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View looking east from Beach 54th Street. The building's corners are lifted in facets that reduce the mass of the building, which is raised to prevent flooding. Wood imprinted ultra-high performance concrete (UHPC) planks wrap the exterior.
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View from entry looking east. An overhead exposed wood timber & Glulam beam roof structure supports a continuous ridgeline skylight.
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View from entry looking south to the children's space beyond. Inclinded planting spans between the entry and raised extension level.
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View from entry looking west toward the children's area and community room beyond, which are raised above the flood plain.
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Skylit children's area looking east. A garden wall allows children to cultivate plants in individual pods which can be swapped and arrayed together in changing compositions.
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Elevated entry walk to the Community Room looking west.
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Community room looking north with exposed wood roof structure above. The space visually connects to the street via a large, deep set horizontal window (left).
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Overview of the community room which provides a street-adjacent flexible space for general library uses and community gatherings & presentations.
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Floor plan. The program consists of two public spaces: a street-adjacent flexible space for general library uses and community gatherings, and a central zone dedicated to children's activities, readings, & screenings. A third section houses library support functions, storage, and services.
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Component axonometric and section diagram. The site, located just 300 yards from Rockaway Beach, is flood-prone and the entire building is raised upon a resilient concrete plinth protecting the spaces from storm surges and providing a gathering place for the community in times of emergency.
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Model top view. Referencing the simple forms of historic meeting houses and town halls, the new LEED Silver certified building has a four-sided perimeter with a traditional hip roof, skewed by its unusual parallelogram shaped site.
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View from Beach 54th Street looking southeast.

ARVERNE LIBRARY

Queens Public Library, Arverne, NY

Proposal 2017
Project 2018-2021
Projected Completion Summer 2026

Located in the Arverne/Edgemere neighborhood of the Rockaways, the Arverne Library Expansion nearly doubles the area of its original 1960s facility, heavily damaged by Hurricane Sandy. The Expansion advances the library’s contemporary role as civic space where adults and children can gather and be together in two new public spaces: a street-adjacent flexible space for general library use and community gatherings, and a central skylit interior garden space dedicated to children's activities, readings, & screenings. A third section houses support functions, storage, and services. The project was designed to provide a resilient structure in this vulnerable coastal location, to achieve LEED Silver certification, and to advance NYC DDC's Design and Construction Excellence Principles of Equity, Sustainability, Resiliency and Healthy Living.

Community
Though the branch was closed in the aftermath of Sandy, this inundated seaside community was drawn to a portable library trailer temporarily parked on the same adjacent vacant lot upon which the expansion is now being constructed. Unexpectedly, library circulation quadrupled during this time, underscoring its significance as a community center and the Expansion embraces the Library's growing civic role, building on its traditional information and technology services that will continue to serve the neighborhood.

Resilience
Located just 300 yards from Rockaway Beach, the building has a robust resilient exterior base & shell. Program spaces are raised 4'-4" above the sidewalk on a cast concrete plinth designed to resist storm surges, survive flooding, and provide a safe gathering place for the community. Conceived as an extension of the sidewalk, a single-switchback ramp provides an accessible route for all without an elevator. The raised building’s bulk is visually minimized at sidewalk level with facets cut from base's corners and above, at its roofline which pitches back from a low perimeter wall, aligning with the existing library height. This resultant, simple oblique hip roofline minimizes bulk and references classic meeting house forms, here skewed to accommodate its atypical parallelogram-shaped site.

A series of staggered, wood-imprinted resilient UHPC exterior planks create a perimeter rainscreen that, along with zinc roofing, provides a robust, low-maintenance protective building shell. The roof hosts a small field of south facing photovoltaic panels that generates a portion of the library's energy, the amount of which is registered within the community room via digital display designed to raise public awareness of energy production/consumption.

Healthy Living
Inside, roof-supporting exposed heavy timber planks and glulam beams, together with a soft, tackable wall finish of acoustic felt, form a visually warm & unified interior liner with a generous ridgeline skylight that visually opens to the sky above and provides daylight to the program spaces below. A series of horizontal, inclined, and vertical interior planting beds, visible from within the existing library, welcomes and defines the children's flex space. Reserve plants, used for normal rotation and maintenance, will offer children the opportunity to learn about and help nurture this indoor garden. The adjacent Community Room visually connects back to the street via a large, glazed opening & continuous window seat, deep set within the perimeter wall, with physical access provided by a dedicated after-hours entry for early morning and evening meetings, classes, and events.

The project features a Percent For Art component entitled The Feeling is Mutual by artist Justin Valdez. Valdez’s drawings will be embedded in the project's glazing in a way that will eliminate the need for additional, code-required distraction graphics. Together with immersive tile installations in each restroom, the works reflect and are deeply rooted in Valdez's extensive experience of life and people in the Rockaways.

Rice+Lipka Architects
Principals: Lyn Rice & Astrid Lipka
Associate Principals: Hanson Liu, Nicholas Desbiens (CD)
Senior Associate: Taylor McNally-Anderson
Associate: John Diven
Sr Designers: John Diven, Michael Choi, Timothy Khalifa, Ahmad Khan, Wei Song
Project Team: Su Yeon Chi, Yiyao Liu, Daniela Leon, Hanyi Liu, Andrew Mack, Dong Lu, Yu Mao, Jianwen Huang

Artist: Justin Valdes
Geotech: Langan
Structural: Silman
Systems: Plus Group
Energy Modeling: ME Consulting
Lighting: CBB
Acoustics: Cerami
Security, Technology, Audiovisual: Cerami
Arborist: Urban Arborist
Interior Landscape: Verdant