Second-floor office enclosure.
On the double-height second floor, the design team created an office enclosure out of plywood and translucent glass. This allows the surrounding library space to serve as a lively research and social area without creating distractions for those at work. The architects achieved the pleated form of the enclosure by creating a variety of cutting patterns for the wooden fins, and by allowing for coordinating seams in the glass. Two pieces of glass were used in each vertical panel to accommodate the bend.
The screen is composed of 1-by-6-inch walnut veneer planks.
On the second floor, the screen doubles as a sunshade and a spatial divider between a reading room and the circulation pathways.
The screen is a recurring theme throughout the interior, warping to create small rooms without cutting off visual access and serving as spot sunshading underneath the existing skylights over workstations.
The double-height second floor is the social heart of the building, where students and faculty can casually meet and mix on the stairs.
On the double-height second floor, students and faculty can meet and mix in the research space perched atop the office enclosure.
In the same vein, the architects preserved the building's legacy as a natural history museum by creating new exhibition spaces on either side of the main entry.
The architects left signs of the building as it existed before—framed reveals in the new walls allow students to see through to the original stone walls of the 1840s structure.
