An A-List You Can Use | Editorial
New Landmark Libraries set the bar for ideas to build on May 15, 2011
Over the past decade, a slew of central libraries have opened that took us to a new level. Together they have formed an ad hoc must-see list of buildings for library directors to tour with their stakeholders as they explore the latest in library design and service trends for their own projects. Seattle, Salt Lake City, San Francisco, Minneapolis, Phoenix, and San José, CA, are a few examples that come to mind. Now, there’s another A-list of libraries to visit, LJ’s New Landmark Libraries, debuting May 15.
“The New Icons,” as project lead Louise Schaper calls the ten New Landmark Libraries, and ten Honorable Mentions—all opened post-2004—prove that you don’t have to be big city slickers to make an impression. They’re not huge iconic buildings but smaller stand-alone libraries or branches that can model the future for us all.*
“These are the best libraries to look at because they represent the most important trends. They’re the libraries people need to know about,” said Schaper. Among those trends are a green ethic, flexibility, transparency, minimalist design, and a proliferation of collaborative spaces.
“The [16] judges [including LJ Architecture Issue maven Bette-Lee Fox] thought deeply about the concept of what makes a New Landmark Library” and about defining the criteria, said Schaper. It’s not just a library that has passed some arbitrary test of time. “The New Landmark Libraries are examples for anyone contemplating a construction, renovation, or expansion project of any sort,” she said. They’re a starting point for your own ideas.
For LJ’s Rebecca Miller, who has championed small and rural libraries via LJ’s Best Small Library in America Award and led New Landmark Libraries in-house, they represent “a whole class of libraries that weren’t being recognized,” she said. “People looking to build weren’t hearing about these libraries when they searched for a model.” Because they’re smaller, they can be more nimble, more responsive; they can try green things.
Schaper, who retired as director of Fayetteville Public Library, AR, and is now a consultant, is also a leader in green design. The Blair Library, built during her tenure, was among the first LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) public buildings in the state. (See her “Let ‘Green’ Creep,” LBD 5/15/10.)
“Ten years ago we would not have seen so many libraries with a green ethic,” said Schaper, noting that the submissions were “awesome.”
What else is near to her heart in the New Landmark Libraries?
“I’m absolutely in love with the minimalist aesthetic,” she said, which emphasizes natural materials and also extends to the minimal use of materials. “Less is greener.”
“I love, love, love, the [New Landmark Libraries’] transparency,” she said. “They’ve all worked hard to bring the outside in.” That transparency works both ways, too. “It’s not only the connection to nature but the connection to the rest of the community. You don’t have transparency if you don’t know what’s going on inside. People on the outside are drawn in.”
One of the New Landmark Libraries that has most surprised Schaper is Poplar Creek Public Library in Streamwood, IL, a renovation and expansion. “They started with a brutalist-style concrete-mass building from 1966 and transformed it into something that is wild and wonderful,” she said. Schaper believes that libraries, as public buildings, should be beautiful spaces that uplift our spirits, and these New Landmark Libraries are all remarkably beautiful.
What is beauty if you can’t see it? I invite you into the New Landmark Libraries in LJ and LBD. Whether you’re thinking about a new building or renovation or just some ideas for change, they’re your map to the next generation of design and service.
*Join Schaper in a free webcast, “Tour of Four of the New Landmark Libraries,” on June 7; www.libraryjournal.com/tourlandmarks.
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| Author Information |
| Francine Fialkoff (ffialkoff@mediasourceinc.com) is Editor-in-Chief, LJ |
For more on trends in library design see "The Year in Architecture 2010."
