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Ridgefield Library

Client
Ridgefield Library
Location
Ridgefield, CT
Size
25,000 SF
Completion
April 2015
Sustainability
LEED Silver
Tags
Libraries Architecture Historic Interiors Sustainability

Set in a park-like setting on a bucolic, small town main street, the original library is red brick, Beaux-Arts, and simultaneously diminutive and monumental. A series of new additions that defer to the original in material and scale lie behind the 1903 building.

As a library for the future, the design melds town fabric with town life. The new library addition forms connections. Large windows frame views so that the townscape becomes part of the interior architecture. In plan and section, the addition locks into the topography of the site, the street, an adjacent building façade, and the old library. There are multiple points of entry, from Main Street, a side street, parking lot, and lower parking lot, all leading directly to a central organizing node in which the many components of the library intersect. The building obtained LEED Silver certification.

Inset image Newman Ridgefield Public Library 03 straightened
Recognition
  • AIA Connecticut 2020 Elizabeth Mills Brown Award of Merit