Library Board Receives Presentation From SOM Architectural Firm On Library Project Design

The Library Board met 03/25/2022 and received Building Project Design Update Presentation from Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM), the Chicago-based architectural firm contracted for the project. You may recall back in September the Common Council received a presentation on the initial design. This presentation followed up on that with greater details and included a design update, an overview of the building’s high performance/sustainability design, a proposal for smart building aspect, and virtual reality tour. This recap will cover the first three of those items.

Jason Fischer from SOM gave the presentation, and before diving in he reminded the Library Board that he represented the many architects, interior designers, and engineers with various focuses at SOM. In addition to those, SOM worked with consultants in a number of areas including landscaping, lighting, acoustics, graphics, wayfinding, audio/visual, and IT security. They have also been working closely with Boldt on preconstruction and conceptual design so that Boldt understood what SOM was proposing.

Finally, they had been engaging with the community and sat down with more than 10 focus groups to get their input and feedback on the latest designs and also draw ideas and suggestions from the focus groups to take back to the drawing table and try to incorporate into the design.

DESIGN UPDATE

He started out with an image of the library building as is current exists, commenting on the fact that it is closed off with a lot of narrow vertical windows and very little natural daylight. Their proposal would make it quite different.

He showed a picture of the pavilions they had design which were conceptually reaching out to the community and inviting the public in and were functionally allowing nature and the outdoors into the library through the use of glass.

The library’s existing façade has very limited windows, and their proposal was to create a lot more glazing and access to daylight on the existing façade.

They wanted to reclad it and increase performance of the overall insulation of the building and also tie all of the exterior cladding into the new addition so that it was all one big piece.

The library is, of course, bound on three sides by streets and on the south side by a parking lot. They want to push the library addition to the south. They will take away some of the existing building façade on the south side and also in some specific areas on the other three sides. They will be maintaining the bones of the existing structure because it is in really good shape with a very flexible open column grid.

They planned to introduce the daylight filled pavilions on the south side. Those pavilions would host a lot of community spaces in addition to library bookshelves.

They would enclose the building with a much more robust and high-performance façade. Some solar panels would be on the roof. The parking lot would stay to the south, and he noted that they were trying to maximize parking.

Ultimately, they hoped that the library would become the new center of community life for Appleton.

He said that SOM was an inter disciplinary architecture and engineering firm so they had several architects, interior designers, structural engineers as well as Mechanical, Electrical, and Plumbing engineers, and sustainability experts who all came together with the consultants SOM works with to come up with creative and innovative plans that are both beautiful, high performing, function, and durable.

He showed some pictures of some of SOMs workers at the library the day before. The picture on the left showed them talking about a door. He said they looked at every single door in the project to make sure they were function, durable, and beautiful.

The picture on the right was a snapshot of the team working very hard, and he talked about how dedicated and talented they all were.

He showed a picture of one of the pavilions from the inside looking out and explained that a lot when into that particular space, and they were working very closely with their structural engineers “who by the way are the best structural engineers on the planet—for real. Like, we do the supertall towers and those same engineers are doing the pavilions here at the Appleton public library.” [Honestly, I had no questions about SOM’s capabilities until he started talking them up in a ridiculous manner. When somebody claims they’re the best “on the planet”, I immediately start doubting their competence. At any rate…]

The timber in the pavilions was glulam beams which were shaped to have a “belly” to them [i.e., they were fatter in the middle than on the sides.] This both aesthetically accentuated the overall shape of the oval and also functionally held the load efficiently. They were saving material, accentuating the architecture, and implementing timber column and beams which was a sustainable and low carbon design solution.

Additionally, timber columns have a smaller footprint for their foundation than other columns, so in addition to saving carbon on the columns and the structure itself, they were also reducing the amount of concrete below grade that would be required to hold up those pavilions.

He moved on to the details of the interior of the building.

He said they were working with their interior designers and materials experts to make material selections that were sustainable and durable and wore well over time.

He noted they had been working with the City of Appleton on site plan review and had submitted a large document for review, then he went over the floor plans with the board.

Ground Level

The main entry would be similar to what exists currently. The large community pavilion was on the lower left-hand side of the screen. There would be and entry/common area which he said was somewhat lacking in the existing building, but in the new building patrons would be able to hang out in that area and meeting other people before decided where they wanted to go in the library. The area would also be more vertically connected than the current library.

They had a lot of open shelves for the collection space in the body of the building.

The area in darker gray on the right-hand side of the screen was back-of-house staff space. They had really considered that space and worked with staff on it to improve the functionality of staff’s work.

On the north side was a loading dock. They thought this was an improvement on the existing building and would allow deliveries and trash/recycling collection to be done away from the main entrance.

There were several study rooms of various sizes, including the community pavilion, for people to reserve. The community pavilion had operable partitions so it could be used as one large room that held up to 400 people or it could be divided into as many as three smaller rooms.

Upper Level

The upper level was accessible via stairs by the common area. The upper level included a room they were calling the “flex box” room which was a flexible space that could host a bunch of activities and meetings.

There was also a nearby boardroom-sized overlook room to the east of the flex box, and to the west on the lower left-hand corner of the rendering was a coworking space. The north side of the second floor held the staff suite and mechanical space. He noted that this was the same location of the mechanical space in the current building. They were trying to use as much of the existing building’s infrastructure as possible.

The second level also had access to a rooftop terrace on the east side, which was located above where the children’s section in the current library is.

Lower Level

The lower level housed the entire children’s collection. It also included some staff space. Both the main area of the lower level and the staff space had access points to the sunken garden.

The sunken garden accomplished two things. (1) It provided access to outdoor space at the lower level, and (2) it also provided daylight into the lower-level space as well.

The “learning stairs” as he called them lead down from the main floor to the lower level and also provided daylight into the space.

Along the norther edge of the lower level, the area that was deepest and furthest away from daylight, they put mechanical space.

There were also several program and discovery rooms for children.

HIGH PERFORMANCE DESIGN

He then moved on to talking about the high performance/sustainability design elements of the project.

He reviewed the reasons why they recommended keeping the existing building.

• It’s the right thing to do for the environment. By reusing the building, they would be reducing their overall energy and material usage. They would also be setting an example for the community on how existing buildings can be reused.
• Buildings are designed to have a lifespan of 100 years. The current building was only 40 years old and was in great shape. They wanted to re-use what was good about the building and take advantage of the fact that it was already there.
• Re-using, re-imagining, and re-imaging the building reflects the values of the community. He said the library is the heart of Downtown Appleton, and it represents the community’s commitment to learning, knowledge, and social responsibility.

He highlighted some of the sustainability features.

• Skylights to drive daylight deep into the interior spaces
• Photovoltaic panels on the roof
• Green roof systems above the pavilions
• 350’ geothermal wells

He touched on the geothermal work that SOM was doing in the area and showed some construction photos of the multicultural center in DePere. It had 95 geothermal wells underneath the parking lot which was similar to the plan for Appleton.

He went on to say that as they design a project, they produce energy models of their decide. They have benchmarks that they want to meet both as a design firm but also simply for the sake of the community to help them save on overall energy costs. There were two different energy things they considered: (1) Operational Energy which was literally the cost of things like turning on the lights and head and (2) Embodied Carbon which was the cost of shipping materials to the site. In the case of this project, because they were reusing existing materials, they would be bringing far fewer materials in from elsewhere.

He showed an image that illustrated the energy use of a baseline building. They estimated that the library project had the potential to see an 80% reduction in the overall operation energy in the building. Additionally, its embodied carbon estimate was much lower than SOM’s targets.

He did however, acknowledge that those estimates were very “conceptual” at the early stages of the design, and they would need to see how it played out. The operational energy could be tracked after the building was built.

He mentioned the benefits of the geothermal system and said that they estimated the system they were proposing would result in about 9% savings over a baseline building and potentially up to 26% savings over the current library’s current baseline energy performance.

He showed a picture of the materials they had been selecting and of the materials selection presentation they had given at the library a few weeks ago. They took the information they garnered from the discussion at that presentation then pulled the samples that the staff liked and the colors they all agreed to and then developed a material pad of the materials to be implemented into the library.

SMART BUILDING

He moved onto the “Smart Building” portion of the presentation and explained that they were trying to accomplish a few things through their smart building technology.

They had shades on all the glass pavilions. The pavilions had a lot of glass in order to allow a lot of natural daylight into the building, but they recognized that there were situations such as when giving presentations or showing movies when they would want to reduce the amount of direct light into the space, so they had shades that could come down to blackout conditions.

They also had a smart shading system. The overall controls of that system would have sunlight and weather tracking built in and then users would also be able to override the system.

The timing would be specific to the site. The library had a specific latitude and longitude and the sun followed a track across the day and throughout the year in a very predictable way.

SOM could actually develop a system where potentially the shades could follow the shape of the pavilion and track the path of the sun throughout the day.

He said that there was a lot of technology in the building—the shading controls he had just talked about, digital displays that libraries need for presentations, movies, and events, and a lot of background audio video technology in the background of the study rooms and throughout the library. As a result, SOM was pushing the idea of a digital twin of the building which would basically be a digital replica of the library. The purpose of the digital twin would be to track information for operational purposes.

[And if the price of the building goes above the budget, I know the very first flashy but unnecessary thing that can be cut to reduce costs.]

He said SOM develops a BIM (Building Information Modeling) model as part of their design services. The BIM model would then get transitioned to a digital plan that could do maintenance scheduling, automate shading controls, track visitor numbers, track parking capacity, and track preferred books and the popular sections of the library. It could also be used for room reservations.

View full meeting details and video here: https://cityofappleton.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=950953&GUID=783CECD8-F793-4D10-ACB8-4262F658735B