Snøhetta designed a library for the Temple University in Philadelphia, a building inserted in a dynamic context that aims to involve students and community. Sited at the intersection of major pathways Polett Walk and Liacouras Walk, the building integrates meeting and social learning spaces as a reinterpretation of the traditional research library.
Distributed on four floors, the Charles Library is cladded in vertical sections of split-faced granite recalling the materials of the surrounding campus, while great wooden arches seem to be carved in the volume. The entrance welcomes visitors with a 3-storey domed atrium lobby, where an oculus, connected to the the top floor, lets the light come in. The ground-floor space in organized in different areas, offering a cafe, an event space, a reading room and a 24/7 lobby, along with the Book Bot, dedicated to the storage of books and officially named ASRS (Automated Storage Retrieval System). With a capacity of 2 milion volumes, this machine occupies three levels of the building.
An instruction room, a computer lab, a writing center occupy the rest of the centre. The upper floor offers bookshelves and private reading areas surrounded by glazed walls and a green roof, one of the largest in Pennsylvania, that it’s part of the library’s stormwater management system, incliding also pervious paved plazas and paths and landscaped planting beds that infiltrate rainwater.
- Project:
- Charles Library
- Architects:
- Snøhetta
- Where:
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
- Area:
- 18,580 sqm
- Completion:
- 2019
- Construction Cost:
- $135 Million
- Sustainability:
- LEED Gold Targeted