About Louise Schaper

Our number one NLL facility, Goucher Athenaeum, crosses service boundaries, mixes library metaphors, and harmonizes a campus already known for its modernist aesthetic.

The 55,000 square foot addition to the UC-Berkeley Law Library appears like an open and transparent one-story pavilion from the street, but it has a huge impact on the law library as well as the law school.

From claustrophobic and dark, the library took on a light and airy presence. Historic and almost forgotten spaces that had been chopped and covered up were restored, including a
30′-tall ceiling in the 1913 “grand reference hall” that became symbolic of the entire effort.

Materials and finishes engender a sense of lightness and fun. Playful, inventive, and, sometimes, surprising, the designs turned straightforward materials, like copper, wood, glass, steel, aluminum, and acrylic, into anything but ordinary. Digitally printed skylight liners, laser-cut guardrails, and water jet–cut aluminum panels provide endless interest.

When Seattle University leadership took on its largest single capital project—expanding the campus library to encompass a learning commons and create a campus hub—it created a landmark knowledge resource for the future that engages and inspires students today.

Columbia University’s new Science and Engineering Library (SEL) is the latest take on how libraries support science research and learning. Housed in a new state-of-the-art high-rise interdisciplinary laboratory building built over an existing ground-level gymnasium, this project required no additional footprint to accomplish its space goals.