Kirkwood Public Library

Project Details

Project Description

• Community Meeting Room
• Children’s Library
• Young Adults Center
• Information Technology Center
• Emergency Medical Services Station
Set along a commercial shopping strip
highway, Kirkwood Public Library is designed
as roadside billboard announcing the public
civic function of reading, learning and
exploration within. The objective was to
create a new branch library for a growing
diverse community that would serve as the
iconic community center of the
neighborhood. Shopping malls and fast food
restaurants flank both sides of the site. Large
commercial signs are stacked along the
highway where this library is sited and a
small scale residential neighborhood is set
one block in from the highway site. It is
within this context, that the Kirkwood Public
Library appears as a collection of books set
on the highway. Facing the highway, the
building façade of stacked horizontal cement
board siding is fashioned as a series of boxes
that represent the edge of books piled up on
their side.