Angela DeGeorge

This thesis investigation lies at the nexus between urban ecology, architectural form, and library programming.

These three issues come together in a design proposal for a new branch Library in Gowanus, Brooklyn.

The public library is arguably the most democratic space in an American city. The library has always been a sanctuary, but it has shifted from a predominantly quiet, introverted space to a buzzing social hub. As the library evolves alongside society, it is constantly adapting within its shell, especially in New York City. New Yorkers rely on their libraries more than ever for economic opportunity and social wellbeing. The city’s three public library systems have experienced a forty percent spike in the number of people attending programs and a fifty-nine percent increase in circulation over the past decade. We are living in the digital age, but the continued importance of urban libraries, as thriving physical places–filled with people, books and computers–is certain.

Angela Marie DeGeorge Master of Architecture David Leven Paul Goldberger

An Investigation of the Urban Branch Library

THE SPACE OF OVERLAP

“A library outranks any other one thing a community can do to benefit its people. It is a never-failing spring in the desert.” – Andrew Carnegie

Branch libraries are stretched thin because they are asked to do so much and adapt to a range of programs and increased attendance. This often creates tensions between the collective and the individual or between the loud spaces and the quiet spaces. Brooklyn is serviced by sixty libraries, but some areas of the borough are more than one mile to the nearest branch, and many branches are not large enough to meet the demands of the building with the average size of a New York City branch library being twelve thousand eight hundred square feet.

This thesis asks how architecture can express these tensions through the language of overlap. Overlap is a motif within the study a branch library’s program. For example, within the same thousand square feet of library in New York City, you might find a group of teens doing homework after school, an elderly local resident checking out a new book, homeless person taking refuge, a toddler learning to read, and an immigrant strengthening their English language skills.

Overlap is also a perceived condition of the site, both socially and physically. Gowanus is an appropriate candidate for a new branch library as the neighborhood is changing with the prospect of a clean waterfront on the horizon.

Even in its current toxic state due to industrial canal pollution, the Gowanus is spotted with new developments that target a high-income demographic. At the same time, public housing is a significant anchor in Gowanus with over four thousand five hundred residents from the Gowanus Houses, Wyckoff Gardens and Warren St. Houses. As the neighborhood is facing the pressure of climbing rental rates, the thesis suggests that a new branch library would help to stabilize the community and bridge connections between existing and incoming communities. Situated at the southwest corner of Nevins St. and Butler St., the Gowanus Library steaks out a truly public space at the head of the canal to act as an entry point to the water’s edge.

Any built intervention on the Gowanus must respond to the site’s current and future ecological concerns related to water. Even after the Environmental Protection Agency carries out its proposed remediation efforts to clean the canal, an active Superfund site, vulnerability to flooding and combined sewer overflows will remain serious issues.

The project begins by working with the water, green infrastructure, and the public plaza as overlapping elements to create a safe and clean habitat that enhances access to the canal. The topography of the proposed public plaza brings patrons up to enter the ground floor above the design flood elevation. A key component of any urban storm-water strategy is the ability of the site to retain, absorb, and distribute surges. This proposal achieves this through the combined use of subterranean gravel beds and coastal vegetation plantings, which not only regulate the flow of the storm surge, but also clean and filter it prior to releasing it into the municipal system.

Over fifty thousand square feet of library rest above this ground system. The building is an exercise in creating public space using modernist principles of form and composition. The project is an arrangement of solid bars containing discreet programs. The bars are composed to emphasize the language of overlap, and to create a sense of porosity on the site. The bars overlap, but do not rest directly on top of one another. Instead, they float above one another creating terraces with three hundred and sixty degree views of Brooklyn and the water. The bars are supported by a diagrid cylinder that skewers each joint of the building.

Inside each of these cores is the circulation–joyful spiraling stairs wrapped in copper. The cores are created as places to gather or to read as well as to move vertically through the building. A patron can exit the oversized staircase onto a landing to sit in a lounge chair underneath an oculus open to the sky. The glorified cores are both collective and circulatory spaces that constitute the overlap between otherwise autonomous bars–they connect the patron from one program to the next.

The bars vary in length, width, and height to accommodate these programs. The longest bar runs north-south and contains two levels of study areas, classrooms, and conference rooms that all overlook the canal. The highest bar is a special space used for community events. It cantilevers over the public plaza and looks south onto the canal.

Underneath this cantilever, anyone in the plaza notices that the underside of each bar is clad in reflective metal, playfully mirroring the social activity of the plaza as well as the vegetation and the copper staircases.

[1] Location of public libraries (yellow) and after school programs (pink) near Gowanus

[2] Site Plan at the southwest corner of Nevins St. and Butler St.

The project uses these moments of playfulness combined with a modernist approach to create beautiful, functional, and valuable civic space at the head of Gowanus. And the formal strategy of this thesis–the expression of overlap– posits how the architecture of libraries can respond to an evolving program.

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West Perspective

[4] Diagram of program tensions and overlap concept

community events space

study carrels classrooms & music rooms

workshare business & career center

cores: diagrid structure, stairs, elevator & breakout meeting spots

staff & book sorting

children’s library

entry & reference desk

gowanus canal

coastal vegetation

public plaza

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Exploded Program Diagram

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Section Model

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Section Model Detail

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Section Drawing

[9] [10] [11]

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Northeast corner and Entry

[10] Model Detail

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Southwest Perspective