DCPL Picks 'Idea Stores'; Starchitect To Help Design Two Branches

Norman Oder -- Library Journal, 10/03/2008

• Team chosen with neighborhood input
• Two branches fully funded, will take three years
• Will they look like “Idea Stores”?

The District of Columbia Public Library, which has faced local criticism for its delayed effort to replace several aging branches, made a splash this week by selecting London-based architect David Adjaye, designer of two highly praised "Idea Store" libraries in London, to help design two new branches.

Adjaye’s firm, Adjaye Associates, and the local Wiencek & Associates will design the new Francis A. Gregory and Washington Highlands branches, replacing drab brick boxes dating from 1961 and 1959 (below), respectively. The team was chosen from a pool of 17 architects by a committee including DCPL staff and local representatives. Adjaye, a native of Ghana, is a black architect now working in Washington, a majority black community. He has also designed the Nobel Peace Centre in Oslo, Norway and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver.

Adjaye will be the lead architect in the schematic-design phase, DCPL said. DCPL’s library building program requires facilities of at least 20,000 square feet, with open/flexible space, and efforts to maximize natural light, reduce the impact on the environment, and save money on energy costs. DCPL is aiming for a LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification of Silver.

The Idea Stores idea
“The Idea Stores that Adjaye designed in London [Whitechapel and Chrisp Street] are buildings that allow users to have transformative educational experiences,” said DCPL Chief Librarian Ginnie Cooper. “Here, Adjaye’s designs will support our work in the five focus areas that make great library service.”

DCPL has funding for both libraries, which each will cost $14-$16 million, including $9.5 million for construction and the rest for design, furniture, materials, computers, and equipment.

Wrote Washington Post critic Philip Kennicott, “The name ‘Idea Stores’ wasn't Adjaye's, but he embraced the concept: how to make libraries that serve multicultural, 21st-century, Web-hungry communities. His designs brought a level of sleek polish -- one building used vertical ribbons of light blue and green glass that echoed the colored canopies of a local market -- not often seen in small community centers. From the outside, Adjaye's Idea Stores look like they should be selling iPods or designer shoes, rather than housing books, short-term day care, aerobics facilities and Internet access.”

"What is exciting to me is that they are not in downtown, they are not grand projects, but are in real family neighborhoods," Adjaye told the Post, which noted that the city “had a hard time attracting designers of Adjaye's caliber.

Adjaye last year told New York magazine, “The Idea Stores are in very diverse communities where there are as many as fifteen languages spoken. A unifying quality was that all these groups were to be found in the market spaces. The imagery of the market is these awnings, which are blue and green stripes. So the façades of the Idea Stores are colored glass, blue and green glass. It is not a literal translation but a visual clue.”