Bass Library. A new day-lit lounge near the entry creates a focal point for both
libraries and encourages student movement from Sterling through Bass Library. New classrooms and group study areas in the
remodeled portion of Sterling draw patrons from the connecting tunnel at Bass to Sterling Library. (HBRA)
Kansas State University, Hale/Farrell Library, Manhattan, KS – USA 2007
The design solution resolved disparities in floor levels, uncohesive circulation patterns, and the formal discontinuity generated by an
episodic history of expansion, while doubling the library´s holding capacity. Two new entrances to the library are extensions of
existing campus walkways, and the character of the exterior combines both the Gothic and Romanesque expression of surrounding
buildings. The entire building is now pulled into a composition That suggests that ist was built over time in a way that was 1927
Collegiate Gothic Revival building. (HBRA)
Newport Public Library, Newport RI – USA 2001
This project involved an addition and renovation to an existing library constructed in 1967. The existing building was considered an
eyesore by most residents, and required extensive upgrades not only to library stack space, but to its mechanical and electrical
infrastructure as well. The majority of the existing construction materials contained hazardous materials and required abatement.
Aesthetically, the library needed to obtain a cohesive appearance inside and out, but without closing operations to the public. An
addition extends the building to the north, expanding and relocating children´s stack areas, children´s activities, periodicals, and
circulation on the upper level, and administrative and lecture hall space on the lower level. Both levels are connected to the existing
building by means of new lobby spaces and new entrances from the axterior. (HBRA)
(see also Conrad Sulzer Library, Chicago, 1985)
Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago, IL – USA 1991
At approximately 756,640 square feet (70,294 m2), it the largest public library building in the world.
The building has taken much flak for ist unabashed post-modern behemothness; but Chicago loves its public library system; its big
and loves big things; and takes great pride in its historic architecture. Now it has a great big historic–looking library. Ask and ye
shall receive. Or in words of eminent architectural historian Vincent Scully, “This is a classicism that, in a sense, its all Chicago: big
and brutal like the city itself, but spefifically metallic and fluid like the interlocking iron work of Louis Sullivan´s Carson Pirie Scott
store...one powerful mass, built of the very bones and blood of Chicago, of the tough body of the Loop, and the ancient urban gesture
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