Library Buildings around the World

In 1948, an issue of Princeton Alumni Weekly showcased the newly constructed Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library. The article
featured photographs, interviews and historical facts about the opening of the library, telling “the story of the new library and how it
came to be.” Within the article, the University Librarian described the essence of what makes the library a successful study
environment:
The outstanding characteristic of Princeton’s Firestone Library is its openness, its ease of access to books and to the library
services….It is a building dedicated to the dignity and value of knowledge and of wisdom. It exists for these purposes alone. If the
architectural ornaments are beautiful or if the technical paraphernalia of librarianship intrude themselves upon you, remember that
they are present incidentally or through necessity. Their purpose is to house books and to make them conveniently accessible for
your study and for the enlargement of the horizons of your mind. This, in effect, is what the new Princeton Library seeks to proclaim
to every student who enters it.
—Julian P. Boyd, University Librarian
This is the legacy on which the renovation will build.
Embracing Our Future
Among the most important goals of the renovation project are improving reader and study spaces, upgrading Rare Books & Special
Collections areas, introducing sustainable building features, updating life-safety systems, and renovating graduate study rooms,
exhibit spaces, and shelving areas in the library.
This renovation work is being done so that, in the words of former President Harold W. Dodds, the miracle contained within this
library can continue—“the miracle of imagination kindled, prejudice thrown overboard, dogma rejected, conviction strengthened,
perspective lengthened.” (http://libblogs.princeton.edu/renovations/the-vision/)
Free Public Library, Morristown, NY – USA 2006
Through continued successful development of new services, this Library had again outgrown its existing building. HMR’s design
responds to those changing needs and continued growth by providing enhanced public library spaces and a new Children’s Library
through expansion of the existing Collegiate Gothic building. Future anticipated growth is accommodated through the relocation of
the Local History collection to an adjacent historic structure and a new underground research reading room that serves as a
connector to the Library building. (HMR)
HO+K, St. Louis – USA + LEGAT architects, Chicago – USA
http://www.hok.com + http://www.legat.com
Libraries:
College of Lake County University Center, Grayslake IL – USA 2005
Awards:
Madigan Outstanding Project Award 2005
Hodgetts + Fung, Design and Architecture, Culver City – USA
http://www.hplusf.com
Libraries:
Hyde Park – Miriam Matthews Branch Library (Los Angeles Public Library), Los Angeles CA– USA
2004
Built at the epicenter of the 1992 Los Angeles riots, the Hyde Park Miriam Matthews Branch Library stands as a testament to civic
renewal and the healing power of architecture. More than just a place to read or gather, the library reaffirms the city’s faith in
South Los Angeles as a vibrant neighborhood and a generator of hope.Part of an ambitious program to build 36 libraries in
communities around Los Angeles, the Hyde Park branch needed to make a statement that reinvestment in small-scale civic
structures could make people’s lives better. Although just 10,500 square feet, the new library offers almost twice the number of
volumes as the neighborhood’s old facility (40,000 books, compared with 25,000). And it nearly triples the number of computer
terminals to 28, up from 10.Hodgetts + Fung originally envisioned the Hyde Park library as an exercise in glass and colored light.
But the client wanted something bolder, so principals Craig Hodgetts, AIA, and Hsin-Ming Fung, AIA, decided to give the building a
more sculptural presence. “We looked at Brancusi’s work because it has such great energy,” says Hodgetts.Eventually, the architects
designed the building with angled glue-laminated-wood columns and beams on the inside and moss-colored cement-board walls on
the outside. “We wanted it to be muscular, to have an animal-like quality to it,” explains Fung. Sitting on a corner site, the building
offers four different faces to its surroundings. While all elevations emphasize masonry at street level and glazing above (for security
reasons), each has its own personality. The south-facing street front expresses a sense of motion with its long, linear composition of
glass and cement board topped by a copper-tinted-steel sawtooth roof. On the north, where patrons enter from the parking lot, the
architects greet them with a jazzy series of angled wood-frame brise-soleils projecting from the facade. The shorter side elevations
speak in quieter tones.In plan, the library is essentially a simple rectangle, but Hodgetts + Fung embued the interiors with a visual
richness by layering materials and angled forms in a syncopated rhythm. “We wanted it to feel like jazz,” says Fung.
( http://www.archrecord.construction.com )
Standing at the crossroads of where the 1992 Los Angeles riots burned is the new Hyde Park Miriam Matthews Branch Library,
named for the first African-American librarian in California. As designed by Hodgetts + Fung Design and Architecture, the library
is helping to revitalize and unite the community, offering residents educational, social, and professional services. The 10,500-squarefoot
library – which replaces the former, smaller Hyde Park branch – draws on a rich palette of materials, colors, and forms. The
culture and history of South Los Angeles informed much of the building’s design, which is marked by a layering of materials and
angled forms. “We wanted Hyde Park residents to interact and respond to the library,” says Craig Hodgetts, AIA. “Instead of
designing space sympathetic to Euro-American culture, we developed a fresh palette of materials and textures that residents would
identify with. Aesthetically, the library is in complete response to the people who occupy it.” The library’s street-front façade is clad
in crisp, pleated layers of moss-colored cement board and copper-tinted steel, and a hand-painted tile mosaic designed by artist
Robin Strayhorn. The brightly-colored mosaic – inspired by local students – portrays the leadership and dreams that have helped
bridge the Hyde Park community. At one end of the building is a courtyard garden designed by landscape architect Katherine Spitz
Associates. The northern façade is marked by sculptural elements of glass, metal grating, cement board, and copper-tinted steel
woven into horizontal panes provocatively angled and set above a slanted cement-board structural base. A jauntily-angled coppercolored
flagpole provides structural support at one corner of the building. Inside, to break the scale of the 22-foot-high ceiling,
exposed structural and mechanical elements diverge in various directions and orientations. Suspended horizontally overhead,
copper-tinted air-conditioning ducts are angled as jagged, sculptural tubes. Support beams, constructed of recycled lumber chips,
stretch vertically, adding to the thicket of elements and colors that inhabit the space. Over the book aisles, rows of elongated
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