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Architecture for culture, research, sport or leisure | Building | Library

competition

Carnegie Library Design Competition / Concours de la bibliothèque Carnegie

Stage 1

Dan Benson & Leslie Woo (Winner)

Enzo Corazza (Winner)

Dwight Lander (Winner)

Harley Swedler (Winner)

Jonah Turk (Winner)

Brad Barrett (Honourable mention)

Philip Beesley (Honourable mention)

Arthur Cader (Honourable mention)

Harry Gaumer (Honourable mention)

Patrick Harrop (Honourable mention)

David Heintz (Honourable mention)

Chi Wong Lo (Honourable mention)

Miss Gelsomina Petti (Honourable mention)

John Walmsley (Honourable mention)

William Weima (Honourable mention)

winner

Dan Benson & Leslie Woo

winner

Enzo Corazza

winner

Dwight Lander

winner

Harley Swedler

GENERAL INFORMATION ON THE COMPETITION

Year	1985
Location	Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Stage	One stage
Competitors	15

Surface area (m²)	1700 m²
Remuneration by stage	5 prizes of $1000 and 10 prizes of $400

Client	Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture
Jury president	Margaret Beckman, Directrice Générale
Doc. level	75%

Description

CARNEGIE 1985
A competiton for a prototypical public library design for a community of approximately 30,000 population.

OVERVIEW
If a Carnegie library were built today, what would it be? What building type would best serve the information needs of public libraries in the 1980's and beyond? What kind of structure would best accommodate new communications technologies and still remain a cultural focus of the community? These basic questions were the essential ones for the Carnegie 1985 competition.

The competition was meant to generate new ideas and to speculate on the public library of the future. The competition was not primarily to generate "state of the art" public library design. While a design meeting current standards and addressing already identified issues was considered to be the starting point, the projects evolved into more adventuresome approaches.

Ideas were illustrated in the design proposal. Evaluation for competition purposes was primarily based on the clarity of the point of view expressed through the project submitted and the proficiency of its illustration. There was no correct solution but certainly entries that were more insightful, provocative or better presented would be marked higher than others.

Program suggestions for a public library for a community of approximately 30,000 population represented a basis for a library that could be built today. These requirements did not necessarily represent the library of the future but offered a starting point for speculation about such a library. Participants in the competition assumed these requirements unless they were illustrating libraries that implied significant changes to this general program.

Some of the concerns that all projects were to respond to included but were not limited to the following:
- Incorporating current and proposed information technology and new building processes and materials into a design for a public library;
- Determining an appropriate design that recognized the economic realities of public building especially in smaller communities;
- A design that portrayed the various roles a public library plays in a smaller community especially as the informal cultural centre of the town;
- The design of an appropriate civic building comparable to that which the Carnegie library represents in most communities. Should the public library continue though to be, as in many communities, housed in a CIVIC monument?;
- A design that recognized the Carnegie library concept and the relation of a prototypical design to the needs of an individual community. While a particular community could be the generator for a prototypical design, it was the prototypical quality of the design on which the competition focused. This did not preclude either illustrating or allowing for the important consideration that each public library be able to respond to the unique needs of its community;
- The design should be adaptable to the various environmental conditions in Ontario.

Public libraries in smaller communities often tend to be the cultural focus of the community. While the programme did not indicate how this should be interpreted, this notion along with the fact that next to the City Hall the library was likely the most prominent public building in the community, was stressed.

The entries were to illustrate a basic premise about what a public library should be in the future. What the public library should be depended not only on speculations about information technology, new building methods and materials, as noted above, but also on what the perceived needs of smaller communities relative to the public library's role would be. To some degree this speculation also extended to what Ontario's society would be like in the coming years.

(From official publication)

Jury comments

(Consult the competitors' projects for specific comments from the jury)

List of Competitors

Competition staff and jury

Jury president	Margaret Beckman, Directrice Générale
Jury	George Baird, Architecte
	Phyllis Lambert, Architecte
	Jerome Markson, Architecte
	Judith McAnanama, Directrice
	Alberto Perez-Gomez, Directeur
	Larry Richards, Directeur

Calendar

Press Review

Nyren, Karl, Carnegie of Tomorrow., Library Journal, 1986

Nyren, Karl, A Carnegie designed for Canada in the 1980s., Library Journal, 1985

Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Culture, Building survey of Ontario public libraries 1980-1985, 1986

Lambert, Phyllis, Le library building, the city, the user, 1986

List of general documents

(not accessible)

Liste des participants
Monographie post-concours
Monographie post-concours
Monographie post-concours
Monographie post-concours

IMPORTANT NOTICE : Unless otherwise indicated, photographs of buildings and projects are from professional or institutional archives. All reproduction is prohibited unless authorized by the architects, designers, office managers, consortiums or archives centers concerned. The researchers of the Canada Research Chair in Architecture, Competitions and Mediations of Excellence are not held responsible for any omissions or inaccuracies, but appreciate all comments and pertinent information that will permit necessary modifications during future updates.
info@ccc.umontreal.ca

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