Heatherwick Studio has released details of their first commissioned public library project in the town of Columbia, Maryland.
Featuring a climbable façade, the five-story library opens to the city’s main promenade with a double-height atrium and a series of transversing exterior terraces lined with native plant species while providing sweeping views of nearby Lake Kittamaqundi.
The studio says its design is meant to “reflect the changed role of the library and serve a community with a rich heritage of fostering diversity and promoting wellbeing.”
Columbia was first developed as a planned community under the progressive vision of founder James Rouse, a prominent local developer known for espousing his conception of “cities as gardens for the growing of people.” Their contribution, therefore, looks to honor this legacy and will serve as a font for educational programs and other activities in line with Rouse’s philosophy.
“Columbia has always been driven by a socially radical vision,” partner Stuart Wood said in a press announcement. “This legacy inspired us to evolve the traditional library beyond books and into a new type of community center for broader learning and social exchange. A walkable, planted building that emerges from the lakeside landscape will house an amphitheater for events, play areas and light-filled rooms designed for working and learning anything from cooking to IT. This will be the community center everyone in Howard County deserves.”
Other interior elements include a café, teaching kitchen, makers’ lab, and children’s play areas. Heatherwick says to expect construction to start late in 2024. The library will open its doors to the public in the year 2027.
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There's something grotesque about their work - the architectural work to be exact. Parodies of the real thing - be it a forest, an island, an acorn, a field. Heatherwick's MO now is taking an object of nature and then blowing it up a thousand-fold into a mess of mirrored metal and glass, sometimes with a tree hat. Crude details galore.
I fear Heatherwick, like BIG, has become a cultural fad. (See Emperor, new clothes.)
Yeah. I get having a house style and standardizing their product line-up - you gain economies of scale and increase institutional knowledge by doing the same thing again and again, better each time. But Heatherwick, dios mio, just pumps out these garish looking parodies all over the world. And developers love it.
grotesque is a great word. i really find the work disgusting; it makes me queasy anytime i see a new proposal.
If the building holds up and sustains meaningful activity in the community, educational, social, and cultural, for x decades, I would have to say it is a successful design. I'm skeptical, of course.
It's a common solution now in community and educational construction, building around large communal spaces and opening up space inside and out and glazing everything so visitors, users can see each other and be seen. Supposedly this transparency encourages community and meaningful interaction, in intimate spaces as well as large. And I'm genuinely curious if it actually works. It feels like they're just glassing up space and putting greenery on top, hoping it will work. Break down walls and throw everybody together and magic will happen. I don't see much thought at all in this design. Is it capable of "fostering diversity and promoting wellbeing"? They're just throwing the pop words out
But if it works, it works.
Concerns:
Maintenance over the long haul. How difficult and expensive is it to maintain those landscaped terraces over the long haul? Such places have limited budgets. And if they don't keep the greenery up, what do you have?
The mission of libraries has changed over the years, but part of the attraction of libraries in the past was to have intimate, secluded spaces to pursue individual studies of whatever nature. You go to libraries to get away from the crowd and crowd thought and behavior. Here, everyone is exposed to all. I find this socially intimidating, not inspiring.
Noise. If the library is successful in drawing visitors and hosts large events, can it control noise throughout? Time was, libraries were quiet. Contemplation requires silence.
And if it down't draw visitors, you have wasted a lot of money on a vacant cavern.
Books are now only part of a library's function, but light is murder on books. It fades colors on bookends, etc. I don't see protection here.
Can they control ventilation and heating/cooling well with all this glass? Will it turn into a greenhouse? How much more expensive is ac with this design?
Cf. BIG's student center for Johns Hopkins: https://archinect.com/news/article/150236637/big-selected-to-design-new-hopkins-student-center
Strange recall of The (now-closed) Vessel. Unfortunate choice. Isn't this only their 2nd US project?
Not everything that avoids the box is unnatural or grotesque (more the opposite if we are being honest)
Not sure why but it reminds me of the Geisel library at UC San Diego. The interior has some superficial resemblance at least. Maybe its just the formal wildness of it all, tied to human experience instead of classical truths...
Something about Heatherwick's architecture attracts discomfort from architects, but joy with its users. It looks like it will be a great library, though the issues Gary raises could be real. The one library that I visited that could offer a clue is the OMA library in Doha. It was I think much larger, and was not too loud by any means, in spite of being a place for families to visit. Libraries have long since become closer to community centres than places to sit in quiet contemplation. Noise and distraction are part of the program. How it functions beyond that is more about community planning than architectural planning. At the very least this is a place that feels welcoming. Not a small thing...
In celebration of this day:
Cheers erupted in the streets of Manhattan early this morning after news broke that the Hudson Yards Vessel will soon be a thing of the past. In a joint statement today, the Vessel’s designer Thomas Heatherwick and Hudson Yard’s developer, Related Companies, announced that the 150-foot-tall copper-clad staircase will be dismantled for safety reasons. Instead, a digital rendering of the structure will be sold as a non-fungible token (NFT) in an auction next month. Earnings from the sale will be used to cover the costs of disassembling the structure.
https://hyperallergic.com/632718/hudson-yards-vessel-to-be-dismantled-april-1/
(This was an April 1 prank that appeared a few years ago.)
We prefer this April 1 prank from 2019, but we’re a little biased…
IKEA Buys Naming Rights to Heatherwick’s Vessel at Hudson Yards
Best ever. You should resurrect this periodically.
Surrounded by parking lots and modernist suburbanism, there's nothing welcoming about this carnival of glass and cantilevers. Given all the ramps, maybe Elon Musk will retrofit it for his latest Tesla show room, once you wipe off the green washing. At least it's tied to human experience instead of classical truths...!)
Carnival is the word. See below.
This context is boxy/modern, though the buildings aren't offensive and I assume are adequate. The site is accessible, and with the water and landscape it allows promise and possibility for transformation. If Columbia has the "social vision" the post claims, such a building could hold great potential for the community.
A community center/library is a special place that can set the tone and character for a neighborhood. It might embody an expressive message that could inspire a vision of society and guide over time. For architecture, it can provide a type different from that of the commercial and residential constructions that dominate the landscape, offering alternative forms, alternative ways of understanding the built environment.
Instead, we get the Heatherwick, which is self-effacing—it covers itself in greenery—and at the same time obtrusive. He stands outside of both history and the present, and ignores the millennia of architectural discussions, on his own. He is talking to himself.
And I don't see any point to it. The facade is arch in its expression, playful, funky, and sort of suggestive—it looks like a crouching animal or something else that exists only in Heatherwick's imagination, something unnaturally natural.
It reminds me of the ethos and expression of an amusement park.
Then there is the giant birdbath. As in so much of Heatherwick's work, a suggestive or symbolic form is enlarged into something that is monstrous and precious—grotesque.
A ceremonial hall at entry might be in order, but this one is oversized and vacuous. What is the social vision here? What social interaction is encouraged? Are people going to gather in the central circle? To do what? Stand around? Are they going to sit around and above the circle and read or watch those in the center? Take selfies of each other?
Etc.
It is an apt expression for the Age of Fluff. It's where we are.
agree it is indulgent and the symbolism is not exactly part of the canon. It is very attractive though, unlike modernism at its height, an architecture that regular people can get behind. His work is more like Venturi than Mies, so the carnival connection makes sense. As for how the public will act, the answer is we dont know. The Doha library by OMA seemed equally grandiose (if brilliant), but it turns out that families want to go there for a whole number of social reasons, so it turns out to be an amazing place for community that was probably never intended. Here there is an intention, or a declaration at least, and seems there is space enough. AND as you point out there is the carnival thing going on. Why wouldnt people go there? I dont think we can judge the building based on how people will act and whether they have the right behavioral prediction algorithm embedded in the curves and open spaces. None of us know what that is. At the very least it can accommodate visitors and it is open enough to change. The rest is about community programming, a matter for the librarians and managers. Libraries are amazing places in recent years, taking on all kinds of community functions, from incubating businesses to after-school classes. Who knows what this place will be. Maybe its just gonna be a place to look at books, but that is unlikely given the declared intent. That the city around the site is not nice is certainly true, but not much of an argument for making a nice thing. Maybe it leads to more good stuff for the area. Stranger things have happened.
Wish I was @ home with my library (instead of living in a van by the river) but I have a book w/ an interview with Denise Scott Brown. There's an amazing quote in there from her (paraphrasing) about the joys of creating architecture - the intellectual challenge of shaping a program into a usable space, and then the surprise and delight that comes with seeing people using your building, especially using it in a way you didn't anticipate.
Libraries can be contained in a 8”x10” iPad. All physical libraries are now “fluff.” Instead (my landscape is going to show) create parks and outdoor areas conducive to reading…shade from glare…snacks…etc. We can reduce the mass of the library by 95% and probably have a more versatile dynamic space.
One small note - the “giant birdbath” is an existing feature.
It's a shame we can't get follow-up studies, Will. I'd especially be curious to hear from the staff over time. I'm really curious—and skeptical—as to how the Heatherwick will play out. It feels vapid, mindless, and trendy.
Much is shown in his library that we see elsewhere. First it represents a view that bringing people together, lots of them, where they can see each other and be seen, is somehow meaningful, is an expression of "community." It is a Facebook mentality, and we see where that has got us. Abandoned is any sense of variation, of difference, of meaningful separation, of meaningful integration. Just throw everybody together where they can vie for attention, get lost in the crowd.
And it represents a trend in recent construction that supports such a mentality, largely through transparency, architecture of glass that is barely architecture. Ignored is any recognition of contexts of time and place, of cultural discussion, of continuity, of disruption, of the history of architecture itself. You don't get the sense that such architecture spends any time with any of these, and it shows. Somehow, we've gone beyond all that—where? To this Heatherwick adds an element of big top, P. T. Barnum ("there's a sucker born every minute") showmanship. The design works largely to draw crowds and bring attention to itself, not present some meaningful symbol that might guide the community
There has to be some way to measure success, and it can't be raw numbers. Heatherwick's Vessel, which this center resembles, drew crowds, up until it had to be closed because of suicides. It has to be the most pointless expression of our time. Success has to be measured in meaningful activity, which will be reflected as much in small group activity as larger. Maintaining some relationship to preserving and spreading knowledge has to be the core of its identity, else why build it? Ways to do that change, so the program will have to be flexible and be able to adapt.
Such a building also has to be able to weather changes in moods and behavior. There will be times when people stay away for stretches, when the institution needs to weather the drought and preserve its vital functions, regardless. At such times, this library would become an empty shell.
Aalto's Säynätsalo Town Hall, above, combines several separate functions—library, commercial space, offices, and, significantly, at the top, the town hall itself—in a varied yet integrated whole. The steps have been used for plays. It promotes the idea of variety within integration, and literally and figuratively gives a notion of society. It stands apart from and at the same time reflects its natural environment. Its relationship with past architecture, especially that of old Italian towns, and with modern would take a long discussion, which is the point. And at some 70 years old, it is still going strong.
I’m suspicious of buildings garnished with plants.
isn't that your job though?
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