Sustainable, Library

University of Florida Library West

Gainesville, Florida | Completed 2008
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The addi­tion to and ren­o­va­tion of Library West at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da was a direct out­growth of the pro­gram and goals devel­oped by the library staff. The main objec­tive was to cre­ate a state-of-the-art library that held 1.25 mil­lion vol­umes, seat approx­i­mate­ly 1600 patrons, and ade­quate­ly house the library staff. The project includ­ed the con­struc­tion of a three-sto­ry, 60,000-square-foot addi­tion, and ren­o­va­tion of the exist­ing 117,000 square feet dis­trib­uted on six (6) floors.

The design goals were to expand, repro­gram, and refur­bish the 40-year-old facil­i­ty to respond appro­pri­ate­ly to con­tem­po­rary library needs with the avail­abil­i­ty of tech­nol­o­gy, user func­tion­al­i­ty, access to and stor­age of the col­lec­tions, staff oper­a­tions, and client ser­vice. The pri­ma­ry objec­tives were the hous­ing of the col­lec­tion under strict envi­ron­men­tal con­trol and pro­vid­ing for user seats with a wide vari­ety of con­fig­u­ra­tions and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy applications.

The goal was to cre­ate com­fort­able set­tings for both pri­vate study and group inter­ac­tion with broad access to many media sources. Key library issues were wayfind­ing, access to ser­vices, secu­ri­ty and con­trol with the dif­fer­ing spa­tial and envi­ron­men­tal require­ments of patrons and collections.

The Team devel­oped a design con­cept that pro­vid­ed a trans­par­ent north façade to reveal the library’s activ­i­ty. This design strat­e­gy empha­sizes the building’s essen­tial pur­pos­es, as well as pre­sent­ing a wel­com­ing pres­ence to the com­mu­ni­ty. The two-sto­ry trans­par­ent glass exte­ri­or wall pro­vides a visu­al con­nec­tion at the main entrance and cre­ates a pow­er­ful con­nec­tion between the library and the Plaza of the Americas.

The design and con­struc­tion process was heav­i­ly influ­enced by the University’s goal of attain­ing a Lead­er­ship in Ener­gy and Envi­ron­men­tal Design (LEED) rat­ing for the project. The LEED require­ments were inte­grat­ed with the oth­er build­ing objec­tives in the first kick-off meet­ing. The ear­ly iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of the sus­tain­able strate­gies for the project impact­ed key deci­sions con­cern­ing archi­tec­tur­al lay­out, site design, and major build­ing systems. 

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Main circulation desk

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The col­lab­o­ra­tive build­ing deliv­ery process includ­ed active par­tic­i­pa­tion from the project team mem­bers from the Library Staff, Facil­i­ties Plan­ning and Con­struc­tion, Archi­tect Engi­neer­ing Team, Con­trac­tor, and Com­mis­sion­ing Agent.

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A part­ner­ing ses­sion was con­duct­ed dur­ing design to align the goals and objec­tives among the team mem­bers. This activ­i­ty was par­tic­u­lar­ly valu­able to the project’s suc­cess by estab­lish­ing expec­ta­tions and com­mu­ni­ca­tions among all the stakeholders.

Infor­ma­tion for the project was gath­ered using:

  • Ques­tion­naires to estab­lish space require­ments relat­ing to size, build­ing sys­tems, tech­nol­o­gy, and adjacencies
  • Inter­ac­tive inter­views with the Library staff
  • Research of sys­tems and mate­ri­als to sup­port the project’s func­tion­al objec­tives and sustainability 
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The Library West Addi­tion and Ren­o­va­tion was suc­cess­ful on many lev­els includ­ing meet­ing the bud­get and sched­ule, as well as achiev­ing the func­tion­al, oper­a­tional and sus­tain­able build­ing goals of the Uni­ver­si­ty. Much of this due to the team part­ner­ing, but specif­i­cal­ly the deci­sion to bring the gen­er­al con­trac­tor on board dur­ing the design phase as part of the project team. 

The con­trac­tor was includ­ed in all major design meet­ings, and respon­si­ble for the cost esti­mat­ing through­out design con­clud­ing with sub­mit­ting a guar­an­teed min­i­mum price (GMP) to the Uni­ver­si­ty. The inter­face between the AE and con­trac­tor proved invalu­able in con­struct­ing the build­ing with­in bud­get and on-time, but also in accom­plish­ing many of the LEED credits.

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Quiet study room

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The South façade was opened up dra­mat­i­cal­ly on the low­er two floors pro­vid­ing a strong visu­al con­nec­tion to the main open space on the campus.

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His­toric Build­ing Near The New Build­ing Library West is bound­ed to the east and west by his­toric Ander­son Hall and Flint Hall, to the south by the Plaza of the Amer­i­c­as, and to the north by the City of Gainesville.

The addi­tion com­pletes the pub­lic edge of the cam­pus, cre­ates an urban park per the Uni­ver­si­ty Mas­ter Plan, and estab­lish­es itself as a new land­mark reflect­ing the scale and char­ac­ter of the Goth­ic-style build­ings flank­ing each side of the site.

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Com­pact mobile shelv­ing was used to max­i­mize stor­age in the small­est pos­si­ble build­ing vol­ume. How­ev­er, the system’s weight pre­clud­ed its use in the upper floors of the exist­ing struc­ture. With this in mind, the deci­sion was made to devote most of the first floor to com­pact shelv­ing and design the sec­ond and third floors of new struc­ture for com­pact shelving. 

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A rein­forced con­crete waf­fle-slab sys­tem was used to min­i­mize the struc­tur­al depth and match the ele­va­tions of exist­ing adjoin­ing floors. This strat­e­gy proved cost effec­tive since it elim­i­nat­ed the need to struc­tural­ly alter the major­i­ty of the exist­ing building.

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