In Mezzo
Advisor: Lane Rick
Site: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Program: Library
How can we design a library that operates in between preserving our past while accommodating future needs? Libraries and the way that people use them are constantly changing. A new building needs to be able to accommodate this variation of uses while staying true to what makes a library a library. This is a 30,000 sqft new library and urban proposal in the Cobbs Creek Neighborhood of West Philadelphia.
Featured in University of Pennsylvania’s Pressing Matters
Concept
In Mezzo preserves and elevates three different versions of the library. The shell of the existing Blanche A Nixon Public Library is retained as the programmatic archival space and an archived object itself. From here, reading and study spaces are lifted into the air to provide acoustic privacy and to integrate with building systems. 15’ modules of ‘reading nests’ unite structure, systems, and program to create a volume around the existing building. A new glass envelope wraps to the aggregation of these nests and drapes into the public realm below.
With the critical library infrastructure lifted in the air, the ground level can function as an open plan. Various public programs like community gardens, remote workspace, workshops, and play space divide the site into a series of terraces that moderate the site slope and evolving public landscape. These three libraries are intentionally separated spatially to bring awareness to the drastic difference in needs of a contemporary library.
This tension that exists in between the changing uses of the library is physically manifested in this project as a tensegrity structure. The reading nests lie within a lightweight tensegrity truss that floats above the existing building. The book stacks in the repository hang from this system, which requires cables to pull the system into stability through the public forum.