Winnipeg Centennial Library

Winnipeg Centennial Library in Winnipeg, Canada by Patkau Architects & LM Architectural Group

Winnipeg's Centennial Library was built in the 1970s, carrying many of that era's worst traits in its design, particularly an introverted monumentality that fails to effectively connect to the park space its 45-degree diagonal plan allows. For a major renovation and expansion of the library, Patkau Architects proposed a four-story glass-walled atrium space overlooking the park, a feature that improves on this external connection, while also improving on the internal workings of the library.

Working in a joint venture with LM Architectural Group, the architects contend that the "existing library consists largely of independent floor plates isolated from one another." Their solution places reading rooms next to the exterior wall in the large four-story space, with a straight-run stair between those rooms and the existing. The latter's exterior walls were opened for additional openness and a visual connection to the park and its sunlight.

In addition to this unifying space, a fourth floor was added above the existing library, as illustrated in this model and this section. Looking at the plans, this top floor creates much-needed space for the stacks. This decision must have been driven by general concerns of a library's place in contemporary society rather than more functional concerns like structure, which might have dictated that the stacks be located on a lower floor.

With the rise of the internet and the retrieval of information via digital means -- as well as the affordability of a certain online merchant -- libraries have had to modify their physical embodiments as well as their role in society. Visitors to libraries are often confronted with video rentals, cafes, gift shops, and computer stations upon entering, perhaps never seeing a book before leaving. The prolonged existence of libraries is due to their public nature, as much as librarians tout their skills as one antidote among many to the "death of the library." With so much privatization days, it's refreshing to not only have places that are truly public but to actually experience them, in whatever way that may be.