San Francisco Main Public Library

The design is organized to permit passage into and through the building and out the opposite end of the full-block site. The library thus facilitates and represents the integration of the different people, interests, and precincts of the city.

Fronting on the Civic Center with two symmetrical facades, the exterior echoes in a modernist way the materials and massing of the neighboring Beaux-Arts institutions. The library’s other two facades offer a contemporary response to the adjacent commercial district.

Internal organization centers on a monumental open staircase and five-story atrium, 60 feet in diameter, which provides a luminous hub of orientation. A glass-enclosed periodicals reading room, suspended above, further draws light into the core of the building.

Bridges link the different precincts and reinforce the metaphor of connection in a library that provides access to both advanced online information systems and more than three million books on open/closed stacks.