Building Design Charette

These are sketchup snapshots of a preliminary building design used for our site and building design charettes. The Layout was a combination of a few different groups' projects.

Programming Document

My group handled the sustainability portion of the programming document. This we tackled in various different aspects such as parking, water use, lighting, etc... This is an example of how we approached each subject from a general standpoint highlighting the problem, solution, and considerations.

Individual Detail Project: Checkout Desk

The circulation and checkout desk became my individual building detail by way of an involved and long process. It took many different forms, but ultimately became the relatively simple solution shown. It featured self checkouts as primary processing with light staffing for technical and service support. It is constructed of a steel frame which supports OSB and Dupont Corian surfaces. High pressure laminate is used for shelving and cabinetry as well.

I did not come up with a flowery metaphor to use as a concept which would generally be expected, particularly in this program. Rather I chose to integrate it as seamlessly as possible with the design language of the stacks and atrium groups' designs. This became a much more streamlined solution and lent itself well to unification of the two spaces.

Salt Lake City Public Library

This is part of my precedent research completed on the Salt Lake City Public Library. It is an incredibly complex and interesting building. I shudder to think what the programming document must have looked like for this project. I learned a great deal particularly when looking at the structural organization of the building. It took a bit of investigation and close examination to determine where columns and structural members were located in the plan, but once they were located the order of what looked like chaos became very obvious.

Greensboro Central Library Precedent Study

Circulation diagram

Public/Private Spaces


Structural Organization

This is a sample of my work for the Greensboro Public Library precedent research. It is a very nice library, however I did not enjoy analyzing it quit like I did with the Salt Lake City Library. There were a great number of programmatic similarities between the two buildings, despite the vast difference between their design and construction styles.

Studio Reading Space 2

Studio Reading Space 1

I think this is one of my favorite design drawings ever. The 3 point perspective really brings it home for me.




This project was very enjoyable to me once I got into a good groove with it. There were many aspects of the presentation that were extremely frustrating to me, and never were really resolved. It was however a great project and I still am in love with my concept idea. I think I will definitely re-use it in a later project. The notion of a library that is the physical embodiment of the workstation used in the movie Minority Report or "Jarvis" from Iron Man is a very cool think to think about with lots of possibilities.