Ridgefield Library

RIDGEFIELD LIBRARY RESTORED RENEWED RESTATED

RIDGEFIELD LIBRARY RESTORED RENEWED RESTATED

PREFACE

A LIBRARY FOR THE TWENTIETH FIRST CENTURY We live now in a digital universe, its content available apparently everywhere, apparently limitless, with answers seemingly always at hand. In this ever-expanding space, the public library - physical, tangible - is a place where the people of a community seek support, one another, community itself. It is a place for all to find that they can experience a sense of belonging within that universe, themselves part of it, as beneficiaries and contributors.

So, if it was ever imagined that, in the face of ever-proliferating new digital media, the public library would fade into insignificance, recent history tells a different story. Far from fading, the public library has found new purpose and meaning in the life of society, taking on more roles, and becoming increasingly important for people of all ages - as a locus for community.

The Ridgefield Library project is a building restoration and addition in the Connecticut town of Ridgefield. It restores a much-valued work of public architecture, a symbol of the town, and adds new space to realize a twenty first century vision of what a public library can be in the life of the community it serves.

Newman Architects

PLANNING & DESIGN

Ridgefield Library ca. 1908

Ridgefield Library is located on one of the finest small town main streets in New England. Placed in a park-like setting, the original Beaux-Arts library building, constructed in 1903, is red brick trimmed with limestone, and although not one of the many Carnegie libraries built in Connecticut, it has a corresponding demeanor - diminutive yet monumental.

Behind the original building was a collection of additions, which deferred to it in material and overall scale. Outmoded, too small, unable to meet expectations that were changing rapidly, inefficient and physically inflexible, the building also required major renovation as well as expansion.

The original single storey building facing Main Street remains in place to anchor the library in place and in time, symbolically asserting that just as Ridgefield Library was there in the past, so too it will be there for the future. The old additions are gone, replaced by a new building that increases the floor area of the library from 23,000 square feet on two floors to 44,000 square feet on three floors. The new addition provides interior space that is flexible from exterior wall to exterior wall, which enables functional needs to drive interior spatial configuration, rather than the other way round, and will allow space to be reshaped as needs change in the future.

The former library building did little to acknowledge from the interior what lay

outside – small windows and a deep floor plate resulted in minimal visual connection between the two. This characteristic is expressive of the role of the library in the past, a role it played for centuries: as a repository of the sources of knowledge, which it committed to protect from the depredations of a hostile world. With the sources of knowledge now ubiquitous, the need to be seen this way is no longer necessary or meaningful - physically or symbolically. The new library is now part of everywhere else. It is part of the world that surrounds it. Now there are large banks of windows that enable people to see in, and to see out to the outdoors so that broad swathes of the townscape are part of the interior experience - a unifying of the interior space of the library and its setting. In this way, the universality of its

contents and its role in the life of society are also framed and informed by what is unique to it - its specific place in the physical and human geography of Ridgefield, which inherently can be found nowhere else.

In plan and section, the new locks into its location - the sloping topography of the site, the street and a new lower level courtyard which it shares with what is now a neighboring community movie theater. Where traditional library design called for one entrance, this new library has entrances at every level, including a reopened front door on Main Street, which had been closed since 1984. By this means the library becomes a place of crossing of town paths that pass through the building, so linking its spaces to those of the town beyond its walls.

SITE PLAN before

Although much smaller than its addition, the original library retains it prominence on Main Street. It defines the library.

The addition takes direction from the old library building. It is lower, and accepts the brick and limestone palette of the original as given. Whereas the old building used the architectural language and ornament of the Beaux-Arts to show that it brought the world to the town, so making Ridgefield part that world, the brick and limestone of the new describe the library as a place of light, space, and connection, a melding of town and library fabric to create a place where town and library are one.

Community Theater

SITE PLAN

The Erechtheion The ruin of the Erechtheion, a temple on the Acropolis in Athens, shows how shifts in scale and modest articulation of the footprint reduce the impression of a large mass. This was our approach to building a large addition to a small building at Ridgefield Library.

Friends Entrance

Meeting

Courtyard

LEVEL ONE

Entrance

A ‘square’ footprint results in a low ratio of perimeter to floor area, enabling higher energy efficiency for every square foot of space in the library than in less efficient floor plans.

At the library, this made it possible to almost double the size of the library without adding height or significantly increasing its scale.

Technical Services

Program

Commons

Children

Terrace

LEVEL TWO

Administration Meeting

Collection

Reading

Entrance

Teens

Meeting

Reading

LEVEL THREE

Restoration of the 1902 building involved relieving its interior spaces of the responsibility to do more than be places to read, so allowing the architecture to assume greater importance as an object for reflection in its own right. The new addition carries most of the responsibility for delivering the program of the library, and reflects the emphasis on access to natural light, making visual connections, and the provision for flexibility, which is integral to a library of the 21st century.

HIGH PERFORMANCE DESIGN Ridgefield Library obtained LEED ‘Silver’ certification from the US Green Building Council, acknowledgement of its contribution to the pursuit of environmental sustainability.

Energy efficiency at the library begins with the building envelope, which is highly insulated, tightly sealed, and, due to the almost square footprint, is small relative to floor area, so reducing the surface area for thermal transfer to the outdoors.

Windows are located to harvest natural light, while the floor plans bring people near the windows to read, resulting in less need for artificial light and improved connection between interior and exterior environments. Exterior overhangs and insulated, tinted glass reduce glare and heat gain, and window blinds control entry of direct sunlight according to the time of day.

Energy conservation extends to the lighting design, which uses fixtures that are both energy-efficient and sensor-controlled to respond to occupancy, user need, and the level of natural lighting during the course of the day.

In most areas, heating and cooling is accomplished with a highly efficient and compact variable refrigerant flow system that also enabled the addition to have a lower floor to floor height, reducing both the new building mass in relation to the original library, its volume, and the quantity of materials required for construction, compared to conventional design.

Throughout, plumbing fixtures are designed to reduce water use, while outside, the landscape architecture uses indigenous plants that require minimal watering.

Building materials for the project were sourced locally and specified to utilize recycled content and to be low in emissions to provide high interior air quality.

ARCHITECT Newman Architects PC

MEP/FP ENGINEER Kohler Ronan STRUCTURAL ENGINEER DiSalvo Ericson Group

PHOTOGRAPHY Robert Benson Photography

CIVIL ENGINEER Tighe and Bond LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT Towers Golde LIGHTING CONSULTANT Atelier Ten SUSTAINABILITY Sage Design and Consulting

Founded in 1964, Newman Architects provides master planning, programming, architectural and interior design services.

A knowledge-driven practice, Newman Architects works to make evocative, thoughtful and sustainable environments that advance human wellbeing.

With a focus on architecture for community, work, and learning, and completed projects in cities and towns, and on campuses across the U.S., the quality of our work has been acknowledged with over 150 awards for design excellence.

Newman Architects has offices in New Haven, Connecticut, and Washington, DC.

CONSTRUCTION MANAGER Dimeo Construction Company www.newmanarchitects.com info@newmanarchitects.com 203 772 1990

300 YORK STREET NEW HAVEN CT 06511 1054 31ST ST NW WASHINGTON, DC 20007 WWW.NEWMANARCHITECTS.COM INFO@NEWMANARCHITECTS.COM COPYRIGHT © 2017