Brooklyn’s public libraries are undergoing a massive wooden reconstruction

Architect and designer Studio Joseph and general contractor Shawmut Design and Construction initially planned to renovate the library after being awarded the contract. Site reviews, along with the project’s evolving priorities, indicated that a teardown and rebuild was necessary, says Shawmut senior director Jonathan Fiato.

Site reviews and prioritized project changes required the team to demolish and rebuild the existing building rather than renovate it.

The idea to pursue massive wood construction came from feedback BPL and its contractors received at community meetings held. for several months. “This scheme we chose captures the spirit of what we were hearing,” says Wendy Evans Joseph, founding partner of Studio Joseph.

Locals wanted space for teenagers, a request BPL hears regularly when updating its offices. “Libraries aren’t so quiet anymore,” says Bodenheimer, adding that the goal is to provide areas that allow strong extracurricular activities.

Residents also asked for a more natural and warm feel, says Evans Joseph. As a result, solid wood became a design consideration and later the construction technology of choice. While the new BPL branch will have metal cladding on the outside, the wood will be exposed internally,

Residents requested that the library have a more natural and warm feel.

The project team says $20 million of the reconstruction price tag was matched with New York City capital funds. BPL is in the midst of a construction boom, with more than a third of its 60 libraries recently overhauled and replaced or slated for large-scale changes, according to Fritzi Bodenheimer, the library’s senior press officer. The Canarsie location, built in 1960, needed upgrades to address some of the roughly $550 million in unmet capital needs across the library system.

Shawmut’s detailed quality assurance plan reduces the possibility of trade partners working on the materials damaging the exposed solid wood.

The construction decision marked the Canarsie Library as the first cross-laminated timber building that Shawmut has designed in New York. However, the company has worked on 10 other massive timber projects across the country. A client-contractor team also visited two ongoing solid wood projects in the region, the student dining center at Amherst College and the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, to see what construction is like. Tarps and plastic wrap used to protect other building materials would damage cross-laminated timber because they are too waterproof, for example. Instead, Shawmut had to plan plywood barricades and other more breathable interventions.

Due to similar quality issues, fixtures and other library equipment installed had to be planned well in advance and required intensive planning in 3D models. “If you move a light fixture on a sheet metal roof, you move the hole,” says Fiato. “If you move it on a CLT roof, your patch won’t look very good.”

The project includes meeting spaces, a recording studio and more in 11,000 square feet, or double the space of the previous building on the site.

The library will also feature a glass curtain wall. Instead of being hung with corbels, the facade will be integrated into the cross-laminated timber. Installation is complicated, even by mass timber construction standards, Fiato says. The glass will fit snugly for structural integrity and energy code compliance, so Shawmut started with computer mock-ups before scaling to 16-foot-by-13-foot mock-ups of the curtain wall on Long Island. The components are being manufactured now and should arrive on site later this year and next.

Other design elements of the finished building use wood or aim to extend the warm, accessible feel to new surfaces, Evans Joseph says. TECTUM wood fiber panels will be used as an acoustic material, while the terrazzo-style rubber floor is intended to be friendly and welcoming.

As one of the city’s first solid wood public buildings, Fiato knows the New York City Department of Buildings and Fire Department are curious to track its performance. Height limits for cross-laminated timber are currently set at 85 feet in New York City, so Fiato is excited to see how building codes might change as more solid wood is introduced.

And soon, Canarsie will be one of two wood-based libraries the city has to evaluate: Coincidentally, the New Lots branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is it is also being rebuilt with solid wood.