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 Shawmut senior director.

Canarsie Library in Brooklyn broke ground in February on a $30.9-million rebuild to double its space.

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 library 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 library hears regularly when updating its branches. “Libraries are not that quiet anymore,” says Fritzi Bodenheimer, a senior press officer for the library system, 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, although the new library 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. Brooklyn Public Library is having a construction surge, with more than one-third of its 60 libraries either recently overhauled and replaced or set for large-scale changes, according to Bodenheimer. The Canarsie location, built in 1960, needed updates to address some of about $550 million in unmet capital needs across the library system.

Canarsie library is one of more than 20 in Brooklyn to undergo major recent upgrade.The construction decision marked the Canarsie Library as the first cross-laminated timber building Shawmut has built 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. Instead, the firm had to plan for plywood barricades and other more breathable interventions. For similar quality concerns, fixtures and other installed library equipment were 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 [cross-laminated timber] 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, the Dept. of Buildings and Fire Dept. are curious to track its performance, says Flato. Height limits for cross-laminated timber are currently set at 85 ft in New York City, so he says he is excited to see how building codes might change as more mass timber is introduced. By coincidence, the New Lots branch of the Brooklyn Public Library is also being reconstructed with the material.