Phillips Exeter Academy Library History
Translated by
ScribdTranslationsPhillips Exeter Academy Library History
Translated by
ScribdTranslationsHISTORICAL REVIEW: LOCATION
GEOGRAPHY :
The first library of Phillips Exeter Academy was a single one.
small room. A member of the class of 1833 remembered
+PAIS: ESTADOS UNIDOS
like it contains "old sermons and a bit of history, almost.
never reads." Even as late as 1905, the library only
It had two rooms and 2,000 volumes. +REGIÓN : NUEVA INGLATERRA
The architect Louis Kahn was chosen to design the new library.
in 1965, and was ready for occupation in 1971. The historian +ESTADO: NUEVO HAMPSHIRE
architectural Vincent Scully recognized its architectural importance
by using a photo of her as the cover of her book COUNTY: ROCKINGHAM
Modern architecture and other essays.
On November 16, 1971, classes were suspended for a day, +CAPITAL: EXETER
and the students, teachers, and staff moved the books (the
library had 60,000 volumes from this time) of the ancient
Davis Library in the new library.
In 1977, Jacquelyn Thomas became a librarian, the first one.
with the complete status of the faculty. By the year 2006, it was at
position of a staff of seven, all of them with postgraduate degrees in
library science. During Thomas's term collection and the
the library programming grew to an appropriate size for a The austerity of the insurgents
small liberal arts college. Nowadays the houses of the
library of 160,000 volumes on nine levels and has a exteriors, in which the
storage capacity of 250,000 volumes, so it is the pillars are narrowing
the largest secondary school library in the world. with height, it integrates without
the library also contains a collection of works by ancient authors
students, as well as the Academy Archive. stridencies in the environment
The library was the first building on campus to be Neo-Georgian of the campus and
computerized thanks to the foresight of Armstrong and Kahn, which
provide the library with enough space for the
in the same way
cable conduit that needs the revolution of the computer library is integrated with the
what's coming. buildings nearby
In 1995, the library was officially named the Class of 1945.
Library, honoring Dr. Lewis Perry, eighth principal of Exeter,
connected to each other through
who served from 1914 to 1946. of distributed paths to
through the campus.
FUNCTIONAL ANALYSIS :
The Library, the ideal project
for an architect, according to Boullée,
is more rigidly classical than the
previous works of Kahn: one
square plant divided into nine
smaller squares, with a
free square in the center, or a large
cube of 34 x 34 x 24, with a cube
empty center, or returning to
Boule, a spherical void.
Kahn structured the library in 3
concentric rings. The ring
exterior is built with a
load-bearing brick wall, includes
the exterior walls and the
reading spaces. The ring
intermediate, which is built
with reinforced concrete, supports the
large blocks of books. The ring
interior is an open space with
huge circular openings that
they show the plants with the
shelves.
FORMAL ANALYSIS:
Kahn made the exterior of the building relatively undramatic; its façade is mainly of brick with teak wood.
wooden panels on most of the windows that mark the location of a pair of wooden cubicles. the bricks are from
load-bearing support; that is, the weight of the exterior part of the building is supported by the bricks themselves, not by a hidden frame
of steel. Kahn draws the viewer's attention to this fact by making the brick pillars noticeably thicker at the
the lower part where they have more weight to bear. the windows are correspondingly wider towards the top, where
the springs are thinner.
The corners of the building are beveled, allowing viewers to see the external parts.
from the structure of the building; Kahn perceived a building surrounded by panel walls and to give emphasis
to this structural form, it interrupted the plates at the corner, leaving a space between them.
The library of Phillips Exeter Academy is a classic example; each of these four 'brick-slab' walls, which house
the library cubicles are 16 feet (4.9 m) deep.
The upper part of the exterior walls is a row of openings similar to the windows below, except that these
aberturas están por encima del techo y no tienen cristal. Kahn se señaló a la arquitectura basada en la sólida, casi primitivos,
masonry masses with holes in them without the glass. the bottoms of these window openings are 6 feet (1.8 m) by
on the floor of a gallery that follows the perimeter of the upper part of the building.
Another gallery surrounds the building on the ground floor; Kahn did not like the idea of a building that was dominated by its entrance, for
what the main entrance to the library hid behind this arcade. its original design, however, called for landscaping with a
paved walkway that would have indicated the entrance without interrupting the symmetry of the facade.
SPATIAL ANALYSIS:
A double circular staircase built of concrete faces an empty space of
travertine that greets the visitor upon entering the library. At the top of the
stairs the visitor enters a dramatic central hall (atrium) with huge openings
circulars that reveal several floors of bookshelves. At the top of the atrium,
Two enormous concrete crossbeams diffuse the light that enters from the triforium.
windows.
Due to the fact that the stacks are visible from the floor of the central hall, the design of the
the library is clear to the visitor at first glance, which was one of the objectives of the Committee
The creation of the Academy had been set for Kahn.
The central hall is 52 feet (15.8 m) high, measured from the floor to the start
from the structure of the roof, and 32 feet (9.8 m) wide. Those dimensions approximate to a
relationship known as the golden ratio, which was studied by the ancient Greeks and has
has been considered the ideal architectural relationship for centuries.
In the circle and the square that combine so dramatically in the atrium,
they considered the paradigmatic geometric units by the ancient Roman architect
Vitruvius also noted that the human body is proportional so that it can fit into
both forms, a concept that was famously expressed with a combined circle and square
by Leonardo da Vinci in his drawing Vitruvian Man.
The outside of the building, which houses the cubicles, is built of load-bearing support.
made of brick. Each Carrel floor encompasses two levels of bookshelves. Each pair of
cubicles have a large window at the top, and each individual cubicle has a small one.
window at desk height with a sliding panel to adjust the light.
The placement of Carrel spaces on the periphery was the result of Kahn's thinking.
that reading spaces should be close to books and also have natural light. For
Kahn, the essence of a library was the act of taking a book from a shelf and walking a few
steps for a window to take a closer look. Each Carrel area is associated with two
niveles de estanterías de libros, con el nivel superior estructurado como un altillo que da a los
cubicles. The stacks of books also look out into the atrium.
The inherent massiveness of the "wall-panel" brick structure of the outer part of the
the library helps to create the atmosphere of closure that Kahn felt was appropriate for
library cubicles.
ORNAMENTAL, STRUCTURAL AND CONSTRUCTIVE ANALYSIS:
The building has the shape of a brick cube that loses
triangular towers at the corners that give it a
greater independence to the facade plans.
A large central void with skylight structures everything.
project; one of the two routes overlooks him
peripheral areas where access to the shelves is provided,
the exterior facade the study tables.
Brick predominates on its facade, with wooden panels.
of teca in most of the windows, which mark the
location of a pair of wooden cubicles. The corners
of the building are chamfered, allowing for the
viewers see the external parts of the structure. A
shaded gallery surrounds the building on the ground floor.
Although in the floor plan and section drawings this space
empty gives a cavernous appearance, in reality the
complexity of this interior space, which spans from the
circular openings on the four wall surfaces up to
the ceiling, which ends with large transversal beams of
diagonally arranged concrete, remember designs
previous libraries with wide central spaces,
like the project of Étienne-Louis Boullée for a
royal library in 1785
The exterior brick walls acting as a partition, which
they visually demarcate this construction apparently
simple, consisting of brick pillars that run through
all the plants.
On the facade, a horizontal intermediate line of panels of
wood marks the reading cubicles that in turn are
also made of wood. The concrete beams are
its structure.
The outer area, where the cubicles are located
reading, is made of brick. The middle area, which contains
the heavy book shelves are made of concrete
armed. The inner area is an atrium.