Location: 10 River Terrace, New York, New York 10282, USA
Year: 2009
Former United States Poet Laureate and founder of Poets House once wrote, “"I dream of an art so transparent that you can look through it and see the world". The LEED Gold home for Poets House, an 80,000-volume library and learning center in Battery Park City, speaks to its founder for its physical transparency beckons all people and voices of poetry to come inside. Such spatial elements as the double height glass entry incorporating an oval glass exhibition space, the transparent children’s library and the glass overhead door in the auditorium that opens to the adjacent park serve as a beacon to invite the community to enter. All spaces, including a reading library, children’s library, entry space, art exhibition space, indoor/outdoor auditorium, and conference room are constantly activated. They are designed to be inherently multifunctional, ultimately making sustainable use of valuable real estate and creating a 24/7 animated environment. Fueled by a forward-thinking design, this 11,000 square foot house of poetry overlooking both the Hudson River and Teardrop Park South is a hub for artistic inventiveness in downtown New York City. The design not only enlarges the scale at which this non-profit can operate but accomplishes this while simultaneously saving both energy and the environment. Built with sustainable materials found within 500 miles of the site, such as renewable beech wood flooring, countertops created from metal scraps and insulation composed of recycled blue jeans, the design of Poets House reduces our carbon footprint. the design also incorporates ongoing high-performance systems that will recycle rainwater, monitor indoor environmental air quality and capture filtered daylight as a source of lighting for the entire library reading room. These building efficiencies reinforce the openness of the architecture, affirming Poets House’s sustainability as a cutting-edge place for poetry in the community and the world.
