We create libraries that reflect and engage your community
ARCHITECTURE
4 PRACTICE SITES
45 YEARS OF OPERATION
200+
EMPLOYEES
ENGINEERING
INTERIOR DESIGN
URBAN DESIGN
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION
BRANDED ENVIRONMENTS
SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
BKV Group’s mission statement guides every project, and allows us to connect our practice values to the goals and objectives of our clients. For us, “Enriching Lives and Strengthening Communities” is foundational to the relationships we build throughout each project, the framework to our advocacy for users and stakeholders during planning and programming, and the maxim that inspires purpose-driven design solutions cultivated specifically in response to each project’s constraints, opportunities, and community needs.
MARK MANETTI
Government a Education Practice Leader, Partner Washington, DC
Government Managing Partner
Chicago, IL
PHIL CALLISON
Government Managing Partner Dallas, TX
Director of Interior Design, Partner Minneapolis, MN
PAUL MICHELL
Government Managing Partner Minneapolis, MN
Director of Branded Environments
Associate Partner Minneapolis, MN
Collaborating regionally, BKV Group operates as a cohesive firm delivering a wide range of project types for a diverse set of national and local clients. We leverage industry-leading communication and technology tools with best-in-class design processes to seamlessly work across practice sites to meet our clients’ needs, and continually expand our presence into existing and new markets.
BKV Group provides knowledge and experience for a wide range of project and sector types, plus has familiarity in working with a spectrum of project partners. Our designers have a profound responsibility to drive positive change in our communities. We are passionate about helping our clients identify, pursue, and achieve ambitious goals in creating unique, meaningful places of value and purpose.
+ Facility Assessments
+ Feasibility Studies
+ Space Plan Studies
+ Pre-Design
+ Programming
+ Planning
+ Community Engagement
+ Renovations
+ Adaptive Reuse
+ New Construction
+ Furniture, Signage, and Branding
+ Contractors
+ Government Entities
+ Regional Libraries (where applicable)
+ Owner’s Project Managers
+ Civil Engineers
+ Library
+ Education
+ Housing
+ Commercial
+ Hospitality
+ Government
INTERIOR DESIGN SUSTAINABLE DESIGN
ARCHITECTURE
INTERIOR DESIGN BRANDED ENVIRONMENTS
CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION
CLIENT
INTERIOR DESIGN
ENGINEERING
INTERIOR DESIGN
INTERIOR DESIGN
LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
INTERIOR DESIGN URBAN DESIGN
Libraries are a place where lifelong learning is nurtured and cultivated. We understand that the expectations of a library –as a place and as a resource – are many: it is a place of quiet concentration and reflection; active collaboration and play; work and studying; and, growth, exploration, and curiosity . BKV Group’s approach to library assessment, planning, and design is centered around key stakeholder engagement as a vehicle to ensure each project embodies the needs and expectations of each unique community.
The nature of the library as a place of learning continues to evolve as we seek out both physical materials and digital resources, while engaging with library staff and programs as an avenue for social learning. As other community resources are curtailed, the library takes on even more responsibility as a safe and welcoming place before and after the work and school day, allowing occupants to focus, collaborate, and engage. Choice is the most critical aspect of a library environment, a feature which ensures a space is useful by all its visitors, for whatever their needs might be.
As a common ground for the whole community, the library is a place for shared traditions: the weekday morning group that shares the newspapers, the parents and children who fill the room for weekly – or daily – storytime, the teenagers clustered together gaming after school, the pairings of students and mentors huddled around study guides. The library also plays host to many different kinds of engagement: from small group to large, from informal to scheduled, from academic to social. A library needs to both accommodate these uses, and be flexible to changing needs.
Even more so than in the past, libraries are growing into places of active exploration. Library facilities, materials, equipment, and programs offer a gateway to new skills, new hobbies, and new subject areas. The library as a place of lifelong hands-on learning calls for spaces and resources that allow patrons to observe, participate, and lead activities that explore science, art, mathematics, and creativity.
Our firm makes places for people: we are keenly aware of the impact a single project can have within its walls, and for the community it serves. Stakeholder engagement is a baseline component of our project process: before we can begin to propose solutions, we need to connect with our clients, so our proposed solutions are truly responsive. We take pride in creating unique design moments throughout each project designed to encourage people to connect.
Investment in planning, design, and construction is a commitment, one that we honor through our vetted project management and quality assurance process. We utilize dedicated specialists in code, specifications, quality assurance, and construction administration, to augment each project team. We engage in-house third-party project review at key design and production milestones to ensure a tightly-coordinated set of contract documents. Our projects are delivered on time, with a record low number of non-client-requested change orders.
Buildings and grounds are resources whose critical value lies in providing safe, secure, inviting, and engaging spaces for student and facility. An institution’s physical resources, its buildings, landscapes, and physical plant infrastructure, are assets to be cultivated: long-term value for the institution and its community lies in strategic investment and thoughtful planning and use of resources. We approach this investment in systems, materials, and resources for long-term positive impacts on: quality of place, human health and wellness, operations and maintenance, allocation of financial resources, and local and regional environments.
Sustainability is integrated, not applied, to every project. We understand the value of a holistic design approach: making decisions at every scale – site, building, room, furniture, equipment – that uses materials and resources responsibly, leaves a project site healthier post-construction than before, improves health and wellness of the occupants, and works within each client’s budget.
Across our market sectors we engage building technology – methods and materials of construction – as a tool to manage project budget, schedule, and energy performance. We collaborate with manufacturers and with contractors to develop project-specific solutions that combine design vision with best value. Our innovation is not only with new construction projects but extends also to our decades-long experience with adaptive reuse of existing and historic structures.
BKV Group provides total building design: from the aesthetics of branding, to the science of building technology, to the challenge of creative cost control.
CONCEPT/ VISIONING
SCHEMATIC DESIGN
DESIGN DEVELOPMENT
Immersing our holistic team in your project from the very beginning to understand your culture, values, objectives, challenges, and location serve as inspiration to develop the project story and thresholds for action in your building. These insights inform the overarching vision/concept narrative that will drive every aspect of the design.
With the story in mind, Schematic Design focuses on function. BKV works with your operations team to understand the operational flow and adjacencies in order to plan efficient layouts that function well for your staff, while creating the experiential path of travel for your staff. Preliminary massing, space plans, initial finish and FF&E selections are developed at this time resulting in a design that embodies your goals, concept narrative, and functional needs.
Refinement of the concept and documentation occur during this phase by marrying the space planning with the concept in a 3-dimensional illustration of the design. Visualization presentations may include wireframe and/or rendered studies, plans, key elevations, initial detail, material and FF&E selections, and virtual reality walk throughs when warranted.
CONSTRUCTION DOCUMENTS
CONSTRUCTION ADMINISTRATION
Construction Documents include Massing Diagrams, Reference, Floor, Finish, Furniture, and Reflected Ceiling Plans; Elevations; Sections; Details; Schedules; and Specifications necessary for your contractor and procurement professionals to execute the project. Documents are coordinated with in-house disciplines and outside consultants, and reviewed for QA/QC. Project bidding, permitting, cost verification, and VE may occur prior to construction.
During Construction and Installation, BKV’s team is actively engaged with your General Contractor and Procurement teams: periodic site visits to monitor construction progress, responding to RFIs and submittals, helping the team address challenges that arise in the field, and review of FF&E, artwork and Accessory installation. Our team responds quickly to keep the project progressing.
Our clients share their stories, their history, their goals, their fears, their wishes. And we listen. We gather all the information we possibly can. And then we get creative.
By adopting your goals as our goals, we can enable you to do your best work. This starts with function and efficiency with an unwavering focus on health, safety, value and longevity.
Let’s create a community asset together
Our firm makes places for people: we are keenly aware of the impact a single project can have within its walls, and for the community it serves. Stakeholder engagement is a baseline component of our project process: before we can begin to propose solutions, we need to connect with our clients, so our proposed solutions are truly responsive. We take pride in creating unique design moments throughout each project designed to encourage people to connect.
Investment in planning, design, and construction is a commitment, one that we honor through our vetted project management and quality assurance process. We utilize dedicated specialists in code, specifications, quality assurance, and construction administration, to augment each project team. We engage in-house third-party project review at key design and production milestones to ensure a tightlycoordinated set of contract documents. Our projects are delivered on time, with a record low number of non-client-requested change orders.
Buildings and grounds are resources whose critical value lies in providing safe, secure, inviting, and engaging spaces for student and facility. An institution’s physical resources, its buildings, landscapes, and physical plant infrastructure, are assets to be cultivated: long-term value for the institution and its community lies in strategic investment and thoughtful planning and use of resources. We approach this investment in systems, materials, and resources for long-term positive impacts on: quality of place, human health and wellness, operations and maintenance, allocation of financial resources, and local and regional environments.
Sustainability is integrated, not applied, to every project. We understand the value of a holistic design approach: making decisions at every scale – site, building, room, furniture, equipment – that uses materials and resources responsibly, leaves a project site healthier post-construction than before, improves health and wellness of the occupants, and works within each client’s budget.
Across our market sectors, we engage building technology – both methods and materials of construction – as a tool to manage project budget, schedule, and energy performance. We collaborate with manufacturers and with contractors to develop project-specific solutions that combine design vision with best value. Our innovation is not only with new construction projects but extends also to our decades-long experience with adaptive reuse of existing and historic structures.
BKV Group is one of the few national design firms offering an in-house Branded Environments unit who, in addition, assist our design teams in navigating through the initial research, strategy and discovery phases, shaping brands early in the project life cycle that will inform how spaces are designed, marketed and experienced.
Project Brand Discovery
Project Brand Messaging, Positioning & Strategy
Naming
Visual Identity/Logo
Brand Guidelines
Brand Applications
Digital & Print Collateral
Marketing Materials
Promotional Merchandise Design
Environmental Graphics / Installations
Visual Identity Systems (Wayfinding Signage)
Social Media Templates
Website Design
Architecture is beautiful for the harmony it creates between itself, it’s environment, and its inhabitants. Sustainable design is the natural progression of that vision with BKV designed buildings always responding to their context — their location, their function, and how they are used by their occupants. BKV Group has a holistic vision for the building’s life-cycle to appropriately respond to context, function, and use. We leverage sustainable design strategies by tapping into a wide spectrum of knowledge — of architecture, interior design, urban planning, energy modeling, engineering, landscape architecture, technology and science — with our clients receiving the benefit of decades of collective professional expertise. In addition, because there is no predetermined outcome or prototypical concept, our process yields work of extraordinary originality, crafted to the specific needs of the site, user and circumstances.
Memberships & Affiliations
AIA Materials Pledge, ASID Materials Pledge, Mindful Materials, B3 Guidelines
2030 Documentation
BKV’s Architects and Designers, Structural, and MEP Engineers report Embodied Carbon and Energy performance for all projects to The AIA 2030 Commitment initiative records
Construction Standardization
Standard Method v1.1 (Greenguard, SCS, Indoor Advantage, FloorScore, CRI Green Label Plus)
Healthy Materials Promise
We work with our vendors to minimize the use of toxic materials and focus our specifications on non-toxic materials. Designers will seek certifications for the materials that are specified by HPD, EPD, Declare, Cradle to Cradle, Living Product, FSC, SCAQMD, CDPH Standard Method v1.1 Greenguard. SCS, Indoor Advantage, Floor Score, CRI Green Lable Plus
Healthy Community Building
Urban design and landscape architecture are critical components of human health
“Trauma is a response to anything that’s overwhelming, and that happens too much, too fast, too soon, or too long. It is coupled with a lack of protection or support. It lives in the body, stored as sensation: pain or tension — or is a lack of sensation, like numbness. It does not impact us all in the same way. Context is critically important.”
Author, Therapist, & Trauma Specialist Resmaa Menakem
South St. Paul, Minnesota
OVERVIEW
BKV’s Kaposia Library enhances community and services.
TYPE
New Construction
SIZE
16,600 SF
BKV Group with Dakota County recently celebrated the grand opening of Kaposia Library in South St. Paul Library – a long-awaited project that will benefit the community in many ways. Said Dakota County Commissioner Kathleen A. Gaylord, who represents South St. Paul. “That’s the thing about libraries — it’s not just a building. It’s a place to gather, it’s a place for kids to experience the joy of reading.”
Setting the Stage for Transformation
With the current building dating back to 1927 and no longer delivering modern library services to serve a socioeconomically diverse population, Dakota County selected BKV for this monumental project with the new library featuring:
• 16,000 square feet on one level, improving access for all user
• Study rooms and meeting spaces to accommodate groups of different sizes
• A “Heritage Room” celebrating South St. Paul history
• An outdoor reading space
• A children’s area and dedicated teen space, across the street from South St. Paul Secondary School.
With the new library now open, the building is designed to be comparable or above LEED Silver rating in energy efficiency and funded with $11.3 million from the federal American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) passed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Wadena, Minnesota
OVERVIEW
BKV’s Wadena City Library expands services and adaptability.
TYPE
Renovation-Adaptive Reuse
SIZE
7,277 SF
With a dated and overcrowded library building, without sufficient site capacity for reuse and expansion, BKV Group led a preliminary feasibility study of multiple sites for adaptive reuse. With the selection of a former bank building more centralized in the City, with higher visibility and site flexibility for future adaptation and growth, the library can offer expanded operations including drive-through book pick-up and drop-off and afterhours rentable space including a community room and maker space.
Some of the main project goals included an enhanced customer experience, dedicated collections and reading areas for children’s, teens, and adults, the accommodation of program functions that were not feasible in the old structure, and exploration of how the building could continue to adapt in the future, including long-term capacity to more than double children’s, provide a dedicated reading garden, and expand meeting and study spaces.
BKV Group’s scope include a detailed collections analysis, stakeholder engagement, conceptual visioning, coordinated design and FF&E services and contract document development, and coordination with the owner’s Construction Manager for pre-construction strategic development.
The new library accommodates growth of all collections, provides separate children’s, teens, and adult collections and reading areas, offers a net increase in overall reading and study areas, a new maker space, and a 50-person flexible meeting room, with the ability to renovate the lower level in the future for additional study and meeting space.”
Falls Church, Virginia
OVERVIEW
Added space and improved functionality for the newly expanded Mary Riley Styles Library.
TYPE
Remodel & Expansion
Size
2-story, 24,600 SF, 6,600 SF addition, 18,000 SF renovation
SUSTAINABILITY
LEED Silver
The Mary Riley Styles Public Library is an important and long-standing institution within the City of Falls Church. The City’s Public Library system has been in place since 1899, but the current building was not constructed until 1957. A major renovation/expansion was completed in 1993, but at 18,000 SF, the current building was over capacity and in need of additional space to accommodate the constant population growth in the area.
BKV Group was commissioned to provide programming confirmation, design and construction administration services for the addition and renovation to Mary Riley Stiles Public Library. The two-story addition along Northern Virginia Street adds 6,600 SF of space to the existing facility. The entrance to the building was relocated to Park Avenue and BKV Group develop the exterior site improvements design with the City as they developed the street scape development plan for Park Avenue creating a “City Center” connecting the Library, City Hall and the community center. The decision to relocate the library to a temporary facility was made as a result of budget challenges identified by BKV Group during schematic design, and prior to the on-boarding of the CMAR Team. BKV Group coordinated with library staff to develop a temporary library concept layout. A proposed shelving layout and analysis was provided to the City to approve a dead-load analysis of proposed stacks locations rather than an assumed live load calculation for book stack loading. This allowed us to load the existing modular classrooms without requiring structural framing or foundation modifications and reduce cost to the City. The modular classrooms were not sprinklered. BKV Group use the IEBC performance compliance path to show minimum code compliance for the adaptive reuse.
The project was constructed via the Construction Manager At Risk (CMAR) delivery method, with a construction budget of $5,245,000.00, inclusive of all CMAR fees and escalation to the mid-point of construction.
Howard Lake, Minnesota
OVERVIEW
Howard Lake Public Library situated in the city’s newly constructed Central Park.
TYPE
New Construction SIZE
6,977 SF
Following a 2018 municipal space needs assessment, which included the library, BKV Group executed a detailed pre-design study for Howard Lake’s 1979, two-story facility. Work included detailed collection, program, and furnishings analysis, an evaluation of the cast-in-place concrete structure’s capacity for expansion, code compliance upgrades, and energy efficiency. The final evaluation included assessments of reconfiguring and transforming the existing building to varying degrees, and also relocation of the library to a new site closer to downtown. The greatest long-term value and operational efficiency was found in relocation to the new Central Park in downtown howard Lake, where the facility can be a single story, provide a multi-use community room available when the library is closed, and also incorporate public restrooms to serve the park.
The project’s goals and objectives include: ensuring equitable and universal access to all library resources; providing a safe, welcoming, and inviting resource for users of all ages, providing spaces with near-term flexibility and long-term adaptability; accommodating the continuing evolution of library services; and the development of staff support spaces that respond to existing operational staffing (1 FTE). The modest facility provides dedicated spaces for each age range of reader, a storytime room connected to a secure outdoor reading area, multiple study rooms including one for use by the City as a “soft interview” room (available after library hours), a fireplace reading area, and the integration of a number of book art pieces that establish a strong sense of identity and character.
Clara City, Minnesota
OVERVIEW
Clara City Library’s study explored renovation or relocation options.
TYPE
Feasibility Study
SIZE
9,970 GSF
The existing operations of the Clara City Library are located in a former bank building. Earlier adaptations of this space for reuse has led to inefficiencies of space, limited space configurations, and a lack of amenity spaces one would typically find in a contemporary local library. The scope of this project was to define current operational, functional, and facility issues, while developing a proposed space program and cost estimate for the recommended renovation or construction strategy. Goals of the project included: Ensuring sufficient space for collections, activities, programming, administration, collaboration and the community. A facility that welcomes, represents, and accommodates the whole community and their varied needs and wants. A renewed library with spaces that are functional, durable, and adaptable as needs continue to evolve.
The study included an evaluation of multiple strategies, including existing building renovation and expansion, re-building on the current site, and potential relocation of the library to multiple potential new sites. The scope of work included a space needs assessment study, benchmarking the library with metrics of the regional library system, dialogue with key library and community stakeholders, development of a recommended space program, development of functional adjacency diagrams, and development of total project cost estimates for each scheme reviewed.
The recommended site has the capacity for the expanded building as a one-story facility, has the flexibility to be a two-story structure if additional shared community meeting spaces are desired, and can accommodate a dedicated library green space which is lacking in the existing location. A benefit of relocation to a new site is that the existing library can remain fully operational until moving into the new building; additionally, this site offers more parking and enhanced pedestrian connectivity to other Clara City public resources.
Moorhead, Minnesota
OVERVIEW
Renovated library into a modern learning center.
TYPE
Higher Education
SIZE
130,000 SF
BKV Group was selected to program, design, and renovate the campus library building into a 21st century learning center. The programming and planning effort considered the critical changes in contemporary collegiate library buildings by defining and re-creating spaces that address the growing demand of electronics and mass media.
Initial construction packages addressed building wide functional and accessibility issues with the addition of an elevator, ADA compliant restroom remodel, mechanical upgrades, classroom renovation, and deferred maintenance of the exterior glazing system. The most recently completed construction package was the final step in the building wide make-over.
Due to the funding timeline and the need to minimize disruption to academic schedule, this package was implemented in two phases. The first phase included new stack and archive areas, new faculty development suite, new information technology help desk and technical services areas. The second phase included a new centrally located technology commons, new reception and information service areas, new 24/7-access media labs, individual and group study areas, and a 24-hour student lounge. Full mechanical, electrical, technology and fire suppression updates were also included in this effort.
State energy and sustainability B3 (Benchmarks, Buildings and Beyond) guidelines were followed for the duration of the project. Compliance was tracked using the state’s online B3 benchmarking/compliance tools.
