Like so many libraries making the transition from curating content to creating it, the Grasselli Library Renovation transforms an existing 100,000sf campus library into a more socially dynamic and intellectually generative space balanced with the more individual scholarship that has long been its role on campus. Once realized, this approach would provide a broader range of experiences and programmatic possibilities than the existing library. The infrastructural and visual expression would support and express the diversity of functions that a library of the future serves.

The original structure was built in the 1950’s and the addition of the Breen learning commons in the 80’s created an internal courtyard between these two era’s. While the addition created the courtyard as an asset, it has remained largely underutilized. Our core observation and contribution was that the potential of the courtyard was not as a leftover of the two buildings but as a third space creating the organizational clarity and ‘presentness’ the complex lacked; it becomes the new entry, new circulation, and ultimately expands its reach out into the quad, effectively opening the library up from the inside and allowing it to benefit from, and participate in, the more ambient life of the campus.

Recognizing the courtyard as a third block of program and a more intentional center of gravity for the life of the building gave physical viability to the library’s mission to serve as a place to think, find, and create. We established a tripartite approach in organizing a library of the past, present, and future; each part with its own distinct character, approach to infrastructure, and set of creative associations:

To Find: our history, analogue, physical content, internal cultivation.
To Think: our present, student belonging, connection to each other and nature.
To Create: our future, digital, media center/ performance, exterior connectivity.

The three corresponding anchors to this renovation include:

The East building’s new home for the Learning Commons, surrounded by student resource programs such as the new Writing Center, Accessibility Services, and Student Success Services

Creating a direct connection between the library’s interior courtyard and the quad, providing an accessible and more centrally located main entry.

The west building’s new maker spaces and entrepreneurship lab, fostering the creative program of the library’s future

With the acute use of materiality and color to punctuate the modest interior architecture, the project injects vivacity and environmental variety into the expansive existing floor plates, balancing the desire to provide a spectrum of learning environments within open, flexible spaces.

Grasselli Library

#Design (6 files)

#Construction (3 files)