Architect says new Cedar Rapids library is one of a kind

CEDAR RAPIDS - It was all superlatives last week from the city's library board and library director at the long-awaited unveiling of the exterior design of the new downtown facility.

“Spectacular,” said Susan McDermott, one of two library board members on the design team.

“We wanted you to feel like you could sink into this place, and at the same time we wanted to be a 21st-century library,” added Library Director Bob Pasicznyuk.

By week's end, Bradd Brown, lead architect on the project for OPN Architects Inc. of Cedar Rapids, weighed in, saying the building will be like no other in the city except for this: It will share with other new, post-flood-era public buildings being built here - most of which OPN has a hand in being “progressive and forward-looking.”

The building, he said, is designed for what it is and for the context of where it sits - in an urban setting across from Greene Square Park with the west side of the building next to railroad tracks and a parking garage.

No one, he said, will mistake the building for anything but a library. The extensive glass on the first floor emphasizes “a transparency” to let people see in as they pass, he said.

He said the library building will sit back on the site, the 400 block of Fourth Avenue SE, to make room for a large urban plaza in front of it, which is intended to act as an extension of the park across the street.

Brown said he has designed more than 30 public libraries in Iowa, Illinois and Wisconsin, but the new Cedar Rapids library will be one of a kind. He attributed that status, in part, to the site and to the goals of the library board and director.

The OPN renderings released last week prompted instant comparisons to the new, OPN-designed Human Services Campus building three blocks away and the new, OPN-designed hotel on the Kirkwood Community College campus.

Line the three up, Brown said, and the differences are clear. Three different OPN teams, he said, designed the buildings. All, he said, share an extensive use of glass and all are “progressive” in design, but he said the similarities stop there.

Brown said he can't wait to see the city's downtown in a few years when the current flurry of post-flood-era construction is complete. That will include the library, a Convention Complex, a federal courthouse and the Human Services Campus building.

“I think this era will mark a major threshold for architecture in downtown Cedar Rapids,” he said. “As an architect, I like that we're thinking progressive and forward ... And I really think it's going to change the character of our downtown in a positive way.”

The opening of the new library is set for July 2013 - or sooner if construction begins this summer.

“I think people will look at this and think, ‘Gosh, it's the neatest library I've seen forever,'” Pasicznyuk said.