New Library and Archives for Beaux Arts
Technique: Watercolor Rendering
Spring 2024
This project consisted in designing a library complex and archives. It was meant to be designed in the Paris Hotel style and hold a library area, reading rooms, offices, a preservation lab, a cafe, and common areas.
Paris, France
The front elevation features a rusticated ground floor with a main entrance to the Port Cochere, and secondary entrances to the fire stairs, Bookshop, and Entrance Lobby. The main entrance is emphasized by two giant-order Corinthian pilasters. The elevation features arched openings at the bottom, and then switches to segmental arches as it moves upward, finishing with a broken pediment of a segmental arch.
The main challenge with this project was to deal with the irregular site. For this, I established two main grids. One parallel to the street, and one parallel to the back of the site. After walking through the Entry Court, on arrives at the Entrance hall: a circular room which acts like a hinge. Here several decisions can be made: access the upper level, exit to the garden, or go to weather of the side wings that wrap around the Entry Court. To further mediate this grid change, the garden uses green space as poche to make the corner of the garden the main entrance.
The second floor has a similar organization to the first level, with the exception that it contains a large reading room in the building’s street front. This floor is were most of the library components are found, including reading areas and an information center with the librarian’s desk.
The Entry Court also includes a main entrance, to the Entrance Hall, and secondary entrances to the sides. Like the main elevation, the main entrance is emphasized with two vertical elements, in this case, a rusticated opening and two rusticated ‘pilasters’ that continued to the top. In the garden elevation, there is no vertical emphasis like in the main elevation and in the transversal section. This is because this is where the natural progress of the building ends. In this project, I played more with ceiling height and room hierarchy.
