| The first seedless navel oranges that revolutionized the California citrus industry were grown in the city of Riverside, CA. Nearly overnight, worthless arid land, transformed by irrigation and railroad lines became a prosperous inland California city. As the county seat, and the home of a university, the population continued for decades to grow and diversify. The Riverside Mission Inn and the Riverside Art Museum by Julia Morgan, just a block away from the new library, are just two architectural landmarks that express the civic pride and ambition of the city’s early founders and are the context for the new building.
After a decade long push for a new library and several previous unsuccessful studies to renovate the outdated 1960’s library, the city concluded a new library on a new site was called for and the old library would be transformed to the new Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art & Culture. The new 40,000 SF Riverside Main Library, a block from the former library, is the result of a long community-driven design process, and is the expression of a modern and much more diverse California community as eager to leave its mark on their city as the wealthy land barons of the late nineteenth century.
The new Riverside Main Library sits on a city-owned, full-block site, totaling 2˝ acres located within walking distance of the Mission Inn and the city’s cultural and business district. The new library is part of the revitalization of this historic residential neighborhood and design for the site included a master plan for the entire block. The library building footprint was consolidated on 1/3 of the full-block site, by stacking library programming vertically. This enabled the remaining 2/3 of the site to be devoted to much needed multi-family housing within the central downtown district.
The master plan includes the library at the head of a new shaded paseo that links two major downtown streets. The two-floor library volume sits 36 feet in the air on massive concrete piers creating an 8,900-square-foot shaded outdoor public plaza. A community meeting room, city archives and a Friends of the Library Bookstore are located next to the new outdoor plaza at ground level.
The elevated library provides patrons views of the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains to the north. The two floor interior volume is covered from end to end in a sweeping vault that roughly parallels the enormous north and south facing windows. A reading room and adjoining 4,000 SF terrace is located on the west end and is a venue for indoor and outdoor events.
The adult reading room and collection areas, on the fourth floor, include a local history reading room that contains the original Tiffany globes and some furniture from Riverside’s former 1903 Carnegie Library.
The large north facing window with high-performance glazing provides natural day-lighting throughout the day, reducing energy use. South and west-facing window areas are shaded by deep building overhangs or projections to reduce solar heat gain, while optimizing view and access to daylight in all areas of the building.
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