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Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library

Mecanoo and Beyer Blinder Belle Architects & Planners

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Innovation
Functionality
Creativity
Eco-Social Impact
Total
JURY VOTES
Governmental Interior
4.77
6.57
4.85
5.59
5.44
Gokhan Avcioglu
Gokhan Avcioglu Principal and Founder at Global Architecture Development
7
7
6
7
6.75
Benjamin Iborra Wicksteed
Benjamin Iborra Wicksteed Partner and Creative Director at Mesura
3
5
4
3
3.75
Eric Wang
Eric Wang Head of Marketing and E-Commerce APAC at Duravit
5.93
5.4
5.97
5
5.58
Tessa Mansfield
Tessa Mansfield Chief Creative Officer at Stylus
5.5
5
5.5
6.25
5.56
Lene Utbjoe
Lene Utbjoe Discipline Lead at Henning Larsen
6
5
6
4
5.25
Agata Kurzela
Agata Kurzela Founder and Design Director at Agata Kurzela Studio
6.5
7
6
7
6.63
Andras Klopfer
Andras Klopfer Managing Partner at BWM Retail
A nice concept in harmony with the...
6.5
6.5
6.5
6.5
6.5
John Lam
John Lam Co-Founder and Design Strategist at State of Culture
The Japanese Zen garden space offer...
4.72
5.3
4.72
4.92
4.92
Victoria Schneyer
Victoria Schneyer Global Head of Store Design at Hugo Boss
4
7
6
5
5.5
Norman-Henner Plattner
Norman-Henner Plattner Head of Store Development at The KaDeWe Group
6
6
5
5
5.5
Client
New York Public Library
Floor area
16722 ㎡
Completion
2020
Budget
$145M
Social Media
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Furniture

SNFL is a new-generation library for all New Yorkers, with special facilities for young users, adult learning, and business. It offers the perfect contemporary complement to NYPL’s world-famous Stephen A. Schwarzman Building (SASB), located across Fifth Avenue from SNFL. SASB opened in 1911, designed by architects Carrère & Hastings in a glorious Beaux-Art style, and receives over 1.7 million visits a year as the mothership of NYPL’s reference collections. New features at SNFL reflect this harmony between the buildings: long tables that recall the impressive scale of those in SASB’s Rose Main Reading Room, ceiling artwork in the Long Room that echoes the neo-classical paintings set in SASB’s ceilings, and the use of classic materials including natural stone, terrazzo, and oak. SNFL has an annual circulation of two million items, and this sheer volume generates challenges in access, organization, and storage. The design solution offers more space, more books, more seats, and lower shelves. The heart of the library is the Long Room, a new space that truly brings the idea of a library into the old structure, which was originally designed as a department store. This dramatic linear atrium separates three floors of flexible, daylit reading areas on one side and five levels of book stacks on the other, a creative and efficient solution to balancing the need for a browsable collection and the desire for more public reading room space. Above the Long Room, the fifth and sixth floors host the Business Center and the Pasculano Learning Center facilities. SNFL now delivers to the Midtown cityscape a sensational new public roof attraction and a striking sculptural addition. Elevators and stairs continue to the seventh floor, which is built at the original building’s roof level. This new floor has pitched wood slat ceilings and contains a flexible 268-occupant conference and event center. An L-shaped roof terrace runs above the 40th Street and Fifth Avenue facades and includes a roof garden and an adjacent indoor café. It is Manhattan’s only free, publicly-accessible roof terrace and offers staggering Midtown views, including across Fifth Avenue to the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building and surrounding skyscrapers. Above the seventh floor, a dramatic new roof slopes up to cover mechanical equipment, reaching 56m (184 feet) above street level. Its angled pitches, and a patinated copper-colored aluminum surface, are inspired by Manhattan’s Beaux Art copper-clad mansard roofs, two 1904 examples of which are visible from the terrace. As a new native New Yorker, the form also nods to the tapering spires of New York’s art deco skyscrapers and faceted facades of its newer towers.