Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Ringling College of Art + Design: Alfred R. Goldstein Library

  • 07/01/18
Ringling College of Art + Design

PHOTOS © JEREMY BITTERMANN

“This is not your grandfather’s library.”
—Larry Thompson, president, Ringling College of Art + Design

The Alfred R. Goldstein Library at Ringling College of Art + Design in Sarasota, FL, enhances the college’s reputation as a design school and sets a new direction for future campus design. Serving as a new nexus of community activity for campus and the surrounding neighborhoods, the library is much more than a depository for books.

As a lively space that draws students, faculty, and community members together, the space features flexible classrooms, group study areas, makerspace, a café, the academic resource center, a rare books collection, and multiple terraces offering views of campus and the adjacent Whitaker Bayou. These program pieces are organized around a central open stair that helps visitors make visual connections to the various activities taking place, and encourages impromptu meetings.

An important aspect of the design process was to include the school community as a creative partner; for example, a continuous three-story service and elevator core is wrapped in a mural designed by a Ringling alum, and serves as an orienting device on each floor.

Located near the center of Ringling’s growing campus—on a site formerly occupied by a gas station and a parking lot—the Alfred R. Goldstein Library brings life to a once vacant part of the college. The ground floor is designed to blur the lines between interior and exterior space, with shaded terraces and vast expanses of glass that welcome visitors in and provide views of the surrounding landscape. Open 24 hours a day, the library has become the most popular meeting place on campus, engaging students, faculty, and the public in community-wide events.

Shepley Bulfinch worked in association with Sweet|Sparkman Architects on this project.

This article originally appeared in the College Planning & Management July/August 2018 issue of Spaces4Learning.

Featured

  • Designing for Every Mind

    Learning environments have the power to shape not just what students know, but who they become. When a school is designed with genuine empathy—for the full range of ways students think, sense, and engage with the world—it becomes more than a building. It becomes a catalyst for growth, confidence, and belonging. That is the animating idea behind neurodiverse design, and it is one that is transforming how more architects and designers are thinking about school design.

  • Virginia Tech Tops Out New College of Engineering Building

    Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va., recently celebrated the topping out of Mitchell Hall, which will soon stand as the largest College of Engineering building on campus, according to a news release. The university partnered with Skanska on the 285,500-square-foot facility, which has an expected completion date of winter 2028.

  • Q&A: How to Prevent Kitchen Grease Fires in Commercial Kitchens

    School cafeterias and university dining halls serve thousands of meals daily, relying on high-heat equipment like fryers, grills, and ovens. While these operations keep students fed, they also generate significant grease-laden vapors. Without proper controls, this grease becomes a silent fire threat. As a certified exhaust cleaning specialist and business coach who has helped hundreds of institutional facilities achieve NFPA 96 compliance, I emphasize that proactive grease management isn’t optional; it’s a core fire/life safety practice.

  • Tomball ISD Opens New Tomball West High School

    Tomball Independent School District in Tomball, Texas, recently celebrated the official opening of Tomball West High School, the district's third comprehensive high school, with a community ribbon-cutting ceremony, according to a district news release.