Architect Design Concept Summary

The Jacksonville Main Library will be a highly efficient, state-of-the-art facility that is a great public place with intimate and grand rooms, garden courtyards, conference areas and cafes. It is designed to attract the community with its diversity and, by virtue of its exterior forms and interior spaces, to become a destination without peer in the city. A place to which people will return again and again for education, inspiration and the pleasure of a beautiful environment.

The Main Library continues the city's rich tradition of civic buildings that speak in a version of the classical language adapted to the particulars of local climate and culture. Seen from Hemming Plaza and Main Street, it presents a distinctive, iconic civic appearance that renders the library readily identifiable with a welcoming environment. Facing Hemming Plaza, a generously proportioned main entrance leads past a Cafe' and Popular Library, each with large windows facing the street, to the Entry Hall and Circulation Desk, where a monumental staircase begins its rise through the building, connecting the various departments. The staircase culminates at the Grand Reading Room, a place of grand proportions with 100 square feet of space and rising to a 46-foot handkerchief-vaulted ceiling. The rooms is bathed in natural light from clerestory windows, as well as windows with balconies overlooking Hemming Plaza.

On the second floor, a courtyard provides a fountain and planted oasis shared by readers and staff, surrounded by intimate reading areas for the various departments, many of which open onto it directly. Windows facing the courtyard bring light deep into the book stacks, reading areas and staff offices. It also accomodates the Florida Genealogy Collections, Children's Department and Theater and Teen Services. The majority of the collections, both fiction and nonfiction, are centrally located on the third floor. The fourth floor houses the Grand Reading Room and Government Documents Collection. The Current Periodicals area and the African-American Collection Reading Room, also located on the fourth floor, overlook the second floor courtyard. The building also opens to Main Street with an entrance to the conference center, allowing it to operate independently from the rest of the library.

The library offers an opportunity to reinvigorate the once and future center of Jacksonville culture. The library builds on the strengths of Jacksonville's architectural legacy and looks toward the future of a vibrant downtown with the library as its centerpiece.