Dual additions - one an external underground structure and another an innovative building-within-a-building interior structure - combine to house Dartmouth’s Special Collections Library.
The Rauner Library project was comprised of both internal and external additions to Webster Hall, a 1901 former auditorium. The external addition consists of a 4,000-sf underground rare book storage area. With underground connections to both Webster Hall and the adjacent Baker Library, the flat-plate concrete addition was designed to accommodate live and dead loads from the landscaped plaza above and included special waterproofing details to protect the precious documents housed within.
The 8,300-sf internal addition replaced the original wood floors with a four-story, steel-framed, flat-plate concrete structure. It was built within the high bay of the building to house book stacks. The structural design met numerous functional requirements, including library stack live-load criteria, minimizing the structural plate thickness to maximize the clear story height, seismic isolation from the existing structure, and a highly refined concrete specification to enable the structure to serve as the architectural finish material.
Rauner Library earned a 2002 Honor Award in the AIA National Design Awards program.
Dual additions - one an external underground structure and another an innovative building-within-a-building interior structure - combine to house Dartmouth’s Special Collections Library.
The Rauner Library project was comprised of both internal and external additions to Webster Hall, a 1901 former auditorium. The external addition consists of a 4,000-sf underground rare book storage area. With underground connections to both Webster Hall and the adjacent Baker Library, the flat-plate concrete addition was designed to accommodate live and dead loads from the landscaped plaza above and included special waterproofing details to protect the precious documents housed within.
The 8,300-sf internal addition replaced the original wood floors with a four-story, steel-framed, flat-plate concrete structure. It was built within the high bay of the building to house book stacks. The structural design met numerous functional requirements, including library stack live-load criteria, minimizing the structural plate thickness to maximize the clear story height, seismic isolation from the existing structure, and a highly refined concrete specification to enable the structure to serve as the architectural finish material.
Rauner Library earned a 2002 Honor Award in the AIA National Design Awards program.
CLIENT: Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates, Inc. (now VSBA, LLC)
LOCATION: Hanover, NH
TYPE: Academic, Library, SERVICES: Adaptive Reuse, Addition, Renovation, Structural Intervention, MATERIALS: Concrete, Steel, SUSTAINABILITY: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Completed project photography © Matt Wargo
