Goals
- Create a useful and successful study environment for MIT students
- Upgrade lighting, finishes, and furniture to restore the architectural and historic gravitas to this important space, and to enhance the image of the reading room and attract more students.
Challenges
- Address immediate functional and aesthetic concerns with minimal upgrades as part of an interim solution for the University, before larger, more significant plans for the space can be implemented.
- Improve poor lighting, upgrade worn finishes, and replace inadequate furniture within a limited budget.
- Respect the classical architectural details of the famed MIT Rotunda while creating a more modern, contemporary space. (This space is under the main iconic dome at the center of the MIT campus.)
Design Response
- Worked closely with the library staff, students, and other user groups to identify key problems and opportunities for improvement. Led design charrettes with key constituents.
- Created a design that is a modern counterpoint to the classical space, while actually enhancing the beloved historic room.
- Developed four reading/study zones suggestive of, but not slavish to, the formal axes and architecture of the space, separated by abstractly-shaped carpets and remaining visually connected.
- Redesigned the circulation patterns to interrupt and slow the pace of through-traffic.
- Created subtle lighting enhancements to address users' concerns, including wall-mounted lighting to raise the ambient light level, and floor and table lamps to lend a more intimate scale to the room.
Contractor
MetroWest Construction
Consultants
Light Th!s, WSP/Flack&Kurtz
