Library Buildings around the World

of its classical facade.” (AIA Guide to Chicago) Hammond, Beeby & Babka won a much –publicized and controversial commission
to design the lagest library building in the country, and spent $ 195 million to carry out this missive. (www.galinsky.com) The Harold
Washington Library Center is a ten-story 760.000 sf main library facility for the Chicago Public Library. At the time of its 1991
completion it was the country´s largest circulating library and the largest design/build architectural project ever undertaken. It
continues to be recognized as a model for the planning and design of major public libraries. (HBRA)
Chicago's Famous Buildings: Fifth Edition, by Franz Schulze and Kevin Harrington
The huge publicity preceding the 1991 opening of the new main Chicago Public Library mostly stemmed from two sources: a longlasting
argument over where the new structure should be erected (indeed, should it be a new building at all or a rehabilitated old
one?) and the formal competition for a final design, a contest that unfolded once the South Loop site was selected.
Moreover, the winning entry generated considerable controversy in its own right. Design architect Thomas Beeby conceived a
building of the sort one rightly calls an edifice, which mostly looks as if the modernist revolution of the last century had never
happened. Clad with granite on the lower levels and brick above, the library is monumental in more than scale, harking back to the
Beaux Arts manner of the late nineteenth century not only in its powerful axial symmetry but in the heavy representational
decoration that adorns its exterior. It is clearly indebted to the ancient Western tradition of grandiloquent civic structures……
(http://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/740668hwlc.html)
YOUmedia is an innovative, 21st century teen learning space housed at the Chicago Public Library's downtown Harold Washington
Library Center. YOUmedia was created to connect young adults, books, media, mentors, and institutions throughout the city of
Chicago in one dynamic space designed to inspire collaboration and creativity.
High school age teens engaging with YOUmedia can access thousands of books, over 100 laptop and desktop computers, and a
variety of media creation tools and software, all of which allow them to stretch their imaginations and their digital media skills. By
working both in teams and individually, teens have an opportunity to engage in projects that promote critical thinking, creativity,
and skill-building.
Mentors from Digital Youth Network as well as Chicago Public Library librarians lead workshops to help teens build their skills and
create digital artifacts – from songs to videos to photography to blogging. Teens learn how to use a variety of technology and digital
equipment, including still and video cameras, drawing tablets, and video and photo editing software. YOUmedia also provides an inhouse
recording studio featuring keyboards, turntables, and a mixing board.
All high school age teenagers are welcome, and the YOUmedia technology is available for free with a valid Chicago Public Library
card.
(http://youmediachicago.org/2-about-us/pages/2-about-us)
Hanbury Evans Wright Vlattas + Company, Norfolk, VA – USA
http://www.hewv.com
Libraries:
Paul Barret Jr. Library, Rhodes College, Memphis TN – USA 2005
Associated Firm: Shepley Bulfinch Richardson & Abbott
$ 42.000.000
http://www.traditional-building.com
Awards:
2009 Interior Design Excellence Award, First Place, ASID Virginia
2007 National Palladio Award, Traditional Building Magazine
2007 Honorable Mention, College Planning & Management Magazine. Education Design Showcase
2007 Algernon Sydney Sullivan Award, Jane Cady Wright, recipient
This Collegiate Gothic library transforms campus, aligning the intellectual heart with the geographic heart. It creates a new campus
quadrangle, in the Oxford tradition and a stately new entrance to campus. The building accommodates classrooms, a media center,
group study rooms, teaching/learning technology laboratory, computer labs, wired carrels, a 24-hour coffee lounge, faculty offices,
and vastly improved facilities for the library collection, archives, and rare books. The project is rich with symbolism, which is
embedded in the architectural festures to communicate the story of the building and the campus. (Hanbury)
More Than a Building: The 136,000 square foot Paul Barret, Jr. Library, located in the center of Rhodes’ 100 acres, has become its
symbolic heart as well. Its placement reoriented the campus so that the academic core physically and symbolically connects with cocurricular
facilities. Large areas once relegated to the “back forty” are now integrated into the life of the college. And it is certainly
not your grandfather’s library! Barret is a technology center with a theater, complete media production facilities and a teaching and
learning center that gives our professors the capacity to hold virtual global classes with colleagues around the world. But we haven’t
gone technocrazy. The collection includes books and traditional resources as well as databases and online journals.
It has dozens of collaborative study spaces where students can work with professors and each other and actually talk out loud. These
spaces, like the rest of the library, offer a completely wireless environment. The 24-hour Middle Ground cybercafé has become the
most popular gathering place on campus. Students like the Starbucks coffee and gourmet fare, the computers for checking email or
working on a paper, the comfortable lounge furniture and the wall-mounted oversized plasma TV screen. Quieter interludes often
occur in the literary garden that is tucked away behind the cloister on the east side of the building. Students relax on the benches or
directly on the grass and enjoy the plantings that were featured in the works of Southern writers such as William Faulkner, Eudora
Welty, Carson McCullars and Robert Penn Warren. (http://www.rhodes.edu)
The College of William and Mary: Earl Gregg Swem Library, Williamsburg VA – USA 2005
Renovation (1966/1986)
In 2008, the Princeton Review rated William & Mary's library system as the eighth best in the United States.
Hardy Holzman Pfeiffer Associates
see :
H3 Hardy Collaboration Architecture LLC : http://www.h3hc.com
Holzman Moss Architecture LLP : http://www.holzmanmoss.com
Pfeiffer Partners Architects Inc. : http://www.pfeifferpartners.com
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