TA24-J F-Pages - Flipbook - Page 60
Opening spread Once a manufacturing plant for rockets and, later, chicken nuggets, the
Frisco Public Library has room (150,000 sf) for all kinds of programming, including a
maker space and cooking demonstrations.
Above In “Storied Landscape,” an installation by design studio Acrylicize, lines from
Texas poetry and literature wind above the main entrance.
58 Texas Architect
1/2 2024
A dinosaur skeleton named Rexy, designed by Artisan Industries, puts the scale
of the building — and the area’s geologic and economic history with fossil fuels — in
playful perspective.
Facing From movable shelving to automated doors that allow sta昀昀 to push book carts
and other equipment through quickly, the library is designed for 昀氀exibility and e昀케ciency.
Below
PHOTOS BY CHAD M. DAVIS, AIA
hen the new Frisco Public Library opened its doors in March 2023,
there were lines around the block. “More than 12,000 people came
during that 昀椀rst week,” says Maureen Arndt, AIA, a founding principal at
720 Design. The numbers were high but not surprising. The library, transformed by Gensler with 720 Design from a former rocket factory into an airy,
welcoming community hub, has plenty to attract visitors. The blank concrete
walls at the former loading dock have been replaced by the glass walls of an
interior breezeway. Inside, visitors are greeted by a full-scale dinosaur skeleton
named Rexy. Sculptural nooks provide engaging spaces for acrobatic readers,
and 昀氀exible private and public areas make room for all kinds of community
activities, from story time and meetings to CNC milling. Community buy-in
was also a factor in those numbers, thanks to a design process that sought out
and incorporated input from neighbors and users.
Then summer came. The number of visitors went up — and up, and up.
In July, the library had 110,000 visitors. “That’s half the population of Frisco,”
says Arndt. “I got an email from Shelley Holley, the library director, saying
they’d broken all attendance records.” With daily temperatures stuck above 100
degrees, the library wasn’t just a destination; for a lot of people, it was a lifesaver.
The extreme heat of 2023 is part of a pattern related to the shifting climate
that is increasingly reshaping public life in Texas. The National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) maintains a list of weather/climate
disaster events with losses exceeding $1 billion each, and in a state-by-state
count, Texas tops the list. Between 1980 and 2023 (as of October 10, 2023),
W
NOAA lists 169 con昀椀rmed billion-dollar loss events, including 19 droughts,
nine 昀氀oods, one freeze, 109 severe storms, 14 tropical cyclones, seven wild昀椀res,
and 10 winter storms. And most of these events were concentrated in the most
recent 昀椀ve years, which suggests that while our weather might be getting weird,
weird weather is the new normal.
As the climate shifts, communities are moving from a kind of whacka-mole approach to addressing weather emergencies to something a little
more preplanned. For example, Austin has designated speci昀椀c buildings as
resilience hubs, which the city’s website de昀椀nes as “neighborhood centers
that are designed to coordinate culturally sensitive, multilingual services to
better meet the needs of diverse groups of community members.” That’s
pretty vague until it comes to times of crisis: “In addition to the day-to-day
bene昀椀ts,” notes the website, “hubs can provide a safe place for temporary
relief during days of extreme weather or operate as centers for distributing
necessities such as food and multilingual information after disaster events
such as 昀氀oods.” Year-round, the sites can o昀昀er “space and programming for
community-building e昀昀orts that increase resilience when emergencies occur.”
As “third places,” libraries have long been hubs for information sharing and
community building. But for post-pandemic, weather-battered Texas communities, libraries are evolving from knowledge centers still mostly about
books into 昀氀exible, richly networked hubs that support community resilience
through means both hi-tech and no tech at all.
Libraries in Texas have always been de昀椀ned by individual and collective
determination. In the emerging state of Texas in the 19th century, reading
material was in short supply — not to mention buildings and librarians. In
his book “A Journey Through Texas: Or, A Saddle-Trip on the Southwestern
Frontier,” published in 1857, Frederick Law Olmsted noted that “in the whole
journey through Eastern Texas, we did not see one of the inhabitants look
into a newspaper or a book.” The 昀椀rst known public library in Texas was
assembled in 1870 in Galveston, where the Chamber of Commerce, with
the mission “to establish and foster a mercantile library and reading room in
this city for the use of all persons subscribing thereto” gathered books from
local merchants. A two-dollar fee limited the usage of the library to a select
few. (Among the reading options was likely a copy of the “Texas Almanac for
1870, and Emigrant’s Guide to Texas,” which covered topics including “the
vast area, climate and fertility of the soil, [and] the mild temperature, neither
so hot nor so cold as in the northern states.”) Without a dedicated building or
