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

  • Rethinking K-12 Schools as a Continuous Learning Experience

    Most students move through three or more separate facilities during their K-12 journey, yet the built environments they encounter at each stage have traditionally been designed in isolation, with little continuity in spatial language, learning philosophy, or physical resources. Each new school is a reset with different layouts, learning models, expectations, and ways of moving through a building. The next generation of school design is making the case that the first day of kindergarten and the last day of high school can and should feel connected through common support systems and infrastructure in the physical environment.

  • Planning with Clarity: Using AI to Make Better Campus Decisions, Not Just Better Designs

    Higher education leaders are being asked to make increasingly high-stakes decisions about campus facilities amid greater uncertainty than ever before. Social and economic pressures, shifting enrollment, and evolving learning models compete with growing deferred maintenance needs to strain even the most robust infrastructure budgets.

  • 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.

  • Children walking along bright school corridor with motion blur

    How Next-Gen Design Is Reshaping the Student Experience

    The environments where students learn play a crucial role in shaping their growth in and out of the classroom. By centering design on well-being, flexibility, and purpose, districts can ensure their facilities remain vibrant community assets for many years to come.