6. Lightness
Core Studio II, Spring 2017
Site: Downtown Brooklyn, New York, NY
Critic: Stella Betts, Levenbetts
The library aims to provide a respite from the visual, vehicular, pedestrian, and commercial activity of the street at the ground level while opening up to views of the historic fabric of the neighborhood at higher levels. The building is structured around a core of shifted, layered public spaces that allow for deep filtration of light from a skylight at the top of the building.
Acting in tandem with the public spaces (auditorium, café, etc.) that fill the central core, and which are illuminated by filtered daylight, other more private work spaces (librarian offices, maker spaces, etc.) inhabit the interstitial space wrapping around these central public areas. Though these private spaces do not receive daylight from the central skylight, they will receive a different quality of light through the façade of the building, which will appear as an opaque solid at a distance but will in fact provide views from the inside out by way of a screened facade.
