"We got involved late," admits Shane Coen. "That's not typical for us." Coen is founder and lead landscape architect at coen+partners, a Minneapolis-based firm with national accolades and a portfolio ranging from community development to residential gardens to urban plazas. By the time he came to the library project, the building concept - including its placement on the site - had been determined by the Library Board and its lead architect, New Haven, Connecticut, based Cesar Pelli & Associates (nowPelli Clarke Pelli Architects). Coen was called in to interview in front of Pelli and 25 other people, and was asked on the spot what he thought the landscape should become. The marquee feature of Pelli's building, a top-floor canopy that extends out over Nicollet Mall, the city's bus-only commercial and shopping street, was already on the boards, as was the building's strict adherence to two different city grids that come together on the site. Coen proposed reflecting the canopy on the ground plane, with light-colored pavement under Pelli's architectural gesture and dark pavement everywhere else. He also suggested
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