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The Rice Thresher
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by Leslie Liu thresher editorial staff
Once Fondren Library is demolished and a new $130 million library takes its place, the view from Willy's Statue facing west will extend to the Baker fountain. The library will be built so there is a central walkway the width of the Sallyport connecting the academic quad and the informal courtyard south of the Student Center. The new building may be completed as soon as 2005, President Malcolm Gillis announced March 15 after the Board of Trustees approved pre-design plans. The university had planned on spending about $80-90 million on the renovation of Fondren, but plans for renovation were scrapped. "We are not going with the lower-priced plan because it did not serve," Gillis said. "It did not serve architecturally and it did not serve academically, so we're taking a big bite out of the apple." The board also approved the construction of two temporary book storage facilities, one on campus and one off campus. Architects will now begin the design phase of all three buildings. Vice President for Finance and Administration Dean Currie said the earliest that construction could begin on the new library would be in fall 2002, but most likely, it will not start until spring 2003. Also, the university must raise half of the funds for the building before ground can be broken. Designing the library The executive architect for the plan is Geoffrey Freeman of Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, a Boston-based firm. Freeman, who has been working with Rice for three years on the library renovation project, specializes in educational facilities and has worked on library renovations at Columbia, Princeton and Yale universities. The new pre-designs show a 295,000-square foot library with two linear wings, about the length and width consistent with other buildings in the academic quad, built east to west. Between the wings will be a courtyard. The wings will be connected by an "immersion concourse," an elliptical structure that will serve as the center of library services. At the west end of the wings is the "reading room," which will be higher than the rest of the building. The building will have four floors above ground and one basement level. "The whole concept now is to design a library around the activity of doing research, the activity of learning," Freeman said. "And so that means taking a library, and rather than designing it around storage, which is a critical part of a library, we're really talking about the active use of information of all formats, whether it's held here at Rice or anywhere in the world, and forwarding that information and reformatting and publishing that information. It's an entirely different idea of what a library is about." Michael Wilford, the design architect on the project from Michael Wilford & Associates, said the room symbolizes the presence of the library at the heart of campus. The location of the reading room is at the intersection of the two main campus axes, and Wilford hopes that the lighted building will attract people. "This space needed, first of all, to be one that could allow for intensive collaboration," Vice President for Information Technology and University Librarian Chuck Henry said. "People like to be isolated, like their nooks and crannies on occasion. They also want places where faculty and students can run into each other." The new library will have entrances from the north, south and east sides. "The challenge was to build a structure that brought people together, helped to create new ideas, cross through the pathways to new discoveries and new knowledge," Henry said. "I have no doubt that this building, this structure, with its mix of services and programs and experts, will become the benchmark for the next 50 years." The name Fondren will remain somewhere in the new library, Gillis said. "The challenge for us is the following: For the last 100 years, we've used Lovett Hall as a source of inspiration for the architecture at Rice," Currie said. "My hope for this building is it will pay enormous respect to Lovett and be a source of ideas for the next 100 years." Where will all the books go?
The temporary storage facility on campus will be located diagonally from the Student Center and across the Inner Loop from the new Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management building. Project Manager Ana Ramirez said she hopes plans for the facility will not get any bigger than 75-76,000 square feet. However, she said no one knows how many books will be in the on-campus facility. "It's still unclear right now because we're just getting ready to review exactly how much space there is for people and how much space there is for books," Ramirez said. Space Planning Committee member John Posch said where the computers from Fondren will go has not been determined. Posch is also a Facilities and Engineering Architecture and Engineering Manager. Ramirez said the university is in the process of purchasing property for the off-campus storage facility. Currie said the location will be three to four miles south of Rice on Main Street. The storage facility will not be browsable, Ramirez said. "We're looking in to seeing if we could provide some facilities where someone could go and get a book there and then sit down and be able to see it there," she said. Currie said there may be some sort of book retrieval service provided that would deliver requested books to campus within one or two days. Ramirez said finding 24-hour study spaces for when Fondren is demolished is a top priority. Some spaces may be provided in the temporary facility, but a space planning committee is looking into other places on campus also. Students and faculty react Current and former college presidents, other student government representatives, deans and faculty council members were invited to hear the announcement of the plans. Many had a positive reaction to the new model for the library. "It will be nice when it's up to par with the rest of Rice," Student Association President Jamie Lisagor said. Interim Dean of Humanities Gale Stokes said he likes the way the plan centers the library on campus. "And I like the fact that the design of the library is going to be a vast improvement on the blocky kind of architecture of Fondren Library," Stokes said. Sid Richardson College President-elect Anisha Patel said she is neutral about the architecture of the model, but she does think the concept for the interior space is sound. "I think it's the right idea in that they're trying to make better work spaces for groups ... because that's something that we're lacking right now," Patel said. Former Wiess College President Josh Katz said there are two sides to getting a new library. "One, the current library isn't suitable, it doesn't provide enough research opportunities to students," Katz, a senior, said. "The poor layout, the design are kind of unfortunate. It doesn't work well with our campus. So in that sense I think it's really great that we go to a university where when there's a problem, we're willing to spend money to address it, we're willing to not just make due with a building that's just OK. I think it shows leadership and vision for the university." However, Katz said there are serious problems with how the university prioritizes funding for things undergraduate students need or want (See Column, Page 3). "Some projects are allowed basically a blank check for however much they want, such as this library, whereas other projects, such as building a new college, are not the same priority, because they're not allowed to be completed with the same level of autonomy, and that's really disappointing to me," Katz said. Last spring, Wiess requested funding for a new masters' house in addition to the funds going to the new college. After campus-wide debate, the request for funding was denied by the Board of Trustees because of insufficient funds. For the next several years, Wiess and Hanszen Colleges will switch masters' houses.
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