Georgia Tech: Price Gilbert Library

After years of planning and construction, the renewed Georgia Tech Library opened its doors to students and faculty in the Spring of 2019 with a completely renovated and retooled Crosland Tower building designed by the collaborative team of PRAXIS3 and BNIM. The Crosland Tower facility represents the first phase of what is ultimately a $75 million trans-formational project including the renovation of 230,000 sf across two library buildings. Originally constructed in 1968, Crosland Tower has been transformed from a nearly windowless facility designed solely for books into a brightly-lit state-of-the-art collaborative research environment. This programmatic transformation was made possible by the removal of existing brick walls on the north and south facades and replacing them with high performance glazed curtain walls featuring integrated external sunshades optimized to improve energy performance to reduce glare and to harvest natural daylight and direct it toward the center of the floor plate. Possibly the most dramatic transformations occur at the top level of the building, where students can study in a newly created Reading Room and outdoor terrace featuring some of the best skyline views in the entire city. One aspect of this project that we’re most proud of is that while the Library’s seat count will be doubled as a result of the renovations, the building’s energy consumption will be reduced by more than sixty percent.