COMHAIRLE CONTAE ÁTHA CLIATH THEAS
SOUTH DUBLIN COUNTY COUNCIL

south dublin county council crest

MEETING OF ARTS-CULTURE- GAEILGE-EDUCATION AND LIBRARIES SPC

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

HEADED ITEM NO. 3

Report on Design Approach to Branch Libraries

Current thinking in Library Building design

1. LIBRARY SPACES

What are we looking for in the design of a library space in the 21st Century?

At one end of this scale, the space serves as a place where the individual user can have his or her individual need met. The floor plan, furniture and IT facilities are arranged so that users can find and use the library's offers, either on their own in peace and quiet, or in one-to-one conversations with library staff. This calls for clarity in the floor plan, clear signage, easy retrieval of materials within all media and media platforms, and visible access to help. At the other end of the scale, emphasis is placed on developing the library into an open, public meeting space, where citizens can meet others in a casual context. This could be a lounge with newspapers, where the library becomes a third place between home and work.

 One challenge in this connection is that the reflection or quiet spaces in the library are often located close to main areas and that they may therefore end up being more of a statement of intent than actual spatiality and positioning that support the possibility of finding peace and quiet for concentration. It is then interesting to discuss in this connection that many users – not least younger ones – often choose to position themselves close to the library's main area and life, despite the fact that they are seemingly occupied by activities that require peace and quiet. And this is regardless of the fact that the library makes it possible to withdraw to more peaceful surroundings. They want to sit close to the community that creates diversion and dynamics without necessarily participating actively in the community. They cultivate what architect Jan Gehl calls 'passive contacts'.

The library space should also inspire and arouse curiosity through interactive and vivid communication of its offers.

Combining all these aspects into a building plan can be difficult but they can be broken down into the following four main areas.

1.1 Learning Spaces

 Learning at the library has typically been orientated towards improving reading skills and towards providing information search and IT competences needed in the digital age. The library also supports education and the educational system. This is done by making books and other materials available, by offering places for people to work and read, and by offering different forms of help, ranging from personal assistance with information search to solving PC problems and offering actual teaching, e.g. in the form of introductions to digital services and similar.

The library's classical learning space in the pre-digital age was the reading room, which offered peace and quiet to work and provided access to key handbooks and reference works. In the digital age, more flexible spaces are needed.

Ideally, the library's learning spaces therefore need to cover a multitude of entrances to information, entrances that appeal to different needs, age groups and learning forms.

The challenge is to create spaces that:

As for the spaces where educational activities and other organised learning take place, the most consistent experience is that the space needs to be completely or partially closed off, as it has proved difficult to retain focus if teaching is organised in an open corner of the adult lending section. Glass walls are a solution that creates closed spaces while at the same time they allow the activity to contribute to creating visible life at the library.

This new branch library would be a space offering access to employment and career information, assistance with online job applications, skills training and free public Internet and computing access coupled with long opening hours. Free Wi Fi facilities and collections of business books, magazines and newspapers also offer the entrepreneur a space in which to read and learn. Enterprise support and start up guidance will also be offered. 

1.2. Inspirational Spaces

One of the library's key missions is to give its users new, meaningful experiences through storytelling and artistic expressions within literature, film, music, games, events etc.  Thus, the library's inspiration space needs to tell stories and be communicative and changeable.

The inspiration space needs to make it possible both for more purposeful users to serve themselves and for 'grazing' users with more time available to find inspiration for new experiences.

Clear signage, references and other spatial markers that make it easier to find what you are looking for can also stimulate users' curiosity.

1.3. Meeting Spaces

New Norwegian research has also shown that the profile of the group that uses the library for other things than borrowing is wider than the group that borrows. One key conclusion is that the library has a great potential for being a meeting place across ethnic, social and economic barriers, and for playing a part as a vital player in the local community.

The fact that all library users have the same status and access to the library's spaces helps give the library its special character. The library space is an integration arena, both ethnically and socially, and at the library, people can walk between different life spheres because the library is used in connection with different life roles and ages

All parts of the library should constitute settings for people's encounters. The library's entrance space and main space need to appear openly inviting. The challenge is to create spaces that are flexible and spacious enough to provide room both for quiet concentration and for discussing project groups.

The library meeting space is not private or 'at home', and nor is it 'work'. This third place needs to be open and yet have a good atmosphere. It should have many different offers so that all visitors experience that there is something suitable for them.

The library's meeting spaces need to cover three important dimensions. One dimension stretches between the intimate, almost private space and the completely public, open square. The second dimension covers meeting spaces that can contain both organised teaching and more unorganised, spontaneous meetings. The third dimension is about scaling – there should be room for both small and large meetings.

The greatest spectrum is found in relation to unorganised or citizen-organised meetings. One end of the spectrum can be a cafe, while at the other end, it can be a couple of armchairs placed, for instance, in a shielded corner, encouraging people to sit down and chat. It can be the furniture in a newspaper reading area that is organised so that it is easy to talk to other readers.

The low-intensity meeting can take place anywhere – in the open square over a box of books, at the event where people sit together, in the quiet reading corner, or by the computer tables where you might ask your neighbour a question. The prerequisite for this to happen is that the library manages to create an open, friendly atmosphere that makes it all seem natural.

Meeting spaces for children are a special category. Many libraries aim to be family libraries, in which it is a basic challenge to create smooth transitions between the children's space and the adult space. A classical space for children is the fairytale space, which is traditionally an intimate, cosy space with benches or cushions in a circle, where stories are read aloud to children. This space will be to entice readers to the bookshelves offering everything from large picture books to resources for learning support. Space will be needed to facilitate school gatherings, workshops and visits to the new building. Literacy based activity will be paramount here both intergenerational and pre literacy activity. There should be space for storytelling and author visits and music and dramatic performances.

1.4. Performance Spaces

In principle, performative activities can take place anywhere in the library space, depending on the extent to which the activity creates noise, demands peace and quiet for concentration or requires special facilities. It should preferably be visible in the sense that it clearly signals what the possibilities are so that people from outside become curious about what goes on.

More quiet creative activities, such as sewing, knitting workshops and making Christmas decorations in paper can take place in an open corner arranged for the specific purpose.

In principle, the performative space can be directed at all citizens. It can be the 'hobby people' who seek facilities and new inspiration; young people from the creative entrepreneurial environment looking for places where they can produce and present their own creative efforts, or creative entrepreneurs who need workplaces and meeting places.

 

2. THE ARRIVAL AREA

At this point I would like to concentrate on a very important are of the library

This is where all of the library's users pass through to find their way further into the library's spaces and collections. One key mission of this area should be to get visitors to venture further into the library's experience spaces.

Be welcoming: If the library is quite sizeable, and if its visitors are not necessarily all regular customers, there can be an important signalling effect in positioning a reception or information post in the arrival area where new visitors are welcomed, and where they can ask for help and be guided to the right functions. If a library does not want to have a reception, an alternative worth considering would be to work with pro-active staff who will welcome visitors as part of their other tasks.

 Invite people to stay: The arrival area should signal calm. It should be clear that the library offers an alternative to motorways and supermarkets.  A lounge area, a newspaper reading space or a study area can contribute to slowing down the pace and encouraging relaxation, presence and life in the arrival area.

Clear signage and guidance: The arrival area should create overview and guide new users to the many different functions and thematic material collections. It can be an advantage to operate with easily recognisable and consistent functional pictograms, colour codes or similar.

Event and culture calendar: The arrival area is an obvious place to present an updated digital or analogue event and culture calendar. This can also serve as a supplement to the reception for more self-reliant customers. This can be used partly to describe the library's own activities and cultural offers – today and onwards – but the culture calendar can also easily go beyond the library's own framework.

Present just a few, but good things from the material collection: There can be obvious advantages in presenting a changing, clear choice of new titles. This may be 'manually' on low tables with 'covers up' – or it may be digital presentations of new titles supported by interviews with writers and/or reviews by other users or the staff.

3. FLEXIBILITY

 The key word now in Library Design is Flexibility

 Flexibility has become a mantra at a time that is characterised by rapid changes. This also applies to libraries, which need to match ever more individualised user needs. Optimally, the flexibility of the interior design and layout, functions and spatial interplay needs to make it possible for all of the library's users, regardless of their needs and behaviour, to find suitable settings and professional assistance.

A library space can be made adaptable for a variety of activities by means of movable furniture, bookcases on wheels and similar. However, the challenge is of course, that flexibility and adaptability as such cannot meet the ambition about providing all users with access to everything all the time. The library's spaces and resources are not infinite. Flexibility must be linked with planning and booking if more functions are to work well in the same spaces, drawing on the same resources.

The ad hoc-based access to the library's abundance of diverse activities and offers poses great demands about clarity and guidance in the usage of the space.