{"id":14446,"date":"2015-09-03T02:01:33","date_gmt":"2015-09-03T00:01:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/ho-fine-arts-library-cornell-university-2\/"},"modified":"2015-09-03T02:19:12","modified_gmt":"2015-09-03T00:19:12","slug":"ho-fine-arts-library-cornell-university","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/ho-fine-arts-library-cornell-university\/","title":{"rendered":"Ho Fine Arts Library, Cornell University"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ho Fine Arts Library
\n<\/strong>College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
\n<\/strong>Cornell University<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cThe design for the Ho Fine Arts Library is an immediate and quite physical invitation to discover an extraordinary collection, which appears as one big volume, visible in its entirety upon entering. Winding staircases are the keys to enter this volume of knowledge, browse, read, and wonder.\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Wolfgang Tschapeller (M.Arch. \u201987), architect<\/p>\n

Cornell University is creating a new home for one of the nation\u2019s most distinguished fine arts libraries.\u00a0The library will serve as a luminescent welcome sign to all those arriving to the campus from the north or leaving the campus from the south.
\nArchitect and AAP alumnus Wolfgang Tschapeller (M.Arch. ’87) was chosen in 2013 as the designer for the FAL. The architectural goal is a 21st-century interpretation of the grand reading rooms associated with great research collections. The library will be a space where people intermingle with books, but are also surrounded by digital resources and opportunities for collaborative study.
\nThe fine arts collection at Cornell ranks among the best circulating collection of its kind. The collection serves all visual and design disciplines at Cornell University, from the history of art to classics to landscape architecture,\u00a0 to archeology, planning, museum studies, to fiber science to the fine arts. By investing in books\u2014not instead of digital resources but in addition to\u2014Cornell is staking out increasingly rare territory in defense of the physical artifact as a durable and irreplaceable academic and creative resource in the visual arts.<\/p>\n

Over the decades, it has expanded and deepened. It is the most heavily used special collection at Cornell, valued across the university and well beyond as a teaching and research resource of rare quality.\u00a0The renovated library is expected to open for fall semester 2017.
\nThe envelope of Rand Hall requires extensive rehabilitation radically adapting the building to a new program. The architectural goal is to respect the past while projecting boldly into the future in order to stage a temporal dialogue.\u00a0The new roof super-structure is a direct consequence of the section, in which four levels of narrow book stacks are arranged vertically to provide floor space for collective reading, study, and public computing. The vertical stacks rise up beyond the original roofline, requiring a new building terminus. The lantern provides the volume needed to house the uppermost level of books and day lighting for the double-height interior space of the library.<\/p>\n