Floor Plan!

First of all, an update (or non update) on last week's post: no news so far on whether the design will be handled by someone from outside the research center. There's going to be another meeting about it monday, so I'll know more by then. Now that that's out of the way, this part has been a long time coming: floorplan!

The library is the bit near the top center of the image there. The front doors (the library is surrounded by frosted glass walls... classy, right? And oh so modern) open to the main library space. Just to the left of the entrance is the library work room, and across from that (upwards on the diagram) is one of the offices. The other office is the lone tiny room off to the side, on the right upper portion of the library. So that's what I have to work with!

Early considerations to set down: the space, overall, is larger. My idea so far (as far as creating a more open area, a sort of mini icommons if you will) is to make the area around the entrance as welcoming and open as possible, and place the stacks and shelving further back into the space. This will also allow undisrupted flow to and from the workroom, should people need to use it. The windows are blocked by the nearby parking garage, so allowing for natural light is (unfortunately, perhaps) not an issue here.

Things to be determined at this point: we've been told that outlets are placed 'every four feet or so' within the space, but it would be nice to know exactly where they are for desk/computer placement and so on. I've already got a pretty good idea as far as the materials placement (as far as what I know about what gets used the most), but that's obviously something I need to hash out completely with Louise before moving forward. We're starting on taking all the measurements next week! Things are really coming together past the research stage, so it's exciting for me.

In a nice coincidence, the iSchool computer lab decided to offer a shortcourse on Omnigraffle
(a visual design program that's often used for early floorplans) right when I need it! I'll be heading to it next Monday from 12-2. The lit review is pretty much wrapped up at this point (I still need to write the intro, but that shouldn't take long) so it'll be nice to have most of March and April to take measurements and work out floorplans. My goal is to make maybe 3 variations and provide some sort of reasoning for the differences in each. Unless I can come up with something that's just perfect on my first try. Is there beginners luck in library design?

At the very least, I know to avoid shag carpeting and earth tones. One thing I've noticed: library design literature refers to the 70's the same way some countries might refer, say, to a history of war crimes.