The architectural and interior design planning process - Library Finance: New Needs, New Models

Library Trends, Wntr, 1994 by Elaine Cohen

For example, if a school was designed as a classroom facility, only activities that fit into 400 square feet segments will function properly. Few library collections have logical breaks which enable them to fit neatly into spaces that are just that size. An award-winning building's central atrium can be an important aesthetic. Its primary function is to bring a sense of grandeur to the interior. One can look up and see through to the next story or look down and view the floor below. Unfortunately, a central atrium creates a "ring around the rosey" effect. Patrons and staff must walk in circles to get from here to there.

For the budget conscious, it is important to note that atriums are also nearly as expensive to heat, ventilate, or air condition as the full floors they replace. Furthermore, buildings with atriums are very difficult to balance mechanically. Service calls that require fixing such gadgets as malfunctioning vents, fans, circulators, pumps, and blowers become a constant fact of life.

Filling in a central atrium is always a solution, but it is one thing to tear down the interior walls of a 1950s school building and another to deck over the glorious atrium of an award-winning building. In both situations, the expense may cause a public furor, but the protests are bound to rise to untenable heights whenever political forces believe that bureaucrats are about to destroy a precious work of art. Similarly, if the school building was erected at the turn of the century, it immediately becomes a historic structure. Should it be replete with special details and fine appointments, resistance to any architectural changes could be defended by an equally ferocious political battle.

Old school buildings are not the only historic structures. Libraries with historical significance seem to be everywhere. There are any number of seventy, eighty, and ninety year old structures still functioning, and they house a variety of libraries - public, academic, governmental, and private. These buildings evoke great affection, even those that have not been well maintained and, thus, have deteriorated. Communities may have ignored their existence, but once one of these structures enters the spotlight, it is amazing how many people profess kinship. The populace tends to view the structures as examples of a gentler age and something they wish to return to - even if they were never there.

Indeed, some of these structures feature architectural details that are either too expensive to fund today or literally against the law. For example, old buildings tend to have impressive exterior stairs that were built without regard to barrier-free environments and, of course, do not comply with Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) guidelines. Sometimes a stair leads to a very handsome entrance flanked by difficult to open heavy wooden doors. Not only are these doors phenomenally expensive to replace, they also are incompatible with ADA guidelines.

Once inside one of these old buildings, the interior architecture and related interior design all too often limit the ability to conduct state-of-the-art library services. An imposing but inflexible teak and granite circulation desk may take up far too much room. In order to add terminals and other details of automated circulation services, makeshift work areas have been created behind and to the side of it. In close proximity to the desk are one or two wood paneled reading rooms whose floors were not constructed to bear the 150 pound per square foot live loads that library bookstacks presently require. Since the majority of the collection was not expected to be open to the public, it was placed in a once closed and now open access metal self-supporting stack whose small entrance is located to the back of the facility. Within the stack, the only access to the second and third tiers is via a narrow metal stair.