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Whitby Public Library & Civic Square
Idea Store WhitechapelWhitby Public Library & Civic Square
An environmentally friendly library shows that a civic building can still be a public landmark.
The town of Whitby, located 30 miles east of Toronto, is home to approximately 100,000 people, many of whom live in a rapidly expanding ring of low density development that surrounds the town’s relatively intact 10th-century urban core. When the time came to rebuild the undersized and technically obsolete main library, the town and architects Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners seized a unique opportunity to bring a set of much needed public spaces to the heart of downtown Whitby.
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The new library is an L-shaped, two-story building that frames a hard surface plaza to the north and a verdant entry court to the south. The creation of a pedestrian precinct and the design’s orientation, massing and inclusion of 80% of the site’s existing mature trees as shade elements embody a high level of sustainability.
Programmatically, the library is organized into two discrete wings linked by a lofty main lobby. The long, narrow eastern wing houses meeting rooms, archives, administrative functions and the café, while the library proper is housed on two floors in a deeper block to the south of the site. The library’s most animated public spaces are grouped around the two-story north atrium facing the square, while quiet reading lounges and study spaces line the southern perimeter. The architecture combines crisp planar elements clad in Indiana limestone, prismatic, copper clad reading bays and large expanses of glazing to create an abstract modern language that still resonates with the town’s ambitions for an enduring civic presence.
Formal name of building:
Whitby Public Library & Civic Square
Location:
Whitby, Ontario
Completion Date: August, 2005
Gross square footage: 56,000 sq.ft.
Total project cost: $20 million
Owner:
Town of Whitby
Architect:
Shore Tilbe Irwin & Partners
20 Duncan Street, Suite 300
Toronto ON M5H 3G8
www.stipartners.com
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