Summer/Fall 2009 — Vol. 62, No. 3
by Liz Newall
Clemson students help bring library to historical Penn Center.
Here’s the assignment.
Find the perfect building site and design for a library. Not just any library. But one that blends modern technology with the essence of the Penn Center on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County — a location that’s among the most significant African American historical and cultural centers in existence today.
Take into account the massive oak canopy, dripping with moss and alive with birdsong. The marshes and rolling Atlantic. The Gullah culture. The storied structures on the 50-acre campus of the Penn School. The island itself.
Think big, but not big box. The site must support a 25,000-square-foot structure with the option to expand another 10,000 square feet. It must be easily accessible, yet fit in seamlessly with the surroundings — especially those incredible live oaks.
Be prepared to communicate your site choice and design to civic leaders, architects, librarians, horticulturists and a diverse general public.
Listen. Revise. Refine. Present again — until you have a plan with elements worthy of inclusion into the final design.
That’s exactly what seven teams of Clemson architecture and landscape architecture students, mostly undergraduates, have recently accomplished. In fact, their work, as part of a multidiscipline design team, has made the construction of the St. Helena Branch Library at the Penn Center closer to becoming a reality.
Beaufort County officials have already advertised the project among architectural design firms for quality-based selection, narrowed the field and begun interviews. Selection is anticipated by this summer, followed by public input. Design and bid should be completed by next spring with construction to begin in the summer of 2011 if all follows the current (tentative) schedule.
Web Extra: A Library for St. Helena Island
Who you gonna call?
Last fall, when Beaufort County planners secured funding and authorization to build a branch library in or near the Penn Center, planning director Tony Criscitiello picked up the phone and called Clemson architecture professor Lynn Craig.
With good reason. Criscitiello had collaborated with Craig and Clemson students on a mixed-use urban design project in North Augusta several years earlier. He knew Craig’s combination of expertise, respect for community and high expectations.
Craig’s international, academic and professional knowledge brings a wealth of experience to his teaching. So does his belief in service-learning. His students’ work is visible in numerous community improvements across the state and as far away as Dominica.
As soon as the call came in, Craig began planning a design studio and charrette to assist Beaufort County, Penn Center administrators and St. Helena Island residents with possible ideas for a branch library.
In architecture design studios, small groups of students work with master teachers on a semester- or yearlong team project to devise solutions to a problem or to meet a particular need.
For every project, students interview key people; gather statistics on demographics and traffic patterns; collect previous plans, deeds and plats; photograph the site from every conceivable angle; and compile all data. Then, they brainstorm ideas, discuss them, refine them and present them to their teachers and clients in a process called a design charrette.
In planning for the St. Helena Island library project, Craig invited landscape architecture students and faculty to join. “It just made sense to have the two — both driven by landform and function — coordinating, rather than one following the other,” says Craig. “And the collaboration gave each student a richer perspective.”
He enlisted fellow faculty Robert Bruhns, Pernilla Christensen and Doris Gstach and architects David Moore ’88, M ’90, Cooter Ramsey, Jim Tiller and Brian Wurst ’84. The team worked closely with Beaufort County library director Wlodek Zaryczny.
Everyone gets into the act
Students started with the architectural program from Zaryczny. The library must meet the educational, recreational and career development needs of a multi-generational and historically unique community and one that supports 21st century technology. Elements include:
- Children and family service areas along with collections and afterschool programs and resources for younger children outfitted with specific literacy education standards.
- Teen services and programs to include a teen room with collections, collaborative learning area, educational gaming and a media production lab.
- Adult and senior resource components including collections, job skills, work force development and literacy training, and small business center.
- Areas of service would also include a computer lab, large community meeting room, study rooms, café, shop and art gallery space.
- Program space would accommodate a heavily populated PC environment and central commons area.
- Depending upon funding, a 10,000-square-foot Gullah-Geechee/African American Resource Center.
Zaryczny gave them a final directive: Make it a place where young people as well as adults will want to be.
With program in hand, students began the next phase — living and breathing the design as it developed from the ground up.
To do that, they, along with faculty, traveled to the historic center area of the Penn Center and stayed at the community center for four days. They researched, studied and chose possible sites, and created site-specific designs while meeting local people involved in the center itself and the library project.
After preliminary research, teams began creating seven distinctively different plans. Sites ranged from within the Penn Center grounds to open fields farther away from the historic buildings.
“In each group, almost everyone had pen, marker or colored pencil in hand,” says Craig. “The respect for each other’s ideas, the focused energy and the collaboration — all were extraordinary.”
Library designs varied from long, low profiles to two-story organic structures, some circular, others in separate units or wings. All were suited to the specific site, incorporated eco-friendly materials and had elements of the history and culture of St. Helena Island.
Community input was critical for both the success of the project and the experience of the students.
“It was a win-win experience for all involved,” says Zaryczny. “The students and faculty were a delight to work with. They listened carefully to what we want, need and can accommodate. Then they came up with a variety of viable options and ideas to address our concerns.”
Students agree. Participant Lindsay Woods says, “Being at the charrette was one of the things I loved most about the project. Traveling to the Penn Center was an experience on its own, plus we were introduced to a new way of studying architecture. This intense form of designing allowed a constant flow of ideas and taught us valuable communication skills.”
Back at Clemson, several other fourth-year design studios have begun designing libraries as close as Atlanta, Ga., and as far away as Barcelona, Spain; Genoa, Italy; and Dubai.
In fact, the Sandhill Research and Education Center in Columbia, an earlier design studio and charrette project led by Craig, has just opened its doors.
And that just may be the perfect ending for the assignment.
For more about the design charrette, contact professor Lynn Craig at clynn@clemson.edu or call (864) 656-3905. For more about the St. Helena Island Branch Library, contact library director Wlodek Zaryczny at wzaryczny@bcgov.net or call (843) 470-6505.
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