BPL Central Branch Transformation

BOYLSTON STREET BUILDING

CITY OF BOSTON WILLIAM RAWN ASSOCIATES | Architects, Inc.

A NEW TYPE OF URBAN LIBRARY:

The Big Urban Room, Immersed in the Life of the City

Library design is undergoing a period of exciting experimentation - redefining how libraries connect to their cities and impact the lives of their patrons. Collaborating with the City of Boston and the City of Cambridge, William Rawn Associates has explored new directions in opening libraries to the life of their cities across four recent projects: the Cambridge Public Library, the Mattapan Branch Library, the East Boston Branch Library, and the Central Branch of the Boston Public Library (BPL).

Through this exploration, a new type of urban library has been forged at the heart of the 2016 transformation of the BPL’s Central Branch – The Big Urban Room, immersed in the life of the city:

• An urban library opening itself seamlessly to its city streets with transparency and multiple entries;

• A library integrating major retail tenant as part of the library interior, without borders;

• A library integrating a major regional broadcast studio as a part of the library’s literal front door to the City, connecting the BPL to the world through the airways.

This new library type stands in contrast to the typical urban library with its reading room, often on an upper “Piano Nobile” level, hidden behind clerestory windows from the bustle of the city. Examples of this typical condition include: the original Boston Public Library, the New York Public Library, numerous Carnegie Libraries; and more recently the Chicago Public Library, the San Francisco Public Library, and the Phoenix Public Library.

HISTORY OF THE PROJECT:

• The 1895 building, designed by McKim, Mead & White (referred to as the McKim Building), serves as the City’s research library – the second largest research library in the country (behind the Library of Congress and ahead of Harvard University according to the American Library Association).

• The 1972 addition, designed by Philip Johnson (originally known as the Johnson Building and later renamed to the Boylston Street Building) serves as the City’s lending library.

• The 2016 re-construction of the public floors of the Boylston Street Building, designed by William Rawn Associates, Architects, transforms 156,000 square feet within the 940,000 square foot Central Library into an open and inviting environment with exciting programming and activity at the library’s front door. The re-construction unifies the McKim and Boylston Street Buildings into a cohesive whole for the first time.

Using this transformation of the Boston Public Library Central Branch as a Case Study, this book explores 9 Principles for this New Type of Urban Library.

Left: Civic Table with Wifi and Power Previous Page: Big Urban Room opening out to Boylston Street

BIG URBAN ROOM

The Big Urban Room is a new spatial type for urban libraries. It contains the library’s most active uses and brings this library activity right to the front door and alongside the city street. Permeable to the city, the Big Urban Room is the direct counterpoint to the traditional reading room which embodies a retreat from the “bustle” of the city.

• In the original McKim building, Bates Hall exemplifies this traditional reading room with its inward focus, with its elevated location above street level, and with its clerestory windows that frame views of the sky, not of the street.

By contrast, the new Boylston Hall on the ground level of the Boylston Street Building epitomizes the Big Urban Room:

• a marketplace of offerings, including newest books, interactive digital media, a cafe and a street-side broadcast studio for WGBH;

• a bustling space open and permeable to the city that pushes the library out to the street and draws the city in;

• a new immersive and engaging experience for library visitors and for pedestrians passing by.

It is noteworthy that for the Boston Public Library, this new 21st century library space, the Big Urban Room (Boylston Hall) shares the same size and civic scale as its 19th century predecessor (Bates Hall); both are tall volume spaces, approximately 210 feet in length.

Interior Street Pathway

Interior Street

Public Green Space

CLARENDON STREET

COPLEY SQUARE

SEAMLESS CONNECTION BETWEEN LIBRARY & CITY

A Seamless Connection between the Library and City is an essential quality of the new spatial type, the Big Urban Room. Specifically, Boylston Hall becomes an extension of the retail and pedestrian activity of Boylston Street. Permeability and overlap between library and City is achieved in several ways:

• Highly transparent glass walls creating a vivid sense of welcome;

• Front Porch created by landscape elements bringing the library out to the street;

• Multiple Entries from Boylston and Exeter;

• A new “Interior Street” connecting Boylston Street entrances with the McKim entrance on Copley Square, and linking many of the Library’s most public assets in between.

BOYLSTON STREET

EXETER STREET

HYBRID PLACE OF BOOKS & DIGITAL MEDIA

For the foreseeable future, libraries will be hybrid places with books and digital media, as noted by John Palfrey in his book, Bibliotech 1 The newly transformed BPL embraces this hybrid reality,

• Celebrating the importance of books, visible immediately from the front door;

• Celebrating its commitment to easy access to digital material.

The BPL’s commitment to public access to digital platforms includes:

• “Digital Stacks” allowing new ways of searching the BPL vast collections of print and physical media;

• Multiple interactive touch-screens at Welcome Center that help orient visitors to the library and the city and allow them to contribute usercreated content;

• Public access to 100+ computers;

• Wi-Fi throughout the library, including the exterior front porch.

BPL is an epicenter for building the Digital Public Library:

• BPL is the home of the Digital Public Library of America (DPLA);

• Digitizing books, typically a “back of house” process, is made visible with a large storefront window into the photography room on the lower level.

Above and Bottom Left: Interactive touch screens Top Left: Newest collection on flexible stacks

CONVENING SPACE

Public libraries can be re-envisioned as consequential places for convening, serving as forums of new ideas and hubs of education and innovation. The newly transformed BPL offers a range of formal and informal convening spaces, including:

• Rabb Auditorium transformed: 340 seat auditorium with new seats, new theater lighting and rigging, new acoustic walls, new finishes, new back of house;

• New and existing rooms (accommodating 20 to 40 to 80 people) for speakers, classes, large meetings;

• Open space configurable for activities: Pop-Up Author Talks, music performances;

• Use of major public spaces for events;

• Use of Lower level as conference center (Rabb + Kirstein) space with pre-function space.

Next Page: Big Urban Room as Event Space Left: Rabb Auditorium

CENTER FOR INNOVATION & COLLABORATION

A vital new role for libraries today is serving as centers for innovation and collaboration

No longer are libraries mere repositories for books, but an ecosystem of working and gathering spaces.

With a variety of shared working areas, the Boston Public Library serves as a place of coworking, of meeting and gathering, of group interaction, of social learning, while also providing places for controlled and introspective study. This project incorporates learning from visits to places like the Cambridge Innovation Center, Workbar, and numerous Universities’ CoLab and Digital Media Commons. The new ecosystem of BPL spaces includes:

• Informal group study/meeting spaces with white boards

• Group meeting spaces

• Multi-person work tables and work counters

• Soft seating around low tables

• Outdoor Civic Table (with power)

• Kirstein Business and Innovation Center as a dedicated resource within the Library

• Cafe stations on the ground floor and lower level.

Clockwise from upper left: Kirstein Business Library & Innovation Center; Teen Library; Gaming Studio; Conference Space; Learning Studio

EMBRACING PERPETUAL CHANGE

More than ever, libraries must embrace perpetual change, responding to evolving technology and changing patterns of patron use. Libraries should build in strategies that ensure day to day flexibility and nimbleness where the library can reconfigure and curate new and temporary activities and collections. The newly transformed BPL embraces perpetual change:

Open space with few walls allows uses to expand and contract over time.

Movable display carts designed to make the New and Novel area (with the newest books) a highly reconfigurable space (a kind of “black box for books.”)

With a Retractable Glass Wall, retail within the Big Urban Room can be flexible between many modes depending on the schedule needs of the retailer and the possible needs of future retail tenants.

Book Market

Book Rooms

BEFORE: VIEW FROM FRONT DOOR -- Protecting the collection

AFTER: VIEW FROM FRONT DOOR -- Welcoming all visitors

PATRON FOCUSED EXPERIENCE

The new BPL challenges longstanding assumptions to create a uniquely patron focused experience.

The visitor experiences entry as a series of intentionally welcoming moments:

• Front Porch, full of activity;

• Clear floor-to-ceiling glass;

• Multiple doors, leading immediately to active spaces, unencumbered by security or check-in/check-out desks;

• Immediate sense of immersion with the most active uses, with the pulse of the library.

This transformation is achieved in part by rethinking and relocating the circulation desk, a typical encumbrance in the entry experience.

• Typically a circulation desk is positioned adjacent to the library’s front door for control of the collection. The result is that the entry is reduced to a security control point.

• Also, typically it is connected to a back of house sorting space which is then connected to the building’s loading area. These typical requirements limit the degree of openness surrounding the front door.

• At BPL, the circulation desk is positioned 70 feet from the front door with clear sight lines to the multiple entries and adjacent to new back of house space which is connected to loading.

A strong new connection between McKim and Boylston Street Buildings brings an experiential coherence to this 940,000 square foot building that unifies and enriches the visitor experience.

BROADCAST HUB & CONTENT CREATOR

Today’s library is no longer just about collection curation, but includes content creation The newly transformed BPL brings this idea to new heights:

Digital Maker spaces are offered in adult and teen areas, and Gaming spaces are integrated in the Teen area.

New Idea: BPL Partnership with WGBH

• Broadcasting “Live from the BPL”

• WGBH’s stream of content created for TV and radio broadcast from the library reinforces the BPL as a hub for the latest information and commentary;

• Library and Boylston Street both serve as visual backdrops to broadcasts;

• Broadcast Studio visible from the street at “100% retail corner”: Boylston and Exeter

• Broadcast activity and presence amplifies the street life of the building;

• Marks the corner of Exeter and Boylston as an epicenter of information and critical thinking in the city;

• Broadcast Studio is one of the many uses within the Big Urban Room

Top

Lower

Lower

Above: Broadcast Booth at corner of Boylston and Exeter Street

Left: Cafe and studio within the Big Urban Room

Left: Library and Cafe Patrons observing live broadcast

Right: Cafe seating animating street life

Libraries today should embrace a sense of fun and discovery for library users of all ages. The BPL embraced this principle of Fun in their 2012 Compass Strategic Plan, calling for “recreational reading and media, invigorating programs, user-created content, and opportunities for exploration in settings that are stimulating and engaging.”2

The new Boylston Street Building--with its vivid color palette incorporated in new finishes, lighting, signage, and furniture--creates a warm and welcoming environment that embraces its role as a tourist destination, exhibition space, architectural attraction, and performance venue--a cultural and entertainment hub in the city of Boston.

A Tale of Two Modernist Libraries, ARCHITECT Magazine by Alexandra Lange

“Rawn has not approached the project with a light hand, but rather with a rainbow fist.”

Front door to Children’s Library

FIRST FLOOR

1. Entries

2. Boylston Hall including

3. Welcome Center

4. New and Novel: Display for new and popular books

5. Newsfeed Cafe and WGBH satellite broadcast station

6. Fiction

7. Tech Central Visitors log almost 1,000 computer sessions per day.

8. Movies and Music

9. New Restrooms near Service Desk

10. Borrower Services Desk Connected to new work room and loading

11. Connection to McKim

LOWER LEVEL

1. Rabb Auditorium

2. Rabb Lobby

Pre-function space with cafe; front door of Kirstein Business Library and Innovation Center and Digital Services

3. Kirstein Business Library and Innovation Center

4. Digital Services Houses Digital Public Library of America (DPLA), Internet Archive, and BPL’s digital imaging department; Digitizing studios on display from Rabb lobby; Two new storefronts

FLOOR PLANS

SECOND FLOOR

1. Reading Tables Overlooking Deferrari Hall

2. Collections for non-fiction

3. Reading Room

4. Reference

5. Children’s Library Interactive space with distinct ageappropriate zones

6. Teen Central with a Maker Space and Gaming Room

7. New Restrooms near Service Desk

MEZZANINE

1. Community Learning Center

2. Tech Classroom

3. Collaboration Spaces

4. Fiction Collection continues on the mezzanine and accessible with new open stair

REVIVING MID-CENTURY MODERN

Libraries’ architecture should embody the openness and accessibility appropriate to a public institution in a democratic culture. A 21st century library must offer an open, warm, and friendly environment, projecting - and delivering - a sense of welcome and invitation.

Mid-century modern architecture - often defined by heroic proportions and robust materials with neutral palettes (such as concrete and stone) arranged on a civic scale - can lack sensitivity to the user experience.

Moreover, many buildings of this era have been left in a state of neglect, because the solidness of the architecture makes renovation difficult. However, by balancing the architectural grandeur of the large spaces with new program and warm, inviting environments created by better lighting, natural materials and finishes, designers can bring humanscaled activity to the library experience.

HISTORY & TRANSFORMATION

Celebrating Mid-Century Modern

REENERGIZING THE BUILDING TO BE A LIBRARY OF THE FUTURE

Just as the McKim Building responded to the programmatic paradigms of its day, the Boylston Street Building was designed in response to ideas about the library of the 1960s and early 1970s. The building experienced very little change in the first 40 years after it was built.

Prior to the renovation, the library was faced with infrastructural shortcomings and architectural roadblocks to its vision of how it could serve the residents of Boston in the future - including an inflexible layout, poor public reception of both the exterior and interior of the building, difficult orientation at the entry, inadequate program spaces, and a lack of modern building systems.

The renovation of the Boylston Street Building offered an opportunity to advance a complementary vision of the future of the Boston Public Library, as a modern library deeply engaged in the life of the city, with physical collections and digital access points that are highly accessible to the public.

Philip Johnson’s Projects, Images Top to Bottom: Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts (1964); IDS Center (1972); The Beck House (1964); Boston Public Library (1972); Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute (1960)

“In the original design there were no windows. That’s a bit grim. The original design does look like an armory.”Philip Johnson 3

The Boylston Street Building in its original layout turned inward. Large monolithic granite screen walls at the first floor prevented visibility between inside and out.

A cavernous, largely empty entrance hall separated the library’s program spaces from the front door. Dark tinted and reflective glazing further obscured the view into the lobby. The opaque program of the Children’s and Teen departments and the staff workroom created a second layer of internal obstruction between the library and the street.

The connection to the McKim Building was narrow and hard to find. This situation restricted pedestrian flow between the two buildings and undermined the experience of the library as a whole.

By increasing the ceiling height and removing the internal barriers in the interior space along Boylston Street, the renovation design creates a greater sense of orientation and welcome.

This singular, open space filled with natural light allows users a broad overview of the library and provides a strong sense of how the building is organized. Johnson’s nine-square grid can be referenced in subtle ways through the ceiling and floor design.

BEFORE

Existing entry, devoid of activity and warmth

Walled off from the City

New Entry with most active spaces right at the front door and along city street

Transparent, inviting, immersed in the life of the City

BEFORE

Library interior cut off from the City by granite slabs and dark tinted glass

Sea of stacks

Most popular seating looking out to City through clear low-iron glass

New stair and landing as gathering place amid collection

PROJECT TEAM

William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc., Architect

William L. Rawn, FAIA

Clifford V. Gayley, FAIA

Sindu Meier, Andrew Jonic, Elizabeth Bondaryk, Robert Wear, Jeanne Carey, Jeffrey Olinger, Mark Oldham, Carla Ceruzzi, Christopher Flass, Linnea Coveney, Sophia Chang, Elizabeth Radich, Phillip Redpath, Daniel Bielenin.

Reed Hilderbrand LLC, Landscape Architecture

LeMessurier Consultants, Structural Engineer

Cosentini Associates, MEP Engineer

LAB [3.2] Architecture, Interior Architecture

Arrowstreet, Inc., Environmental Graphics and Signage Design

Small Design Firm, Inc., Interactive Digital Designer

Cavanaugh/Tocci Associates, Inc., Audiovisual and Acoustic Design

Lam Partners, Lighting Design

Nitsch Engineering, Civil Engineer

R.W. Sullivan Engineering, Code Consultant

The Green Engineer, Inc., Sustainability Consultant

Darlow Christ Architects, Newsfeed Café Architect

PMA Consultants, Inc., Owner’s Project Manager

Consigli Construction Co., Inc., Construction Manager

WGBH, Newsfeed Café

A Catered Affair, Newsfeed Café

Robert Benson Photography:

29B, 34A, 36, 37, 47A, 47B, 49A, 49B

© Millicent Harvey: p. iii

Historic Images: pp. 40A, 42A: Atlantic Photo Service, Inc. Boston Public Library. Web. www.flickriver. com/photos/boston_public_library/5393645098/

p. 40B: Pete Sieger. Crystal Court, IDS Center. Web. www.flickriver.com/photos/peterjsieger/

p. 40C: North Carolina Modernist Houses. The Beck House. Web. www.ncmodernist.org

p. 40D: © Mary Ann Sullivan

p. 40E: Hillary Lewis and John O’Connor. Philip Johnson: The Architect in his Own Words. New York: Rizzoli, 1994. p. 86

p. 42B: Hilary Lewis and John O’Connor. Philip Johnson: The Architect in his Own Words. New York: Rizzoli, 1994. p. 86

CREDITS

SPECIAL THANKS TO

CITY OF BOSTON

Mayor Martin J. Walsh

Patrick Brophy

CITY OF BOSTON PROPERTY & CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT

Patricia Lyons

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

David Leonard, Library President

Robert E. Gallery, Chairman of the Board of Trustees

THANKS ALSO TO

Mayor Thomas Menino, Amy Ryan, Jeffrey Rudman, Byron Rushing, Michael Colford, Eamon Shelton, Christine Schonhart, Beth Prindle, Ellen Donaghey, Jim Meade, Laura Koenig, Gina Perille, Melina Schuler, Joe Mulligan, Maureen Anderson, Jim McQueen, Dan Pierce, David Gallogly, Brian McLaughlin, Linda Polach, Elizabeth Stifel, Ellen Lipsey, Meredith Weenick, Chris Gordon.

END NOTES

1. John Palfrey. BiblioTech: Why Libraries Matter More Than Ever in the Age of Google. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

2. Gina Perille. The Boston Public Library Compass: Strategic Plan. p.31. http://www.bpl.org/compass/files/2012/05/bpl-compass-report-final-spreads-LR.pdf

3. Hilary Lewis and John O’Connor. Philip Johnson: The Architect in his Own Words. New York: Rizzoli, 1994. p. 87

This book was designed by William Rawn Associates, Architects, Inc.

Contacts: Principal Clifford V. Gayley, FAIA cgayley@rawnarch.com 617.423.3470

Principal William L. Rawn, FAIA wrawn@rawnarch.com

SPECIAL THANKS TO

CITY OF BOSTON

Mayor Martin J. Walsh

Patrick Brophy

CITY OF BOSTON PROPERTY & CONSTRUCTION MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT

Patricia Lyons

BOSTON PUBLIC LIBRARY

David Leonard, Library President

Robert E. Gallery, Chairman of the Board of Trustees