Library Buildings around the World

and electrical systems have been completely replaced with modern energy-efficient systems. The parking lot has been expanded and
the landscaping around the new building blends with the handsome existing garden. (Stern)
Baker Library / Bloomberg Center, Harvard Business School, Boston, MA – USA 2005
Baker Library was designed by McKim, Mead & White and completed in 1927 as the centerpiece of the Harvard Business School
campus. Our renovation and addition reconceives the building as a 160,000-gross-square-foot center for research and group study,
with greatly expanded meeting facilities, faculty offices and their support services, and archival storage for the Library's one of a
kind collection of historical business materials. Central to the reorganization is a second front entrance at what was originally the
back of the building to address the reorientation of the campus to the south, making the building an easily accessible crossroads of
the HBS campus. Our design provides for pedestrian movement through the building from north to south through the original
portico and lobby, and secondary circulation from west to east, all on the first floor. The exterior facades and important interior
rooms of the original building are restored and the original self supporting stacks replaced with faculty offices, seminar rooms, and
lounges. A skylit atrium brings natural light deep into the building and provides an informal meeting place for students and faculty.
The Baker Library | Bloomberg Center is our second project at the Harvard Business School, following on the completion of the
Spangler Campus Center in early 2001. (Stern)
Columbus Public Library, Columbus, GA – USA 2005
The new Main Library in Columbus, Georgia, merges 21st-century library technology with traditional library services to create an
institution that will serve the needs of the Columbus community for many years to come. Located on a central 42-acre site formerly
occupied by the abandoned Columbus Square Mall, the library and the park surrounding it provides the community with an
important cultural amenity in a landscaped setting. The three-story library rises to a lantern that has become a beacon for
Columbus, visible from I-185 and from surrounding neighborhoods. The library’s dignified architectural character respects the redbrick
Classicism of Georgia in a contemporary way. Sloping roofs give it a welcoming appearance, and a large gentle curve on the
southwest of the otherwise rectilinear building captures panoramic views while echoing the circular lantern above. High-quality
materials are used both inside and out to create a lasting and appropriate new civic building for Columbus. The brick and limestone
front facade of the building faces north towards Macon Road with a two-story-high covered porch at the main entry. Ample parking
for 339 cars is provided in front of the library building, with a convenient drop-off area and book drop. Inside the main entry there
is an active lobby space with direct access to the popular materials section, the children’s library, and the conference center; and,
overhead, an oculus to the rotunda space beneath the sixty-foot-diameter lantern above. Just inside the entrance, readers have access
to the popular materials section, an informal browsing area modeled on successful large bookstores and featuring best-sellers, bookson-tape,
CD and video rentals, as well as a coffee shop serving light refreshments. Also on the first floor is a section devoted to teen
readers and the children’s library, arranged in distinct sections for children of different ages, from picture book collections for
preschoolers to homework areas for older children. A separate dedicated room is provided for children’s story hour and arts and
crafts activities. In good weather the children are able to enjoy a secure and supervised outdoor garden for casual reading and
storytelling hours. Many libraries now provide full conference facilities, and the new Columbus Library is no exception. On the east
side of the first floor, the conference center includes a 124-seat auditorium, a 2,700-square-foot multipurpose meeting room, and
small conference and training rooms. The conference center has state-of-the-art technology including teleconferencing capabilities
that allow for hook-ups to Muscogee County schools, Columbus State University, and other, more remote locations. The conference
center has its own dedicated entry, so that it can be used even when the library is closed. Also on the first floor are work spaces for
library staff and a service yard that can accommodate the substantial materials delivery needs of a modern library.
A broad, grand stairway directly off the lobby rises to a circular gallery space on the second level where the work of local artists and
photographers can be displayed. Alternatively, library patrons may ascend in one of three elevators. The main collection of the
library, both fiction and non-fiction, is located on the second floor, laid out in one continuous sequence for ease of retrieval. Patron
seating areas face the large north and east windows that run along the front of the building. Quiet study and group study rooms are
also provided. Computers for internet access, which play an important role in the new library, are grouped together in "e-commons"
adjacent to the reference desk so that the reference librarian can assist in searches and other patron queries. A significant
architectural feature on the second floor is the arced double-height grand reading room, a 50 foot by 100 foot room in the tradition
of great American public libraries. There is significant opportunity in this space for artistic enhancements both now and in the
future. The grand reading room opens onto to an outdoor balcony for social events. The third floor of the library contains public
conference rooms, services for library patrons with special physical needs next to the elevators, and offices for library
administration, all accessible from the central rotunda. (Stern)
Jacksonville Public Library, Jacksonville, FL – USA 2005
300.000 sqf., € 101.700
A public library is the most democratic of our institutions: it has the capacity to draw in the young and old, from every ethnicity and
background. A great library must be much more than a depository for books or a facility for information exchange: it must be a
great collective civic place. Our aspiration for the Jacksonville Main Library is to build a highly efficient, state-of-the-art facility that
is also a great public place, with intimate and grand rooms, garden courtyards, conference areas, cafes, and the like, designed to
attract the community in all its diversity and, by virtue of its exterior forms and interior spaces, to become a destination without peer
in the city, a place to which people will return again and again for education, inspiration, and the pleasure of a beautiful
environment. Our design for the Jacksonville Main Library continues the city's rich tradition of civic buildings which speak in a
version of the classical language adapted to the particulars of local climate and culture. Seen from Hemming Plaza and from Main
Street, it presents a distinctive, iconic civic appearance that renders the Library readily identifiable as a welcoming and ennobling
public place. Facing Hemming Plaza, a generously-proportioned main entrance leads past a Cafe and Popular Library, each with
large windows facing the street, to the Entry Hall and circulation desk, where a monumental stair begins its rise through the
building, connecting the various departments. The stair culminates at the Grand Reading Room, a place of civic proportions, 100
feet square and rising 46 feet to a handkerchief-vaulted ceiling, bathed in natural light from clerestory windows, with balconied
windows overlooking Hemming Plaza. At the second floor, a courtyard provides a fountained and planted oasis shared by readers
and staff, around which are grouped the intimate reading areas of the various departments, many of which open onto it directly.
(Stern)
Miami Beach Library and Collins Park Cultural Center, Miami Beach, FL – USA 2004
In designing the new Miami Beach Library we have carried out our commitment to place and tradition with a building that recalls
and reinforces the stylish yet relaxed modernism of Miami Beach's architecture, capturing not only its clear shapes that work so well
in the intense sunshine but also the garden-like sense of oasis of shaded courtyards that provide a welcome refuge from busy streets
and cloudless skies. The creation of a new cultural arts campus surrounding Collins Park offers the opportunity to redefine and
reinvent this strategically located park as a town square for Miami Beach, which currently has no commensurate civic gathering
place or community green. This plan, re-establishing the historic connection of Collins Park and the Bass Museum with the Atlantic
Ocean, draws additional strength from the location at its periphery of the new Library and the new home for the Miami City Ballet,
which together will attract a large and diverse population. While the Collins Park Cultural Center improvements and Library
design alike build upon the past, they look forward to a vital future. They are each in their way open stages for the public — for
special celebrations, festivals, and concerts that can be held in the park; for lectures, readings, and story hours in the Library.
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