What started as a renovation project has become a rebuild that will be one of the first public mass timber buildings in New York City.
The new Canarsie Library, a branch of the Brooklyn Public Library (BPL), broke ground in February and is undergoing a $30.9-million project that will include meeting spaces, a recording studio, and more across 11,000 sq ft—twice the size of the previous building—upon completion in 2027.
Architect and designer Studio Joseph and general contractor Shawmut Design and Construction initially planned to renovate the library after being awarded the contract. Site reviews, along with the project’s evolving priorities, indicated that a teardown and rebuild were necessary, says Jonathan Fiato, a senior director with Shawmut.
Site reviews and prioritized project changes dictated that the team tear down and rebuild the existing building rather than renovate it.
The idea to pursue mass timber construction stemmed from feedback the BPL and its contractors received at community meetings held over several months. “This scheme that we chose captures the spirit of what we were listening to,” says Wendy Evans Joseph, founding partner of Studio Joseph.
Locals wanted space for teens, a request the BPL hears regularly when updating its branches. “Libraries are not that quiet anymore,” Bodenheimer says, adding that the aim is to offer areas that allow loud after-school activities.
Residents also asked for a more natural, warm feel, says Evans Joseph. As a result, mass timber became a design consideration and later the favored building technology. Though the new BPL branch will have metal cladding on the exterior, the wood will be exposed internally,
Residents asked for the library to have a more natural, warm feel.
The project team says $20 million of the reconstruction price tag was allocated from New York City capital funding. BPL is in the midst of a construction surge, with more than a third of its 60 libraries either recently overhauled and replaced or slated for large-scale changes, according to Fritzi Bodenheimer, a senior press officer with the library. The Canarsie location, built in 1960, needed updates to address some of the roughly $550 million in unmet capital needs across the library system.
Shawmut’s detailed quality assurance plan decreases the chance that trade partners working on the materials will damage exposed mass timber.
The construction decision marked the Canarsie Library as the first cross-laminated timber building Shawmut has designed in New York. The company has worked on 10 other mass timber projects across the nation, however. A client-contractor team also visited two mass timber projects underway in the region, the Amherst College student dining center and the American Repertory Theater at Harvard University, to see what construction looks like.Shawmut’s detailed quality assurance plan is designed to reduce the risk that trade partners working on the materials will damage what will ultimately be exposed mass timber. Tarps and plastic wrap used to protect other construction materials would damage the cross-laminated timber because they are too impermeable, for example. Instead, Shawmut had to plan for plywood barricades and other more breathable interventions.
For similar quality concerns, fixtures and other installed library equipment had to be planned far in advance and required intensive planning in 3D mockups. “If you move a light fixture in a sheetrock ceiling, you move the hole,” Fiato says. “If you move it in a CLT ceiling, your patch isn’t going to look very good.”
The project includes meeting spaces, a recording studio, and more across 11,000 sq ft, or twice the space of the previous building on the site.
The library will also have a glass curtain wall. Instead of being hung with brackets, the facade will be integrated into the cross-laminated timber. The installation is complicated, even by mass timber-construction standards, Fiato says. The glazing will be a tight fit for the sake of structural integrity and energy code compliance, so Shawmut started with computer mockups before escalating to 16 ft by 13 ft mockups of the curtain wall in Long Island. The components are being manufactured now and should arrive on site later this year and next.
Other design elements in the completed building either use wood or aim to extend the warm, approachable feeling to new surfaces, Evans Joseph says. TECTUM wood fiber panels will be used as an acoustic material, while the terrazzo-style rubber floor is meant to be friendly and inviting.
As one of the first public, mass timber buildings in the city, Fiato knows the Dept. of Buildings and the New York City Fire Dept. are curious to track its performance. Height limits for cross-laminated timber are currently set at 85 ft in New York City, so Fiato is excited to see how building codes might change as more mass timber is introduced.
And soon, Canarsie will be one of a couple wood-based libraries for the city to assess: By coincidence, the New Lots branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is also being reconstructed with mass timber.