new central library

Downtown Austin's central library is too small and too outdated. After years of planning, the City is looking to build a new 200,000 square foot downtown library on the Seaholm site.

The building is designed by Lake Flato, an internationally known architecture firm based in central Texas.

Unfortunately, the renderings shown below seem more designed to show off the roof than any other elements of the proposed facility.

Topics include City alleyway reconstruction, new Central Library design.

The City of Austin has more residents than the cities of Boston (although the Austin MSA is smaller than the Boston metropolitan area), Seattle and Nashville.

Austin's central library is 110,000 square feet - 1/5 the size of Boston's main library, 1/3 of Nashville's, and 1/5 of Seattle's.

The Austin central library seats 300 people while Boston's library seats 4,400. Austin has 75 public computers vs. 550 in Boston and 400 in Seattle.

Since this has come up again recently, I thought I'd put together a better background piece than this old one.

I've co-opted an image from one of the proposals for the new central library for this and added some lines.

The thick green line is the major transit corridor of Congress Avenue.

The Statesman ran an interesting feature today on the downtown Austin condo market. It looked at many of the intangible benefits of downtown living.

It makes the obvious point that downtown living is not for everyone, but that a vibrant urban core enhances the life of everyone.

The article summarizes the importance of the current wave of downtown development:

Over the last year, a task force has been working on a plan to create an ambitious new destination library for downtown Austin, This flagship facility would incorporate world class architecture and a prime downtown location to create a dramatic new public space that will be a prime asset for downtown denizens.