LJ’s New Landmark Library | Cesar Chavez Branch Library
Phoenix Public Library | Laveen, Arizona | Architect: Line and Space, LLC May 15, 2011 |
| Divine in the Desert Locked between an arid environment and a human-made lake, the Cesar Chavez Branch Library pays tribute in its design to both settings and maintains a unique place in the landscape. Large cantilevered overhangs shade the interior spaces, which include the cool children's area, while leaving the view of the site's beauty undisturbed. Children's area photo by Henry Tom, AIA; all other photos by Bill Timmerman |
3 | A Living Room on the Lake
Cesar Chavez Branch Library, one of Phoenix Public Library’s gems, is designed to provide a living room to a community without a civic center. Its site, on the urban edge of a popular 40-acre park and perched on the bank of a humanmade lake, is both accessible and attractive to surrounding neighborhoods. Its decidedly green design honors the desert environment with innovative solutions to living in an arid landscape.
Twice the size of the system’s other branches, it aims to meet the needs of a rapidly growing community with many young families. How? The library offers 24,000 items and interactive displays for children five and younger. Teens call their area “R3” for read, relax, and rejuvenate.
An open design plan, another New Landmark Libraries signature, gives this library long-term flexibility—an advantage when facing changing needs and service models. But unique space is not compromised. The teen niche offers computers, MP3 listening stations, and a plasma TV for DVD viewing in a semi-enclosed environment. The children’s area is defined by indoor and outdoor reading spaces, a sculptural security fence made from recycled materials that turns into a mobile, a ceiling-suspended kite sculpture, and a brightly colored sculptural wall and ceiling in the story room.
Staffers get a nod in this smart design, too. They can enjoy their own open-air patio and plenty of natural light in their work spaces. Some of the heavy lifting is done by strategically placed walk-up and drive-up book drops that empty directly into the circulation workroom where sorting occurs.
Respect for the Sonoran sun
The library uses an innovative but commonsense approach to sustainability. The building was given proper solar orientation to minimize energy and maximize daylighting. Then by partially building into preexisting earth mounds, the library is better insulated. Another strategy that is common to green buildings is the use of insulated low-E glazing that helps reduce heat gain through window glass.
With large cantilevered overhangs that create shade and shield the interior from the sun, this modern desert library is clad in low-maintenance concrete masonry, steel, and aluminum, much of it locally sourced and some of it left exposed to highlight its natural beauty.
The “green” rooftop does overtime. Made of a highly reflective insulated foam system that is coated with a UV treatment to protect it from degradation, it decreases the building’s heat-island effect while also functioning as a vast water catchment surface. Funneling rainwater into the lake for later use for park irrigation turns the lake, which the submitters call a “contradiction in the desert,” into an asset as a massive storage tank.
Water is also salvaged by harvesting condensation from mechanical units and distributing it to landscaping via an underground perforated pipe.
Creature comforts that pack “wow!”
In another innovation, customers using the library’s reading patio can tune their own outdoor microclimates to feel up to 20 degrees cooler. That’s achieved by pushing interior exhaust air, typically vented through a roof, through adjustable spot diffusers in the outdoor patio. This reuse of air conditioning makes the patio habitable even in the warmest months.
The Cesar Chavez Branch gets a strong “wow” response. Sitting on the edge of a park next to a busy street, it offers passersby exposure to what a modern library and responsibly designed desert building are all about. This branch, said one judge, has an “incredible connection between building and landscape.” It is downright earthy yet exceedingly up-to-the-minute and, well, futuristic.
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Vitals OPENED 2007 New construction Branch Library SIZE 25,234 square feet COST $5 million LEED-NC Silver certification POP SERVED 62,866 |
For more on trends in library design see "The Year in Architecture 2010."
