New library branch opens on Pico Boulevard

Olive ShermanStaff WriterA new branch of the Santa Monica Public Library is being built on Pico Boulevard to bring together nearby neighborhoods through sustainability and design, according to architects at Koning Eisenburg Architecture (KEA).According to KEA architect Nathan Bishop, who is the principal architect in charge of the Pico Branch Library, KEA’s main focus when designing its other project, Virginia Avenue Park, was to knit two nearby neighborhoods together — the wealthier south-of-Pico single family homes, and the less-affluent north-of-Pico apartment buildings.“The library was really thought of as an augmentation of [the Virginia Avenue Park],” Bishop said. “Everything from where it’s placed, to its thinking and ideas, is really about making something that people feel like they can make their own.”According to Bishop, KEA tried to make a community influenced library possible by holding community meetings open to the public.“We had a number of community meetings very early on,” Bishop said. “We’d have [about] seven tables, and we’d each sit at different tables, and we’d talk to people about [possible sites]."Bishop said KEA also explored the idea of doing something culturally inclusive with the library."One of the things we got strongly from the neighborhood group was that [the library] should be culturally specific to the neighborhood,” Bishop said. “It’s an interesting problem because that neighborhood has been changing ethnicities and cultures for a hundred years."Bishop said that the library's roof is a gray-water system which harnesses rainwater and re-uses it to flush the library’s toilets. This is possible because the roof is angled in a way that makes it easier to harness the rainwater.“[The gray-water system] is awesome, because hopefully more students will go to that library, and use greener resources,” Caitlin Smith (’15) said. “It points to the future, and says maybe, more places will be like that.”The library also features an automated book return, which checks-in books without a librarian having to do the manual work, according to Bishop.“If there’s something like [an automated book return], where [students] don’t have to check [the books] in themselves, that would be huge because that’s a big time-consuming thing for the library staff," Lohren Price, Samo’s library assistant said.Bishop said that Santa Monica is trying to get rid of the old Carnegie models of libraries, which have a reception desk dividing readers and librarians.“There was a kind of control exerted by the librarians,” Bishop said. “We tried to make this library feel more loose, and open."Bishop hopes that the new library environment will be beneficial to the public."What's really key about the library is that it's supposed to be in some way that’s not culturally specific and culturally inclusive so everyone can feel, or imagine, that it’s something of their own.”osherman@thesamohi.com