PUBLISHED BY MOSHOLU PRESERVATION CORPORATION

Designs for New Fordham Library Unveiled 

By WILLIAM WICHERT

Next to Tuff City Tattoos, and just up the block from a bustling Fordham Road, a new glass-enclosed building with a frisbee-shaped roof will soon stand four stories tall. This is the vision for the new Bronx Borough Center Library, the highly anticipated, and energy-efficient replacement for the Fordham Library Center on Bainbridge Avenue. 

The new library will more than double the size of the overcrowded Fordham branch, which was built in 1923 and renovated twice since. Designed by Richard Dattner & Partners Architects, the new building will increase the number of computer workstations and the size of the current book collections while adding a new auditorium and a Latino and Puerto Rican Cultural Center. 

The increased space will allow for an expansion of programs currently 
available at the Fordham Library. Residents will be able to take part in 
the library's adult literacy classes through the Center for Reading and 
Writing and the English for Speakers of Other Languages courses. 
Fledgling entrepreneurs may utilize the technology training and research 
materials aimed at small business owners.

The Bronx Borough Center Library will also set a precedent as the first "green building" in the library system. Many of the 34 Bronx libraries have undergone some renovations in the past, but the new library will utilize modern technologies to conserve energy, saving the library thousands of dollars in the process.

Advanced sensors will automatically provide light and air ventilation, depending on the conditions in a particular area of the building. Seating near the glass facade will be flooded in natural light without accumulating any extra heat. At every level, a light shelf will bounce the sunlight up towards the ceiling so that light may be brought deeper into the building. 

"It's not a super high-tech building. It's just common sense using existing technologies," said Daniel Heuberger, a co-designer of the new library, which is modeled on current buildings in Germany. European countries began utilizing energy-efficient methods after the oil crisis in 1973, but the United States has only begun experimenting with energy conservation in the last 10 years, Heuberger said.

Construction is set to begin next January, after 15 years of searching for the money and a place to build. A site for the building became available in 2001, when the New York Public Library acquired the former Con Edison building on Kingsbridge Road near Fordham Road. The funding for this $50 million project soon followed through the cooperative efforts of various state and city officials as well as a private donation from a library trustee.

While the NYPL's capital budget has seen a nearly 30 percent cut over the past year, funding has remained intact for what is expected to be "an important architectural addition to the Bronx," said Mary Elizabeth Wendt, associate director of the branch libraries.

The technologies in the Bronx Borough Center may be invisible to the untrained eye, but Heuberger hopes that the building itself will increase the public's awareness of such energy-efficient possibilities. While he understands that one building cannot save the world, he believes that "it's the addition of building after building after building that will start to make a difference."