Designing a new library building

The most recent library planning meeting was July 7, Saturday, 4 pm at Hartung Hall.

The library board was asked to work on a design that would make the library building a community center. The librarians settled down for some serious thought and consideration of what our ideal, full-featured new library would incorporate, and came up with a rough list of nifty ideas. At this point, the list may have a few internal contradictions that will need to be worked out by the library design team.

Gary Pohl of Wildland Design has created a tentative site plan, which will be refined soon.

The membership's input on site planning and building design is encouraged! Several planning sessions will be held at Hartung Hall, and we will need your ideas.

There have been several planning meetings on the library design to date: 7/7/07, 12/9/06, 8/27/06, 8/6/06, and 6/16/06.

A proposal team has been formed to work on grant proposals. For more information, contact Merritt Helfferich, Kate Billington, or Amy Cameron.

We need a construction team to organize our permitting, contracting, and design work. Please contact the librarians (library at esterrepublic.com) if you would like to help with this. Thanks!

Please consider the list below a grab bag of ideas that we might incorporate into the library's design. We have an architect who is willing to help us with the design, but he and any other members of the design team will need information such as time frame, our priorities, proposed building size, a plot plan, and so forth.

Design features

• expandable building (as the collection grows, the library should be able to grow comfortably too)
• green building, with low energy use, composting toilet, passive and active solar design, superinsulation, recycled and recyclable (low impact) materials, nontoxic materials, natural and full-spectrum lighting (where it won't damage the books), multipurpose furnace, and appropriate environmental controls to preserve the collections
• community oriented: the grounds should include space for a community garden and bicycle/scooter parking;an outdoor reading pavilion/warmup area; the parking lot should not be the prominent feature; the design should include, along with the library collections, space for a conference room, gallery space, museum space, a café and kitchenette, office space, a children's book room, audio/visual booth(s), a map room, an aurorarium/observatory, minerals collection display, a hangout space/lounge (with comfy couch and table), a mud/entry/coat room, and, of course, a utility room. Per the ECA's request, there should be enough common room for the building to be used as a community center.
• site oriented: the building should generate as much of its own power as possible, through solar, hydro, or wind power, or such means as heat differential power generators (i.e., as much independence from oil, coal, and the grid as possible). The building and grounds should fit into their surroundings as though they belong there, looking and operating as part of the community and land.

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