New Castle County, Delaware
Construction Administration for Woodlawn Library
StudioJAED performed construction administration for the new Woodlawn Library in a collaborative effort with the Hillier Group. The library is located on a former Division of Motor Vehicles site that also once served as community parkland owned by the Woodlawn Trustees in Wilmington, Delaware.
Community input greatly influenced the design of the library to ensure that the facility met the needs of its end-users. A literacy training unit features multi-purpose computer labs and classrooms for visitors of all ages and a community meeting room is available for group functions.
The interior of the main stack area and administrative area of the library features exposed structural steel and an exposed infrastructure to maintain an older, industrial feel. The interior also features 4” raised floors designed to accommodate wires for flexibility. Tungsten, mercury and halogen interior lighting enhances the vast amounts of available light the windows provide. Cherry baseboards, shelving, doors and trim are displayed throughout the building.
The interior and exterior granite wainscotting was chosen to complement the stone used in existing area homes, while the exterior brick and stone were also selected in a effort to seamlessly blend the new building into the surrounding historic architecture.
In the early 1930s, William P. Bancroft and New York Central Park landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted originally envisioned a diagonal pedestrian walkway on the site, which was ingeniously incorporated into the location of the library, the design of the building itself, and the design of the new pedestrian bridge.