Flower Power

摘要

Imagine a 24,000 square foot space anchored by a rotunda and embraced by undulating glass walls. "Doesn't it remind you of a flower?" Meg Klinkow Hartmann, director of the Oak Brook Public Library, IL, asked the group as participants pondered the overhead view of her library. In fact, yes, a voluptuous daisy. But the reality of service inside the flower is not so pretty: since the building lacks interior walls, sound zings through the public area, creating what architect Rick McCarthy of Burnidge Cassell Associates, located in Elgin, IL, called "odd acoustic issues" and exacerbating the need for a distinct and ideally separate space where youthful library users could be loud.