Phillips Exeter Academy Library
Encyclopedia
The Phillips Exeter Academy Library in Exeter, New Hampshire
, U.S., with 160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, is the largest secondary school
library in the world. It is part of the Phillips Exeter Academy
, an independent boarding school
.
When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building, the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new building. Deciding instead to construct a library with a contemporary design, the school gave the commission to Louis Kahn
in 1965. In 1997 the library received the Twenty-five Year Award
from the American Institute of Architects
, an award that recognizes architecture of enduring significance that is given to no more than one building per year.
Kahn structured the library in three concentric square rings. The outer ring, which is built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel spaces immediately inside them. The middle ring, which is built of reinforced concrete
, holds the heavy book stacks. The inner ring is a dramatic atrium with enormous circular openings in its walls that reveal several floors of book stacks.
In 1912 the Davis Library was added to the campus with space for 5,000 volumes. Although a major improvement, its atmosphere was inhospitable by the standards of later generations. Stacks were locked to students, for example, and the librarian's office was located at the entrance to the stacks to maximize control over entry. Decisions about book selections and the library's program were in the hands of an all-male faculty committee instead of the female librarian.
In 1950 Rodney Armstrong became librarian, the first with a graduate degree in library science
. One of his first moves was to open the stacks to students. That solved one problem, but the real difficulty was the lack of space. The library contained 35,000 volumes at that point, many of them stored in cardboard boxes for lack of shelf room. After years of effort, Armstrong eventually succeeded in bringing a new library to the academy.
Architect Louis Kahn
was chosen to design the new library in 1965, and it was ready for occupancy in 1971. Architectural historian Vincent Scully
acknowledged its architectural significance by using a photo of it as the frontispiece for his book Modern Architecture and Other Essays.
On November 16, 1971, classes were suspended for a day, and students, faculty, and staff moved books (the library had 60,000 volumes by this time) from the old Davis Library into the new library.
Henry Bedford, who became librarian shortly after the new library was occupied, supervised the transition not only to the new building but also to a new way of operating a library. Staff librarians were encouraged to see themselves as co-instructors with the regular faculty and to put less emphasis on shushing library patrons. A piano was installed and the library began sponsoring lectures and concerts.
In 1977 Jacquelyn Thomas became librarian, the first with full faculty status. By 2006 she oversaw a staff of seven, all with graduate degrees in library science. During Thomas' tenure the library's collection and programming grew to a size appropriate to a small liberal arts college
. Today the library houses 160,000 volumes on nine levels and has a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, making it the largest secondary school
library in the world. The library also contains a collection of works by alumni/ae as well as the Academy Archives.
The library was the first building on campus to be computerized thanks to the foresight of Armstrong and Kahn, who supplied the library with sufficient conduit space for the cabling needed by the coming computer revolution.
In 1995, the library was officially named the Class of 1945 Library, honoring Dr. Lewis Perry, Exeter's eighth principal, who served from 1914 to 1946.
, Amherst
and West Point
, had been chosen to design the new library and had drafted plans with traditional architecture. Richard Day arrived as the new principal of the academy at that point, however, and found their design to be unsatisfactory. He dismissed them, declaring his intention to hire "the very best contemporary architect in the world to design our library".
The school's building committee was tasked with finding a new architect. Influential members of the committee became interested in Louis Kahn at an early stage, but they interviewed several other prominent architects as well, including Paul Rudolph
, I. M. Pei
, Philip Johnson
and Edward Larrabee Barnes
. Kahn's prospects received a boost when Jonas Salk
, whose son had attended Exeter, called Armstrong and invited him to visit the Salk Institute in California, which Kahn had recently built to widespread acclaim. Kahn was awarded the commission for the library in November 1965.
Kahn had already thought deeply about the proper design for a library, having earlier submitted proposals for a new library at Washington University
. He also expressed a deep reverence for books, saying, "A book is tremendously important. Nobody ever paid the price of a book, they only paid for the printing". Describing the book as an offering, Kahn said, "How precious a book is in light of the offering, in light of the one who has the privilege of the offering. The library tells you of this offering".
The building committee carefully considered what they wanted in a new library and presented their ideas to Kahn in an unusually detailed document that went through more than fifty drafts. The early designs included some items that were eventually rejected, such as a roof garden and two exterior towers with stairs that were open to the weather. They were removed from the plans when the building committee reminded Kahn that neither of those features would be practical in New England winters.
. The inner area is an atrium.
The library's heating and cooling needs are supplied by the nearby dining hall, which Kahn built at the same time as the library, but which is considered to be of less architectural significance.
The building committee's document specified that the new library should be "unpretentious, though in a handsome, inviting contemporary style". Kahn accordingly made the building's exterior relatively undramatic, suitable for a small New England town. Its facade
is primarily brick with teak
wood panels at most windows marking the location of a pair of wooden carrels. The bricks are load-bearing; that is, the weight of the outer portion of the building is carried by the bricks themselves, not by a hidden steel frame
. Kahn calls this fact to the viewer's attention by making the brick piers noticeably thicker at the bottom where they have more weight to bear. The windows are correspondingly wider toward the top where the piers are thinner. Kahn said, "The weight of the brick makes it dance like a fairy above and groan below."
The corners of the building are chamfer
ed (cut off), allowing the viewers to see the outer parts of the building's structure, the outer "doughnut." The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects says, "Kahn sometimes perceived a building as enclosed by 'plate-walls,' and to give emphasis to this structural form, he interrupted the plates at the corner, leaving a gap between them. The Library at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire (1967–1972) is a classic example". Each of these four brick "plate-walls," which house the library carrels, is 16 feet (4.9 m) deep.
At the top of the exterior walls is a row of openings similar to the windows below except that these openings are above the roof and have no glass. Vincent Scully said that Kahn was drawn to architecture based on "solid, almost primitive, masonry masses with voids in them without glass." The bottoms of these window-like openings are 6 feet (1.8 m) above the floor of an arcade
that follows the perimeter of the top of building.
Another arcade circles the building on the ground floor. Kahn disliked the idea of a building that was dominated by its entrance, so he concealed the main entrance to the library behind this arcade. His original design, however, called for landscaping with a paved forecourt that would have indicated the entrance without disrupting the symmetry of the facade
. Architectural historian William Jordy
said, "Perverse as the hidden entrance may seem, it emphatically reinforces Kahn's statement that his design begins on the periphery with the circle of individual carrels, each with its separate window."
greets the visitor upon entry into the library. At the top of the stairs the visitor enters a dramatic central hall with enormous circular openings that reveal several floors of book stacks. At the top of the atrium, two massive concrete cross beams diffuse the light entering from the clerestory
windows.
Carter Wiseman, author of Louis Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said, "The many comparisons of the experience of entering Exeter's main space to that of entering a cathedral are not accidental. Kahn clearly wanted the students to be humbled by the sense of arrival, and he succeeded." David Rineheart, who worked as an architect for Kahn, said, "for Lou, every building was a temple. Salk
was a temple for science. Dhaka was a temple for government. Exeter was a temple for learning."
Because the stacks are visible from the floor of the central hall, the layout of the library is clear to the visitor at a glance, which was one of the goals the Academy's building committee had set for Kahn.
The central room is 52 feet (15.8 m) high, as measured from the floor to the beginning of the roof structure, and 32 feet (9.8 m) wide. Those dimensions approximate a ratio known as the Golden Section, which was studied by the ancient Greeks and has been considered the ideal architectural ratio for centuries.
The circle and the square that are combined so dramatically in the atrium were considered to be the paradigmatic geometric units by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius
. He also noted that the human body is proportioned so that it can fit in both shapes, a concept that was famously expressed with a combined circle and square by Leonardo da Vinci
in his drawing Vitruvian Man
.
The specifications of the Academy's building committee called for a large number of carrels (the library has 210) and for the carrels to be placed near windows so they could receive natural light. The latter point matched Kahn's personal inclinations perfectly because he himself strongly preferred natural light: "He is also known to have worked by a window, refusing to switch on an electric light even on the darkest of days." Each pair of carrels has a large window above, and each individual carrel has a small window at desk height with a sliding panel for adjusting the light.
The placement of carrel spaces at the periphery was the product of thinking that began years earlier when Kahn submitted proposals for a new library at Washington University. There he dispensed with the traditional arrangement of completely separate library spaces for books and readers, usually with book stacks on the periphery of the library and reading rooms toward the center. Instead he felt that reading spaces should be near the books and also to natural light. For Kahn, the essence of a library was the act of taking a book from a shelf and walking a few steps to a window for a closer look: "A man with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way. He will not go fifty feet away to an electric light." Each carrel area is associated with two levels of book stacks, with the upper level structured as a mezzanine that overlooks the carrels. The book stacks also look out into the atrium.
The inherent massiveness of the brick "plate-wall" structure of the outer part of the library helps to create the cloistered atmosphere that Kahn felt was appropriate for library carrels. While explaining his proposal for the library at Washington University, Kahn had used the example of the cloistered carrels at the monastic library at Dunham, England, to explain his "desire to find a space construction system in which the carrels were inherent in the support which harbored them ... Wall-bearing masonry construction with its niches and vaults has the appealing structural order to provide naturally such spaces."
windows above the atrium so massive? Carter Wiseman says, "While they appear to be—and indeed are—structural, they are far deeper than necessary; their no-less-important role was to diffuse the sunlight coming in from the surrounding clerestory windows and reflect it down into the atrium." Sarah Goldhagen thinks there is more to the story, asserting that "the concrete X-shaped cross below the skylit ceiling at the Exeter Library is grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect." Kathleen James-Chakraborty goes even further: "Above, in the most sublime gesture of all, floats a concrete cross brace, illuminated by clerestory windows. Its weight, which appears ready to come crashing down upon the onlooker, revives the sense of threat dissipated elsewhere by the reassuring familiarity of the brick skin and wood details." Kahn similarly floated a massive concrete structure above the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester
, which he designed a few years earlier.
Another issue is the extent to which Kahn deliberately introduced elements into some of his buildings that give them the ageless atmosphere of ruins. Kahn himself spoke of "wrapping ruins around buildings", although in the context of another project. In his essay "Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome," Vincent Scully
argues that Kahn followed this practice in several of his buildings, including this library, saying, "And in his library at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Kahn won't even let it become a building; he wants it to remain a ruin. The walls don't connect at the top. They remain like a hollow shell". Romaldo Giurgola
, on the other hand, avoids this interpretation in the entry he wrote for Louis Kahn in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects. In it, while discussing the arrangement of exterior compenents of Kahn's National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, Giurgola wrote, "This relationship with daylight was the determining element behind this solution, rather than the formal desire to 'create ruins,' as some critics have suggested." In the very next paragraph Guirgola describes the chamfered corners of the library at Phillips Exeter by saying only that Kahn used this device to show that the structural importance of the corner is greatly reduced in buildings like the Exeter library that are constructed with reinforced concrete
and other modern materials.
Exeter, New Hampshire
Exeter is a town in Rockingham County, New Hampshire, United States. The town's population was 14,306 at the 2010 census. Exeter was the county seat until 1997, when county offices were moved to neighboring Brentwood...
, U.S., with 160,000 volumes on nine levels and a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, is the largest secondary school
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
library in the world. It is part of the Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy
Phillips Exeter Academy is a private secondary school located in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the United States.Exeter is noted for its application of Harkness education, a system based on a conference format of teacher and student interaction, similar to the Socratic method of learning through asking...
, an independent boarding school
Boarding school
A boarding school is a school where some or all pupils study and live during the school year with their fellow students and possibly teachers and/or administrators. The word 'boarding' is used in the sense of "bed and board," i.e., lodging and meals...
.
When it became clear in the 1950s that the library had outgrown its existing building, the school initially hired an architect who proposed a traditional design for the new building. Deciding instead to construct a library with a contemporary design, the school gave the commission to Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...
in 1965. In 1997 the library received the Twenty-five Year Award
Twenty-five Year Award
The Twenty-five Year Award is an architecture prize awarded by the American Institute of Architects to buildings and structures that have "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years", and that "[exemplify] design of enduring significance." The project receiving the award can be located anywhere in...
from the American Institute of Architects
American Institute of Architects
The American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
, an award that recognizes architecture of enduring significance that is given to no more than one building per year.
Kahn structured the library in three concentric square rings. The outer ring, which is built of load-bearing brick, includes all four exterior walls and the library carrel spaces immediately inside them. The middle ring, which is built of reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
, holds the heavy book stacks. The inner ring is a dramatic atrium with enormous circular openings in its walls that reveal several floors of book stacks.
History and services
The first library at Phillips Exeter Academy was a single small room. A member of the class of 1833 remembered it as containing "old sermons and some history, scarcely ever read". Even as late as 1905 the library had only two rooms and 2,000 volumes.In 1912 the Davis Library was added to the campus with space for 5,000 volumes. Although a major improvement, its atmosphere was inhospitable by the standards of later generations. Stacks were locked to students, for example, and the librarian's office was located at the entrance to the stacks to maximize control over entry. Decisions about book selections and the library's program were in the hands of an all-male faculty committee instead of the female librarian.
In 1950 Rodney Armstrong became librarian, the first with a graduate degree in library science
Library science
Library science is an interdisciplinary or multidisciplinary field that applies the practices, perspectives, and tools of management, information technology, education, and other areas to libraries; the collection, organization, preservation, and dissemination of information resources; and the...
. One of his first moves was to open the stacks to students. That solved one problem, but the real difficulty was the lack of space. The library contained 35,000 volumes at that point, many of them stored in cardboard boxes for lack of shelf room. After years of effort, Armstrong eventually succeeded in bringing a new library to the academy.
Architect Louis Kahn
Louis Kahn
Louis Isadore Kahn was an American architect, based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. After working in various capacities for several firms in Philadelphia, he founded his own atelier in 1935...
was chosen to design the new library in 1965, and it was ready for occupancy in 1971. Architectural historian Vincent Scully
Vincent Scully
Vincent Joseph Scully, Jr. is Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject...
acknowledged its architectural significance by using a photo of it as the frontispiece for his book Modern Architecture and Other Essays.
On November 16, 1971, classes were suspended for a day, and students, faculty, and staff moved books (the library had 60,000 volumes by this time) from the old Davis Library into the new library.
Henry Bedford, who became librarian shortly after the new library was occupied, supervised the transition not only to the new building but also to a new way of operating a library. Staff librarians were encouraged to see themselves as co-instructors with the regular faculty and to put less emphasis on shushing library patrons. A piano was installed and the library began sponsoring lectures and concerts.
In 1977 Jacquelyn Thomas became librarian, the first with full faculty status. By 2006 she oversaw a staff of seven, all with graduate degrees in library science. During Thomas' tenure the library's collection and programming grew to a size appropriate to a small liberal arts college
Liberal arts college
A liberal arts college is one with a primary emphasis on undergraduate study in the liberal arts and sciences.Students in the liberal arts generally major in a particular discipline while receiving exposure to a wide range of academic subjects, including sciences as well as the traditional...
. Today the library houses 160,000 volumes on nine levels and has a shelf capacity of 250,000 volumes, making it the largest secondary school
Secondary education
Secondary education is the stage of education following primary education. Secondary education includes the final stage of compulsory education and in many countries it is entirely compulsory. The next stage of education is usually college or university...
library in the world. The library also contains a collection of works by alumni/ae as well as the Academy Archives.
The library was the first building on campus to be computerized thanks to the foresight of Armstrong and Kahn, who supplied the library with sufficient conduit space for the cabling needed by the coming computer revolution.
In 1995, the library was officially named the Class of 1945 Library, honoring Dr. Lewis Perry, Exeter's eighth principal, who served from 1914 to 1946.
Choosing Louis Kahn as architect
The project to build a new and larger library began in 1950 and progressed slowly for several years. By the mid-1960s, O'Connor & Kilham, the architectural firm that had designed libraries for BarnardBarnard College
Barnard College is a private women's liberal arts college and a member of the Seven Sisters. Founded in 1889, Barnard has been affiliated with Columbia University since 1900. The campus stretches along Broadway between 116th and 120th Streets in the Morningside Heights neighborhood in the borough...
, Amherst
Amherst College
Amherst College is a private liberal arts college located in Amherst, Massachusetts, United States. Amherst is an exclusively undergraduate four-year institution and enrolled 1,744 students in the fall of 2009...
and West Point
United States Military Academy
The United States Military Academy at West Point is a four-year coeducational federal service academy located at West Point, New York. The academy sits on scenic high ground overlooking the Hudson River, north of New York City...
, had been chosen to design the new library and had drafted plans with traditional architecture. Richard Day arrived as the new principal of the academy at that point, however, and found their design to be unsatisfactory. He dismissed them, declaring his intention to hire "the very best contemporary architect in the world to design our library".
The school's building committee was tasked with finding a new architect. Influential members of the committee became interested in Louis Kahn at an early stage, but they interviewed several other prominent architects as well, including Paul Rudolph
Paul Rudolph (architect)
Paul Marvin Rudolph was an American architect and the dean of the Yale School of Architecture for six years, known for use of concrete and highly complex floor plans...
, I. M. Pei
I. M. Pei
Ieoh Ming Pei , commonly known as I. M. Pei, is a Chinese American architect, often called a master of modern architecture. Born in Canton, China and raised in Hong Kong and Shanghai, Pei drew inspiration at an early age from the gardens at Suzhou...
, Philip Johnson
Philip Johnson
Philip Cortelyou Johnson was an influential American architect.In 1930, he founded the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, and later , as a trustee, he was awarded an American Institute of Architects Gold Medal and the first Pritzker Architecture...
and Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes
Edward Larrabee Barnes was a American architect.Barnes was born in Chicago, Illinois into a family he described as "incense-swinging High Episcopalians", consisting of Cecil Barnes, a lawyer, and Margaret Helen Ayer, recipient of a Pulitzer Prize for the novel Year of Grace...
. Kahn's prospects received a boost when Jonas Salk
Jonas Salk
Jonas Edward Salk was an American medical researcher and virologist, best known for his discovery and development of the first safe and effective polio vaccine. He was born in New York City to parents from Ashkenazi Jewish Russian immigrant families...
, whose son had attended Exeter, called Armstrong and invited him to visit the Salk Institute in California, which Kahn had recently built to widespread acclaim. Kahn was awarded the commission for the library in November 1965.
Kahn had already thought deeply about the proper design for a library, having earlier submitted proposals for a new library at Washington University
Washington University in St. Louis
Washington University in St. Louis is a private research university located in suburban St. Louis, Missouri. Founded in 1853, and named for George Washington, the university has students and faculty from all fifty U.S. states and more than 110 nations...
. He also expressed a deep reverence for books, saying, "A book is tremendously important. Nobody ever paid the price of a book, they only paid for the printing". Describing the book as an offering, Kahn said, "How precious a book is in light of the offering, in light of the one who has the privilege of the offering. The library tells you of this offering".
The building committee carefully considered what they wanted in a new library and presented their ideas to Kahn in an unusually detailed document that went through more than fifty drafts. The early designs included some items that were eventually rejected, such as a roof garden and two exterior towers with stairs that were open to the weather. They were removed from the plans when the building committee reminded Kahn that neither of those features would be practical in New England winters.
Architecture
The library has an almost cubical shape: each of its four sides is 111 feet (33 m) wide and 80 feet (24 m) tall. It is constructed in three concentric areas (Kahn called them "doughnuts"). In the words of Robert McCarter, author of Louis I. Kahn, "From the very beginning of the design process, Kahn conceived of the three types of spaces as if they were three buildings constructed of different materials and of different scales – buildings-within-buildings". The outer area, which houses the reading carrels, is made of brick. The middle area, which contains the heavy book stacks, is made of reinforced concreteReinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
. The inner area is an atrium.
The library's heating and cooling needs are supplied by the nearby dining hall, which Kahn built at the same time as the library, but which is considered to be of less architectural significance.
Exterior
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
is primarily brick with teak
Teak
Teak is the common name for the tropical hardwood tree species Tectona grandis and its wood products. Tectona grandis is native to south and southeast Asia, mainly India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Burma, but is naturalized and cultivated in many countries, including those in Africa and the...
wood panels at most windows marking the location of a pair of wooden carrels. The bricks are load-bearing; that is, the weight of the outer portion of the building is carried by the bricks themselves, not by a hidden steel frame
Steel frame
Steel frame usually refers to a building technique with a "skeleton frame" of vertical steel columns and horizontal -beams, constructed in a rectangular grid to support the floors, roof and walls of a building which are all attached to the frame...
. Kahn calls this fact to the viewer's attention by making the brick piers noticeably thicker at the bottom where they have more weight to bear. The windows are correspondingly wider toward the top where the piers are thinner. Kahn said, "The weight of the brick makes it dance like a fairy above and groan below."
The corners of the building are chamfer
Chamfer
A chamfer is a beveled edge connecting two surfaces. If the surfaces are at right angles, the chamfer will typically be symmetrical at 45 degrees. A fillet is the rounding off of an interior corner. A rounding of an exterior corner is called a "round" or a "radius"."Chamfer" is a term commonly...
ed (cut off), allowing the viewers to see the outer parts of the building's structure, the outer "doughnut." The Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects says, "Kahn sometimes perceived a building as enclosed by 'plate-walls,' and to give emphasis to this structural form, he interrupted the plates at the corner, leaving a gap between them. The Library at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire (1967–1972) is a classic example". Each of these four brick "plate-walls," which house the library carrels, is 16 feet (4.9 m) deep.
At the top of the exterior walls is a row of openings similar to the windows below except that these openings are above the roof and have no glass. Vincent Scully said that Kahn was drawn to architecture based on "solid, almost primitive, masonry masses with voids in them without glass." The bottoms of these window-like openings are 6 feet (1.8 m) above the floor of an arcade
Arcade (architecture)
An arcade is a succession of arches, each counterthrusting the next, supported by columns or piers or a covered walk enclosed by a line of such arches on one or both sides. In warmer or wet climates, exterior arcades provide shelter for pedestrians....
that follows the perimeter of the top of building.
Another arcade circles the building on the ground floor. Kahn disliked the idea of a building that was dominated by its entrance, so he concealed the main entrance to the library behind this arcade. His original design, however, called for landscaping with a paved forecourt that would have indicated the entrance without disrupting the symmetry of the facade
Facade
A facade or façade is generally one exterior side of a building, usually, but not always, the front. The word comes from the French language, literally meaning "frontage" or "face"....
. Architectural historian William Jordy
William Jordy
Dr. William H. Jordy was a leading American architectural historian. At the time of his death, Jordy was Henry Ledyard Goddard Professor Emeritus of Art History at Brown University, where he taught for many years....
said, "Perverse as the hidden entrance may seem, it emphatically reinforces Kahn's statement that his design begins on the periphery with the circle of individual carrels, each with its separate window."
Interior
A circular double staircase built from concrete and faced with travertineTravertine
Travertine is a form of limestone deposited by mineral springs, especially hot springs. Travertine often has a fibrous or concentric appearance and exists in white, tan, and cream-colored varieties. It is formed by a process of rapid precipitation of calcium carbonate, often at the mouth of a hot...
greets the visitor upon entry into the library. At the top of the stairs the visitor enters a dramatic central hall with enormous circular openings that reveal several floors of book stacks. At the top of the atrium, two massive concrete cross beams diffuse the light entering from the clerestory
Clerestory
Clerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...
windows.
Carter Wiseman, author of Louis Kahn: Beyond Time and Style, said, "The many comparisons of the experience of entering Exeter's main space to that of entering a cathedral are not accidental. Kahn clearly wanted the students to be humbled by the sense of arrival, and he succeeded." David Rineheart, who worked as an architect for Kahn, said, "for Lou, every building was a temple. Salk
Salk Institute for Biological Studies
The Salk Institute for Biological Studies is a premier independent, non-profit, scientific research institute located in La Jolla, California. It was founded in 1960 by Jonas Salk, the developer of the polio vaccine; among the founding consultants were Jacob Bronowski and Francis Crick. Building...
was a temple for science. Dhaka was a temple for government. Exeter was a temple for learning."
Because the stacks are visible from the floor of the central hall, the layout of the library is clear to the visitor at a glance, which was one of the goals the Academy's building committee had set for Kahn.
The central room is 52 feet (15.8 m) high, as measured from the floor to the beginning of the roof structure, and 32 feet (9.8 m) wide. Those dimensions approximate a ratio known as the Golden Section, which was studied by the ancient Greeks and has been considered the ideal architectural ratio for centuries.
The circle and the square that are combined so dramatically in the atrium were considered to be the paradigmatic geometric units by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius
Vitruvius
Marcus Vitruvius Pollio was a Roman writer, architect and engineer, active in the 1st century BC. He is best known as the author of the multi-volume work De Architectura ....
. He also noted that the human body is proportioned so that it can fit in both shapes, a concept that was famously expressed with a combined circle and square by Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
in his drawing Vitruvian Man
Vitruvian Man
The Vitruvian Man is a world-renowned drawing created by Leonardo da Vinci circa 1487. It is accompanied by notes based on the work of the famed architect, Vitruvius. The drawing, which is in pen and ink on paper, depicts a male figure in two superimposed positions with his arms and legs apart and...
.
The specifications of the Academy's building committee called for a large number of carrels (the library has 210) and for the carrels to be placed near windows so they could receive natural light. The latter point matched Kahn's personal inclinations perfectly because he himself strongly preferred natural light: "He is also known to have worked by a window, refusing to switch on an electric light even on the darkest of days." Each pair of carrels has a large window above, and each individual carrel has a small window at desk height with a sliding panel for adjusting the light.
The placement of carrel spaces at the periphery was the product of thinking that began years earlier when Kahn submitted proposals for a new library at Washington University. There he dispensed with the traditional arrangement of completely separate library spaces for books and readers, usually with book stacks on the periphery of the library and reading rooms toward the center. Instead he felt that reading spaces should be near the books and also to natural light. For Kahn, the essence of a library was the act of taking a book from a shelf and walking a few steps to a window for a closer look: "A man with a book goes to the light. A library begins that way. He will not go fifty feet away to an electric light." Each carrel area is associated with two levels of book stacks, with the upper level structured as a mezzanine that overlooks the carrels. The book stacks also look out into the atrium.
The inherent massiveness of the brick "plate-wall" structure of the outer part of the library helps to create the cloistered atmosphere that Kahn felt was appropriate for library carrels. While explaining his proposal for the library at Washington University, Kahn had used the example of the cloistered carrels at the monastic library at Dunham, England, to explain his "desire to find a space construction system in which the carrels were inherent in the support which harbored them ... Wall-bearing masonry construction with its niches and vaults has the appealing structural order to provide naturally such spaces."
Architectural interpretations
Architectural experts sometimes differ in their interpretations of Kahn's design. Why, for example, are the cross beams at the clerestoryClerestory
Clerestory is an architectural term that historically denoted an upper level of a Roman basilica or of the nave of a Romanesque or Gothic church, the walls of which rise above the rooflines of the lower aisles and are pierced with windows. In modern usage, clerestory refers to any high windows...
windows above the atrium so massive? Carter Wiseman says, "While they appear to be—and indeed are—structural, they are far deeper than necessary; their no-less-important role was to diffuse the sunlight coming in from the surrounding clerestory windows and reflect it down into the atrium." Sarah Goldhagen thinks there is more to the story, asserting that "the concrete X-shaped cross below the skylit ceiling at the Exeter Library is grossly exaggerated for dramatic effect." Kathleen James-Chakraborty goes even further: "Above, in the most sublime gesture of all, floats a concrete cross brace, illuminated by clerestory windows. Its weight, which appears ready to come crashing down upon the onlooker, revives the sense of threat dissipated elsewhere by the reassuring familiarity of the brick skin and wood details." Kahn similarly floated a massive concrete structure above the sanctuary of the First Unitarian Church of Rochester
First Unitarian Church of Rochester
The First Unitarian Church in Rochester, New York was designed by architect Louis Kahn in 1959 to replace the previous church designed in 1859 by architect Richard Upjohn, founder of the American Institute of Architects ....
, which he designed a few years earlier.
Another issue is the extent to which Kahn deliberately introduced elements into some of his buildings that give them the ageless atmosphere of ruins. Kahn himself spoke of "wrapping ruins around buildings", although in the context of another project. In his essay "Louis I. Kahn and the Ruins of Rome," Vincent Scully
Vincent Scully
Vincent Joseph Scully, Jr. is Sterling Professor Emeritus of the History of Art in Architecture at Yale University, and the author of several books on the subject...
argues that Kahn followed this practice in several of his buildings, including this library, saying, "And in his library at Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire, Kahn won't even let it become a building; he wants it to remain a ruin. The walls don't connect at the top. They remain like a hollow shell". Romaldo Giurgola
Romaldo Giurgola
Romaldo Giurgola AO is an Italian-American-Australian academic architect, professor, and author. Giurgola was born in Galatina, in the south of Italy in 1920. After service in the Italian armed forces during World War II, he was educated at the Sapienza University of Rome...
, on the other hand, avoids this interpretation in the entry he wrote for Louis Kahn in the Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects. In it, while discussing the arrangement of exterior compenents of Kahn's National Assembly Building of Bangladesh, Giurgola wrote, "This relationship with daylight was the determining element behind this solution, rather than the formal desire to 'create ruins,' as some critics have suggested." In the very next paragraph Guirgola describes the chamfered corners of the library at Phillips Exeter by saying only that Kahn used this device to show that the structural importance of the corner is greatly reduced in buildings like the Exeter library that are constructed with reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete
Reinforced concrete is concrete in which reinforcement bars , reinforcement grids, plates or fibers have been incorporated to strengthen the concrete in tension. It was invented by French gardener Joseph Monier in 1849 and patented in 1867. The term Ferro Concrete refers only to concrete that is...
and other modern materials.
Recognition
- In 1997 the American Institute of ArchitectsAmerican Institute of ArchitectsThe American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
gave the library their Twenty-five Year AwardTwenty-five Year AwardThe Twenty-five Year Award is an architecture prize awarded by the American Institute of Architects to buildings and structures that have "stood the test of time for 25 to 35 years", and that "[exemplify] design of enduring significance." The project receiving the award can be located anywhere in...
for architecture of enduring significance, which is given to no more than one building per year. - In 2005 the United States Postal ServiceUnited States Postal ServiceThe United States Postal Service is an independent agency of the United States government responsible for providing postal service in the United States...
issued a stamp that recognized the library as one of twelve Masterworks of Modern American Architecture. - In 2007, the library was ranked #80 on the List of America's Favorite Architecture by the American Institute of ArchitectsAmerican Institute of ArchitectsThe American Institute of Architects is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to support the architecture profession and improve its public image...
.
External links
- The Phillips Exeter Academy library's web site is an excellent resource. Click on "Design of the Library" to see links to a Kahn Reference Guide, Floor Schematics, etc.
- Figure 6 of an academic paper called "The Tectonic Integration of Louis I. Kahn′s Exeter Library" provides a helpful exploded view drawing of the library's constituent parts.