Franklin Library
Architecture Firm: LLB Architects
Year: 2019 Design Awards
Category: Commercial Architecture: Civic/ Institutional
Location: Franklin, MA
Type: Merit Award
Comments from the Jury:
- A second challenging modern library intervention, into a historic building. This one even more difficult, requiring a new addition to complement the historic library.
- The site-ing and facade materials of the new addition were carefully chosen to respect the original 1904 library building.
- The design was a golden opportunity to create a dramatic and significant addition that provides a new accessible entry. The non-distracting modern addition is tucked gracefully behind the historic library, allowing the historic building to maintain its place of prominence along the main street.
- As much as the original building was designed as a treasury to protect the contents, the addition expresses the new, open transparency of a twenty-first century library.
- The addition is offset from the existing building creating an open space for the new monumental stair. This stair and entrance corridor creates a central communal space that connects the addition to the historic building.
- The large-scale corner openings give the light a volumetric quality inside the building while the texture and color of the terra cotta addition contrasts the granite of the original structure.
Franklin, MA