Archinect - News

Lovely Hunters Point Library is actually lacking in terms of universal design

2019-10-04T07:00:00-04:00

“I think it looks really beautiful," said Frank Wu, the president of Court Square Civic Association, a group in Long Island City that tries to encourage smart development. [...] “There are a ton of stairs but only a single elevator,” he said, adding that accessibility has long been an issue in Long Island City, which has seen the number of young families with strollers balloon in recent years.

A much-lauded new library in New York City's Long Island City district designed by Steven Holl Architects might have serious shortcomings when it comes to accessibility and universal design.

The library's fiction collections are organized along a set of tiered levels that can only be accessed via staircase. Photo © Steven Holl Architects.

As patrons have flocked to the library, it has been discovered that certain areas are less accessible than others, including the library's fiction aisles, which are set along multiple tiered levels that are only accessible via stairs.

Joe Bachner, a resident who visited the library, told Gothamist, "If you can’t walk, you can’t go through that area."

In order to overcome this situation, Gothamist reports, librarians are available to go up and select books for library patrons, as necessary.

A decade in the making, Steven Holl's Queens Library prepares for its grand opening

2019-09-19T15:48:00-04:00

The Hunters Point Community Library is one of the finest public buildings New York has produced this century. But it cost more than $40 million, took a decade and almost died.

NYT architecture critic Michael Kimmelman is full of praise for the Steven Holl Architects-designed Hunters Point Community Library in Queens which will finally be opening to the public next week Tuesday, September 24th.

Impression of the under-construction library building in November 2017. Photo: Jim Henderson/Wikimedia Commons

"Compact, at 22,000 square feet and 82 feet high, the library is among the finest and most uplifting public buildings New York has produced so far this century," writes Kimmelman and asks: "Why can’t New York build more things like this, faster and cheaper?"

Construction of Steven Holl-designed Queens Library is underway

2015-05-22T16:20:00-04:00

Construction of the forthcoming Queens Library has begun at Center Boulevard and 48th Avenue in Hunters Point of NYC's Long Island City. Steven Holl Architects won the commission back in 2010 to design the new $30.6 million public library. Surrounded by recently built skyscraper condominiums and nearby attractions like the Gantry waterfront and Louis Kahn's Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park, the Queens Library is set up to become the latest landmark for the changing neighborhood.

The library's new design was developed in effort to provide more communal space for local residents and create new connections to surrounding areas in the neighborhood. The library is encased within an exposed concrete square volume coated in aluminum for a "subtle sparkle". Users would move up and along a series of bookshelf-flanked stairs and will encounter the separate children's, teen, and adult areas of the building's fluid program. Glazed cuts in the facade also further open up the building and give views o...