The New Downtown Library
Designing with Communities
How libraries became urban America’s signature buildings
In The New Downtown Library, Shannon Mattern investigates how libraries serve as multi-use public spaces, anchors in urban redevelopment, civic icons, and showcases of renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas and Cesar Pelli. Mattern brings to light the social forces, as well as their architectural expressions, that form the essence of new libraries and their vital place in public life.
An academic look at the changing architecture of libraries.
Sara Pearce
The past twenty years have seen a building boom for downtown public libraries. From Brooklyn to Seattle, architects, civic leaders, and citizens in major U.S. cities have worked to reassert the relevance of the central library. While the libraries’s primary functions—as public spaces where information is gathered, organized, preserved, and made available for use—have not changed over the years, the processes by which they accomplish these goals have. These new processes, and the public debates surrounding them, have radically influenced the utility and design of new library buildings.
In The New Downtown Library, Shannon Mattern draws on a diverse range of sources to investigate how libraries serve as multi-use public spaces, anchors in urban redevelopment, civic icons, and showcases of renowned architects like Rem Koolhaas, Cesar Pelli, and Enrique Norton. Mattern’s clear and careful analysis reveals the complexity of contemporary dialogues in library design, highlighting the roles that staff, the public, and other special interest groups play. Mattern also describes how the libraries manifest changing demographics, new ways of organizing collections and delivering media, and current philosophies of librarianship.
By identifying unifying themes as well as examining the differences among various design projects, Mattern brings to light the social forces, as well as their architectural expressions, that form the essence of new libraries and their vital place in public life.
Featured libraries are located in Brooklyn, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Nashville, New York, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Francisco, Seattle, and Toledo.
An academic look at the changing architecture of libraries.
Sara Pearce
The New Downtown Library represents an important contribution to literature in the architecture field, but also has the potential to contribute greatly to the shaping of the future of library design. Based on impressive and original scholarship, it is an invaluable resource.
Ken Breisch, Director of Graduate Programs in Historic Preservation, University of Southern California
Shannon Mattern approaches her subject from a very welcome multidisciplinary background, thereby providing her readers with valuable perceptions and insights that are not easily available elsewhere. An excellent and thorough examination.
David Kaser, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Library and Information Science, Indiana University
Mattern is very informative. The book is attractive enough to be a magnet to draw people to its pages.
Desert Morning News
CONTENTS
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. All Things to All People: The Public Library and Its Multiple Identities
2. A New Chapter: The Third Wave of Library Design
3. The Downtown Library, Urban Sprawl, and the Information Age
4. Form for Function: The Architecture of New Libraries
5. Reinventing the Public Square: Libraries and Nonmedia Programming
6. Open Stacks: Negotiating Space for Media
7. Away from the Desk: New Modes of Librarianship
Conclusion
Notes
Index
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