surrey library case study

Client City of Surrey Type Institutional, Civic, Library Size 82,000 sq.ft. Status Completed 2011 Photography Ema Peter, Nic Lehoux

Surrey City Centre Library

Revery’s award-winning design for Surrey’s LEED Gold-certified City Centre Library features extensive use of concrete and glass to create a modern, open, light-filled, and welcoming community space. Completed below budget on a 22-month fast-tracked schedule, this new central library was the first building in the City of Surrey’s Urban Civic Precinct and marks the next phase of a major civic investment in the transformation of downtown Surrey, BC.

Centrally located adjacent to one of the most intensively utilized transit hubs in Metro Vancouver, the building’s flexible design evolved from the need to provide a space for reading, studying, and above all, gathering as a community. Sculpted around a soaring column-free atrium and meticulous day-lighting strategy, the library features angled walls, floor-to-ceiling windows and vaulted skylights that cascade natural light into the building’s center, illuminating every corner and refracting light from the angled white ribbons that wrap each floor. At all times, the room, as well as the stacks and various activity spaces, remain open and transparent to each other, encouraging people to interact both within the building and outside.

Equipped with the latest in technology, the design offers spaces for group and individual study, and community gathering: a Living Room, a “place with a couch for mom to wait”, a coffee shop, a Dinner Table for group work, and Listening Chairs with integrated audio speakers.

Acclaimed internationally for its unique and contemporary design, Surrey’s City Centre Library is dedicated to natural light, social interaction, and pride of knowledge for its diverse community of patrons.

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Surrey City Centre Library

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Surrey City Centre Library

A triumph of sculptural concrete and natural light.

Surrey City Centre Library’s dynamic, contemporary design reflects the changing role of libraries as social gathering spaces for the community, rather than an archive for books. Its completion has bolstered the momentum of Surrey’s downtown revitalization efforts, redefining this once-suburban area as a thriving destination for iconic architecture.

Project Essentials

Location Surrey, BC
Client The City of Surrey
Architect Revery Architecture (Bing Thom Architects)
Size 85,000 ft² (7,900 m²)
Budget C$26.5 million
Sustainable Features Certified LEED Gold

Bing Thom’s interest in natural daylighting largely informed the design. Since glare and steep contrasts of lighting levels are to be avoided, the building’s curving walls, tilted windows and vaulted skylights ensure light is painted across each corner of the library and its social gathering spaces.

Fast + Epp’s main challenge was to develop innovative solutions under a tight project schedule. The building had to be designed and constructed in only 15 months in order to meet a federal government stimulus funding program.

Canadian Consulting Engineers

2013 Award of Excellence - Building Category

The complex sculptural shapes of this four-storey structure are formed by cast-in-place concrete exterior cladding walls at the perimeter, which are tilted at 10 degrees out-of-plane and 35 degrees in-plane. These tilted walls are tied back for gravity and seismic forces to an internal steel and concrete structure. Steel trusses at the roof level and steel framing at the third floor provide a large, column-free atrium space.

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Surrey City Centre Library by Bing Thom Architects

May 19, 2016, 12:16 pm Comments Off on Surrey City Centre Library by Bing Thom Architects

Bing Thom Architects designed the Surrey City Centre Library near Vancouver featuring angled concrete walls, curved windows and a pointy corner that resembles a ship’s bow. The library is the main branch of the public library system in Surrey. The dwelling replaced an outdated facility and marked an important phase of “a major civic investment in the transformation of downtown Surrey,” said Bing Thom Architects, a Vancouver-based firm founded in 1982.

The building’s sculptural form consists of concrete walls that partly slope inward, providing visual interest while also minimising solar heat gain. The northern side of the building comes to a sharp point, resembling the bow of a ship, while windows include both curves and points – both features that have been popularised by the work of the late Zaha Hadid.Computer modelling software was used to ensure the concrete formwork was “highly efficient and easy to construct”.

“The exterior concrete structure was carefully detailed as the final surface, thereby eliminating the need for expensive building cladding,” the firm added.

The team incorporated expansive areas of glazing, ensuring plenty of light enters the building. They also designed the entrance to feature clear sight lines, allowing visitors to quickly get oriented once inside the facility.

“The building design evolved out of the need to provide a space for reading, studying, and above all, gathering as a community,” said the firm.

“With advances in easily available electronic information, the role of libraries is changing and the book collection is no longer the central focus.”

Elytra Filament Pavilion

Bolsover Residence by Dillon Kyle Architects

Surrey City Centre Library

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Architects : Revery Architecture Area : 82,000 f2 Country: Canada Year : 2011 Photographs : Nic Lehoux and Ema Peter

Text description and images are provided by the architects.

Located adjacent to one of the most intensively utilized transit hubs in Metro Vancouver, the LEED Gold-certified Surrey City Centre Library is both a landmark and ‘living room’ of a thriving new urban civic precinct. Wrapping around the bright, spacious atrium in a spiraling ascent from the main level to the fourth, the library offers a welcoming and inspiring gathering space for the surrounding community and beyond.

The library’s city context informed the continuous sweeping curve that defines its western edge; a direct expression of the drive bounding the site. The dramatic slope of the building’s doubly curved, outward tilting envelope maximizes floor area on a constrained site, provides solar shading for life-cycle maintenance savings, and creates an iconic dynamism of form.

Sculpted around a soaring column-free atrium, the library offers a diverse mix of large, interconnected “high” spaces and “low”, more intimate spaces. At all times, the various activity spaces remain open and transparent to each other, allowing for a sense of belonging even when engaging in independent reading and study. One of the most dramatic spaces is the ‘urban living room’, an open, double-height reading area with expansive windows overlooking the public plaza to the east.

To enable the creation of the central atrium, Revery conceived a long span upturn beam that could be concealed within the undulating form of the balustrade. This gesture transfers the structural loads, while offering a memorable aesthetic articulation.

The team conducted a series of light studies using 3D computer models and scale architectural models to explore whether natural , indirect light could reach all parts of the library while minimizing or eliminating direct sunlight . During these studies, it was determined that the stairs’ guard rails could act as light baffles to distribute light throughout the space; the team then optimized the shape of the light chimney, shape of the stairs, and the height and angle of the guard rails to orchestrate scores of illumination throughout the library’s interior. The project’s meticulous daylighting strategy provides 50% more light than standard practice with less than 40% glazing area.

The Surrey City Centre Library inaugurated the precinct and it was therefore crucial that it be able to adapt as demands increased and diversified. Open, raised access floors can reconfigure to host various social assemblies, cultural events, and learning exchanges, while responding to evolving priorities and technologies. The library’s top floor, which has an increased footprint due to the outward slope of the building’s walls, invites partnership leases, providing tremendous long-term cost benefits for the library while also fostering community integration.

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In fall 2009, Bing Thom Architects (BTA) won a stimulus grant from the Canadian government to build the new $36 million (Canadian), 77,000 square foot Surrey City Centre Library, envisioned as a centerpiece of this fast-growing community outside Vancouver, BC. The caveat: use it or lose it. In exchange for the funding, construction had to be finished in 18 months—half the usual time allowed for such a project. “We got the grant in November and started working in December,” says Michael Heeney, principal at the Vancouver-based BTA. “By February, we were under construction.”

The accelerated schedule meant there was no time to conduct essential public meetings and focus groups to find out what the community wanted from their new library. BTA’s solution: use social media.

The birth of the Ideabook

Collaborating with the Surrey librarians, BTA set up an “Ideabook,” using Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, and a library blog to display design concepts and ask for public input. Right away, “People started chiming in,” says Heeney, in an undertaking that would have significant impact on both design and service.

At the height of the process, the sites were getting 6000 hits per month. By contrast, about 30 people typically attend one community meeting, says Heeney. And while focus groups tend to draw an older crowd, the largest percentage of the new library’s online “fans” were under 25. Also, in Heeney’s view, the second largest group, women between 35 and 44, reflected a segment of Surrey’s working family population that would not usually take time to attend evening and weekend forums.

Some requests were predictable, says Surrey chief librarian Melanie Houlden: more computer training, more books and DVDs, and more programming in general. Others were less anticipated but just as important. The Muslim population asked for a prayer room, Heeney says. The rising number of people who work at home wanted small rooms they could use for meetings. Kids requested a clock in the spacious children’s area, a place to draw pictures, and couches where their parents could relax while waiting for them.

On Flickr, people posted images of architecture they liked, much of it in keeping with the soaring, open environments they were seeing in BTA’s plans. Pictures of China’s ultramodern Shenzhen Library showed that structure’s dramatic, grand staircases, which double as informal seating. Images of the Central Library in Amsterdam revealed biomorphic chairs and airy white spaces. Other pictures ranged from the open-plan Seattle Central Library to colorful murals in an airport in Moncton, NB.

People-centered design

All of this feedback informed BTA’s existing commitment to creating an uplifting community destination, with central areas that could double as performance spaces. The architects also saw a need for smaller, “living room”–type places where people could read or work.

“We spent a lot of time making sure there were opportunities for people-watching,” says Heeney. “There is a sort of natural, voyeuristic desire for people to know what’s going on around them.” A request for a quiet workplace resulted in a glassed-in study area.

Two enormous staircases ringing the central atrium are key to the Surrey library’s final design, a sleek four-story building, which, owing to the tapered shape of the site, also conjures associations with a ship. As Houlden says, “These beautiful staircases work in two ways—either you sit and enjoy the view outside, or settle in with laptops and books.” In addition, the stairs serve as bleacher-type seating for events and performances.

On opening day last September, 10,000 people filed through the building. Now that the community has opined on the library, Houlden and staff are soliciting more online input “about where to go from here,” service-wise, she says.

The new facility replaces a 10,000 square foot, “sad little building” that was built in 1974 and used to be a plumbing supply store, Houlden notes. The library staff went from providing eight public computers to 80; from running a suburban-type, “drive-by” facility to a city library envisioned as a community hub. There is “so much opportunity,” she says.

Opportunity knocks for BTA, too. “We got into this process by necessity,” says Heeney of the Ideabook approach. “But it’s now become a standard part of our practice.”

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