More than five years after it first opened in November 2009, the renovated and expanded Cambridge Public Library (CPL) in Massachusetts is still receiving accolades. The American Institute of Architects (AIA) sent two judges to CPL this past November to evaluate the library for its prestigious Institute Honor Award for Architecture. The new library was designed by William Rawn Associates in conjunction with Ann Beha Architects, who handled the restoration of the original 1889 library. CPL has won 22 awards, including the Boston Society of Architects’ Harleston Parker Medal for “the single most beautiful building” built in the Boston area in the last ten years. It was also featured in the American Libraries Library Design Showcase (2010).
Fifteen buildings received this year’s AIA award for architecture, but CPL is the only library in the group. This is the third year in a row that the AIA has chosen a project involving the restoration or renovation of a historic library building. In 2013, the New York Public Library was recognized for its outstanding exterior restoration of the historic main branch, and last year the St. Louis Public Library won for the transformation of its 100 year-old Central Library. The new CPL combines modern, green construction with historic renovation. The competition judges said, “This project reveals the perfect marriage of old and new: the original Romanesque library building…has been rigorously renovated and seamlessly connected to a striking new 76,000-square-foot glass building.”
Director Susan Flannery, who worked in the original building, was involved in the plans for a new library from the very beginning of the project. When asked if she missed anything about the old library, she replied with an emphatic “No!” Because of its small size, the old building was crammed with stacks and the historic WPA murals in the reading room were obscured. Now, cleaned and properly lit for the first time, the murals are a showpiece. Post-renovation, the old building combines roomy public areas with spaces for collections and technology. Flannery said they tried very hard to keep as much space as possible for public use, but that the second floor was so tiny and oddly shaped that it was only feasible to use for administrative staff offices. A glass-walled conference room was cleverly constructed on the porch of the old entrance.
Flannery told Library Journal that the decision to build a green building was central from the beginning of the design process. The building is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Silver certified thanks to a number of components, the most striking of which is the three-story curtain wall, the first of its kind in the United States. Automated systems inside the glass wall control heat and glare to make appealing reading spaces year-round. Readers can relax in a comfortable, bookstore-like environment while still enjoying the surrounding park only feet away. Flannery cited the ground floor as one of the building’s highlights. The large space filled with current titles and natural light is open and inviting. Patrons can eat and drink as well as mingle informally while browsing the newest titles.
Also of particular note are the spaces for teens and children in the library. Too often, according to Flannery, children’s spaces are relegated to the basement or other undesirable locations. “Young people need superior spaces in the library” if they are to become future library users, she said. The teen room, located in a separate room on the ground floor off the computer lab, gives teens their own space while making it easy for library staff to supervise them. The children’s room occupies the entire third floor and resembles nothing so much as an enormous treehouse: The ceiling looks like a forest canopy and the structural pillars are patterned like tree trunks. It is Flannery’s favorite place in the library, she said, “because I see it as the future.”