Austin Central Library

Overlooking Shoal Creek and Lady Bird Lake, the LEED Platinum Austin Central Library is a building shaped by light and designed to respond to the context of its place. One of the most day-lit public libraries in the nation, the heart of the building is the six-story atrium which provides daylight for more than 80% of regularly occupied spaces. The library is a technologically-rich, innovative community hub which establishes a major civic presence and community gathering space in the heart of downtown Austin.

Joint Venture with Shepley Bulfinch

The library has become Austin’s “living room.” Serving as the anchor to the new Seaholm EcoDistrict, the library connects downtown Austin, Lady Bird Lake, and greater Austin through an extensive bicycle network and walking trail. The design team overcame a constrained, complicated, and sloping urban site to create an approachable community hub. The heart of the building is the six-story atrium which provides daylight for more than 80% of regularly occupied spaces. The client envisioned an iconic, civic hub where locals could connect with their community by pursuing a variety of interests.

It's one thing to aspire to create a community library that everybody wants to visit and be part of. It's quite another thing to actually have accomplished that, and watch it be used in ways that you never imagined that people would use it. John Gillum

Former Library Facilities Manager

Austin Central Library is a technologically-rich, innovative community hub. The library’s flexible, blended spaces include indoor collections and reading rooms, outdoor reading porches, maker spaces, outdoor dining, a technology center, café, bookstore, 350-seat event center, art gallery, demonstration kitchen, and 200-car parking garage. Integrated art works, interspersed throughout the library, showcase local and national artists.

The unique reading porches and rooftop butterfly garden, inspired by Texans’ love for the outdoors, draw visitors to connect with nature. The building’s facades were tuned by orientation to harvest daylight and views, giving 99 percent of the library’s regularly occupied spaces views to the outdoors. The building’s climatic responsive design and use of local materials lend a timeless and iconic fit to the library and its diversity of community spaces.

As the city of Austin’s first LEED Platinum municipal building, the Austin Central Library is a conservation model for institutional and civic buildings. A 180 kw rooftop PV array provides power to the building while shading occupants using the garden. A 373,000-gallon rainwater harvesting system, reused from existing infrastructure, provides water for landscape irrigation, restroom plumbing fixtures, and the landscaped rooftop pollinator garden.

Sustainable Design

Achieving Energy Reduction

Post-occupancy data shows that the project realized a 32.7% reduction in energy in comparison to a baseline building. The team focused on efficient systems and daylighting throughout design to achieve this goal. The daylighting solution included shading and light shelves along perimeter windows and a specially calibrated skylight. The varied placement of the staircases and bridges were strategically designed to allow sunlight to flow in while encouraging visitors to walk between the different floors instead of using the elevator when possible.

Sustainable Design

Daylighting 80% of Spaces

To design the most daylit public library in the nation, the integrated team utilized both analog and digital tools. The team created a four-foot-tall scale model of the library’s six-story atrium, took it to a local park, and tuned and shaped the roof for optimal, glare-free natural light conditions. The workshop was critical in shaping the library’s 128-foot-long skylight, and it reinforced the design of the library’s six-story atrium, which helps provide daylight for more than 80% of regularly occupied spaces.

Sustainable Design

Reducing Indoor Water by 93%

Early in design, the project team agreed the Austin Central Library should be a model of water stewardship in an area of Texas that regularly wrestles with drought and water restrictions. During an initial sustainability workshop, the team discovered a vault on land outside the library’s property line controlled by the city utility. By partnering with the utility, the design team gained access to the vault, which now functions as a 373,000-gallon cistern that harvests rainwater and condensate collection. The project eliminates potable water irrigation and reduces indoor potable water use by 93%.