Client:
Leon County Board of Commissioners
Project: 12,000 sf
branch library
Cost: $2.5 million
Status: Conceptual
Design - Scheme D
Delivery: Bid
Description: What is the essence of a library in the digital age where the printed medium is fast being replaced by bits and bytes? How properly to frame personal growth and development? Public growth in the most private of ways. Development of self toward an Ideal.
How is the physical environment that protects and inspires and moves us into and through the incredible process of human growth and transformation, to be articulated? Should it speak to the past, the future? Both? Should it preserve or should it portend?
Is a library a repository for all the knowledge that has come before, a warehouse of reverent ideas, a powerful elixir of potential and ultimately, the spatial opportunity to for ghost of the master to impart wisdom to the student? Or is it about exploration and discovery of timeless ideas in the context of the present and applied to a future?
A vault of wisdom? Or an intellectual jungle gym and potentially infinite field in one's quest to connect random dots?
Scheme D is an exploration of the question itself. A building, which looks like thought itself. An impetus to ask. An object which invites contemplation and self-reflection. Potentially inspiring to all who enter or who just choose to stand on the sidewalk and observe. A backdrop to the dance of exploration and discovery.
The proposed conceptual design demonstrates, promotes, and stimulates wonder, self-transformation and the flux necessary to grow as humans.
Construction: The freeform shell of this design would most economically achieved with laminated timber and bent plywood. The radii are not so great as would cause any special techniques or process. The interior core of the shell would be densely insulated with a soy-based foam to R-30+ rendering a extremely efficient enclosure. Interior ‘walls’ and ceiling would be wrapped in a warm, natural finish, wood veneer. Floors would be cork or the traditional carpet. The inset walls that bracket the enclosure would be mediated from the shell by continuous 16” glass band. Roof and exterior walls would be a very low-profile seamed and painted metal. As alternative they could be an elastomeric coating The whole building would sit on a pedestal both to increase the drama of the experience and to make it more 55-mph worthy |
